Mookie Betts delivered a go-ahead RBI single in the eighth inning, securing a 4-3 victory for the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Colorado Rockies.
The win meant L.A. took two out of three from their NL West foes at Dodger Stadium. The game’s 3-3 deadlock had lasted until Betts’ tiebreaking hit in the eighth, with Colorado continuing to make things interesting in Wednesday night’s finale.
Eighth-Inning Decider Breaks Stalemate
Early shakiness from both starters, Roki Sasaki for the Dodgers and Gabriel Hughes for the Rockies, turned into somewhat of a pitchers’ duel by the third inning. This period saw the game settle into a 3-3 deadlock that persisted until Betts’ tiebreaking hit in the eighth.
The Dodgers initially struck against Hughes, who was making his first big league start. They brought one run home on a bases-loaded wild pitch and another pair in on a Kyle Tucker single in the first inning.
Sasaki’s Early Struggles and Recovery
It took until the sixth inning for another Dodger to reach base, after Hughes retired 15 straight L.A. batters following Alex Call’s strikeout. This sequence gave the Rockies time to get back into the contest.
Sasaki, coming off a rough outing against the Padres where he allowed six runs across three innings, was shaky early on in his start against the Rockies. He served up solo homers to Kyle Karros and Edouard Julien, which sliced L.A.’s lead to 3-2 in the second inning. He then gave up the tying run when a leadoff walk came around to score on a sacrifice fly in the third.
The Rockies seemed poised to take the lead in the fourth, with Sasaki giving up a single and a double to put a pair of runners in scoring position with nobody out. However, Sasaki bore down, working a quick three-pitch strikeout of Troy Johnston on a foul tip. A longer battle with Julien ended in a called strike three on the eighth pitch, and Sasaki got out of the jam by getting Ezequiel Tovar to fly out to right field.
After escaping the fourth inning unscathed, Sasaki retired all six of the batters he faced in the fifth and sixth, ending up with a quality start in spite of the early stress.
After the way the Rockies refused to go away late in games, the Dodgers must have been glad to see them depart Dodger Stadium with all of their bags in tow at the conclusion of this week’s three-game series.