Steve Webb
Game 142, 9/7/2024: Dodgers 7, Guardians 2
CHAVEZ RAVINE, CA — In the absence of Gavin Stone, the Dodgers planned to have a bullpen game on Saturday against the Guardians. Cleveland didn’t plan to do the same, but it ended up happening anyway, as the Boys in Blue chased starter Gavin Williams with a six-run first and coasted to a 7-2 victory to even the series with the AL Central leaders.
The fun got started early on Saturday. After opener Ryan Brasier worked a scoreless top of the first, the Dodgers got right to work in the bottom of the frame. Shohei Ohtani absolutely annihilated the first offering from Williams but it was just foul down the right field line for a loud and angry strike one. Even though Shohei grounded out in the at-bat, the tone was set. The rattled Williams struggled to find the strike zone after that, issuing free passes to Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Max Muncy.
With the bases loaded, the back half of the Dodgers batting order went to work. Four straight productive at-bats. First, Tommy Edman smoked a ground-rule double to left to score a pair. Gavin Lux hit a sacrifice fly to score Muncy from third. Next, Miguel Rojas hit an opposite field single to score Edman for the fourth run of the inning. Finally, the coup de grâce: an Andy Pages two-run homer to left center. Pages got the start in the place of the injured Teoscar Hernandez and didn’t waste his opportunity. On a 3-1 count, Pages pounced on a center-cut fastball and deposited it among the paying customers in the pavilion. With that outburst, it was 6-0 Dodgers and they had plenty of wiggle room for the bullpen game to come.
After Brasier, the Dodgers sent Michael Grove out to pitch the second. After a catcher’s interference was called on Austin Barnes, outfielder Lane Thomas drilled a pitch into the seats and the Guardians were on the board. It started to look like it might be one of those games where the Dodgers score early and then slowly give away their lead.
However, the Dodgers’ pen tightened things up. Justin Wrobleski was next up on the mound, and though he struggled with his control (three walks in two innings), he made the pitches when he had to, and escaped both innings of work with plenty of traffic, but no runs allowed. So, I guess that would count as an improvement on his start in Phoenix last weekend. After Wrobleski’s two innings, Blake Treinen worked around a couple of hit to throw a scoreless fifth, and Alex Vesia got the game into the late innings with a 1-2-3 sixth.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers did manage to add on a bit. Mookie Betts, who has been hot as Hades since his return from the IL, blasted a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth to make it 7-2. In his last seven games, Betts is hitting .417 with an OPS of nearly 1.400. That’s helpful, sports fans.
Pitching-wise, it was more zeros for the bullpen the rest of the way, with Michael Kopech holding the Guardians at bay in the seventh and Brent Honeywell locking down the eighth and ninth to secure the victory.
This final interleague series of the year wraps up with a matinee on Sunday afternoon. The Dodgers will send Jack Flaherty, whose importance to the team has increased exponentially lately, to the mound. Flaherty will match up against righty Tanner Bibee (11-6, 3.56 ERA, 162 SO). Game time will be the usual for a Sunday, 1:10 pm. Then, it’s a crucial stretch of games that could very well decide the division: a home series against the Cubs, and then a road trip to Atlanta and Miami before the final homestand of the year, against the Rockies and Padres. Lots of baseball left until October. Let’s put this thing away!
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