If this were a normal season, and the Dodgers had clinched the National League West title by now, they could have given Shohei Ohtani Friday night off so he could bask in the afterglow of his six-hit, three-homer, two-double, 10-RBI game to become the charter member of baseball’s 50-homer, 50-stolen-base club on Thursday in Miami.
But this is not a normal season, not with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, baseball’s two hottest teams since the All-Star break, within striking distance heading into the penultimate weekend, so Ohtani was in the lineup for the series opener against the last-place Colorado Rockies.
“There are no days off right now,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “We had a champagne toast [Thursday to celebrate a playoff-clinching win]. We got in late. We have to keep winning baseball games. We’ve still got people on our heels, and I want our guys to continue to stay hungry.”
That isn’t a problem for Ohtani, who seems insatiable at the plate right now. The slugger crushed his NL-leading 52nd homer of the season in the fifth inning, turning a one-run deficit into a one-run lead, and stole his 52nd base in the seventh, part of a three-hit night that helped push the Dodgers to a 6-4 win in Chavez Ravine.
The Dodgers (92-62) reduced their magic number to clinch their 11th division title in 12 years to five with eight games left. They remain four games ahead of the San Diego Padres and six ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West.
The Dodgers trailed 2-0 when Andy Pages led off the bottom of the fifth with a 407-foot home run to left field off Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland to cut the lead to 2-1.
Max Muncy doubled to left center with one out, and after Kiké Hernández popped out, Ohtani hammered a full-count 92-mph fastball that was well above the strike zone 423 feet over the center-field wall for a 3-2 lead.
Sam Hilliard’s two-out solo homer off Alex Vesia pulled Colorado even 3-3 in the top of the sixth, but Teoscar Hernández led off the bottom of the sixth with his 30th homer of the season for a 4-3 lead, and the Dodgers rallied for two more runs in the seventh.
Pinch-hitter Tommy Edman sparked the seventh-inning rally with a one-out walk off reliever Jaden Hill. Edman stole second, took third on Ohtani’s infield single and scored on Mookie Betts’ sacrifice fly to center. Ohtani took third on an error and scored on Teoscar Hernández’s RBI infield single for a 6-3 lead.
Evan Phillips retired the side in order in the seventh, and Blake Treinen threw a one-two-three eighth as part of a bullpen game for the Dodgers. Michael Kopech gave up a leadoff homer to Michael Toglia in the ninth before retiring the next three batters for the save.
The game began with a Betts web gem, the Dodgers right fielder racing to the wall to make a leaping grab of Charlie Blackmon’s first-inning drive while the Rockies leadoff man rounded the bases, thinking he hit a home run.
Betts came down on the warning track and remained seated while Blackmon rounded third and headed for home. Only after Pages, the Dodgers center fielder, helped him up did Betts take the ball out of his glove and throw it back to the infield.
Ohtani received a lengthy standing ovation from a crowd of 49,073 after he was introduced in the bottom of the first, but with chants of “MVP! MVP!” echoing through the stadium, Ohtani struck out, beginning a four-inning stretch in which the Dodgers managed just two singles off Freeland.
The Dodgers, employing a bullpen game, got a scoreless first inning from Ryan Brasier and a scoreless third and fourth from Brusdar Graterol, but Colorado took a 2-0 lead on Hunter Goodman’s RBI groundout off Joe Kelly in the second inning and Blackmon’s two-out solo homer off Daniel Hudson in the fifth.
Rehab report
Clayton Kershaw threw a 32-pitch bullpen session on Friday, just two days after he threw 80 pitches off a bullpen mound in Miami, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the veteran left-hander is on the verge of returning from a left-big toe injury that has sidelined him since Sept. 1.
“The most important part is getting it healthy, which it’s not yet,” Roberts said of the toe. “The other part is keeping his arm moving so you don’t lose the buildup he’s had. The last part is the execution, and it’s hard to have that when you’re not working with the full deck. He’s doing the best he can, and with each passing day, he gets more healthy and feels better.”
Reliever Anthony Banda, who suffered a left-hand fracture when he hit what the team called a “solid object” with his pitching hand in frustration after giving up two runs in a Sept. 9 game against the Chicago Cubs, threw a bullpen session on Thursday and is scheduled for another bullpen workout this weekend.
“The velocity was good [on Thursday], and he’ll throw another one using his slider,” Roberts said of Banda, a left-hander who is 2-2 with a 3.23 ERA in 46 games. “He should be ready to go for us the day he’s eligible to come off the injured list.”
