The decisive blow in the Dodgers’ 12-4 win against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday at Dodger Stadium was the kind of unrelenting rally they hadn’t mustered since leaving Colorado on Monday.
The Dodgers were trailing by a run going into the bottom of the fourth inning. Then they put together a six-run rally. They stacked up six hits, only one of which was for extra bases, and two walks in the inning, to knock Cubs starter Colin Rea out of the game before piling on against long reliever Javier Assad.
“We all love home runs,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But sort of a hallmark for our club is stress, and continuing to put pressure on the opposing pitchers. You look at the last week, we really haven’t done that. We might’ve scored three in one inning, and then nothing happens after that. But continuing to apply pressure is kind of what we typically do. And we did that tonight.”
They did that with contributions from all over the lineup.
Shohei Ohtani ended a three-game hitless streak (0 for 12) with a single in the first inning. He went on to draw two walks to reach base three times.
Max Muncy — batting third because he was feeling under the weather and Roberts wanted to take advantage of the matchup with Rea before replacing Muncy with Santiago Espinal — drove in the Dodgers’ first runs. Muncy’s two-run blast in the third inning was his ninth home run of the season.
Dodgers No. 8 hitter Hyeseong Kim started the fourth-inning rally with a line-drive single up the middle. Then Alex Freeland, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, Dalton Rushing and Andy Pages combined for six RBIs.
Teoscar Hernández celebrates with teammates in the dugout after scoring on a two-run single by Dalton Rushing in the fourth inning Saturday against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“When everybody gets going, we’re just about unstoppable,” said Freeland, who hit two doubles from the nine hole.
They kept applying pressure against the Cubs’ injury-depleted bullpen, putting together a four-run sixth inning that added two more RBIs to Pages’ tally.
“We just smelled an opportunity, and we took advantage of it,” Rushing said. “That’s what good offenses do.”
On the mound, the Dodgers (18-9) benefited from what Roberts described as Roki Sasaki’s “best outing” of the season.
“I don’t think the line does it justice,” Roberts said. “Gave up three homers, but the swing-and-miss, the in-zone, all that stuff I really liked.”
Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki delivers against the Cubs in the first inning Saturday at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The home runs were all solo shots since Sasaki was successful at limiting traffic on the bases. He left the game in the sixth after putting runners on base with a walk and a single. It was the deepest he had pitched into a game this season.
Sasaki was throwing a new, harder version of his splitter. It was his most-used pitch Saturday, accounting for 48% of his throws, according to Statcast.
Sasaki acknowledged, through Japanese interpreter Kensuke Okubo, that he made a “small adjustment” to his splitter/fork ball. Asked what that adjustment was, he quipped, “I can’t tell.”
Sitting between 90 and 91 mph, his splitter was almost six mph faster than his bread-and-butter fork ball.
“It’s more tunneled like the fastball,” Roberts said, describing how Sasaki’s new splitter tricks hitters into thinking it’s a different pitch. “And you would think you’re going to get more swing-and-miss. And today, with that split, it stays in the hitting zone a little bit longer and makes the hitter make the decision a little bit sooner.”
Left-hander Jack Dreyer entered and immediately walked designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros to load the bases. But he struck out the next two batters, and right-hander Will Klein finished the escape job.
The bullpen, with Kyle Hurt and Jake Eder also contributing, held back the Cubs (17-10) the rest of the way. The Dodgers’ victory stopped the red-hot Cubs’ 10-game win streak. A rubber match Sunday will decide the series.
