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For most of the afternoon, Wednesday’s game played out frustratingly for the Dodgers.
The team’s lineup squandered a couple key early chances, getting just one total run from two bases-loaded opportunities in the bottom of the fourth and fifth.
, had his worst inning of the season on the mound, giving up four runs in a nightmare fifth inning that included a leadoff walk and miscommunication with Freddie Freeman on a ground ball to first base. Shohei Ohtani, making his 12th pitching start of the season as scheduled despite last week’s knee injury, had his worst inning of the season. Indeed, this Dodgers team has more margin for error than most.
They can hang around, stay within striking distance and flip the script on a moment’s notice. Wednesday, it turned out, would become the latest example, with Freddie Freeman keying the club’s eventual 5-4 victory with a go-ahead two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth. The squandered bases-loaded chances didn’t end up mattering, despite a three-at-bat sequence with the bags full and no outs in the fifth that “was as bad as it gets,” Roberts said.
Ditto with the four fifth-inning runs Ohtani was charged with in his six-inning start, one that was also hampered by a bloody blister on his right middle finger. Instead, once Freeman provided the lead with his 12th home run of the year — a towering two-run blast against Rays right-hander Kevin Kelly on a center-cut sinker, turning a one-run deficit into a one-run lead — the club rolled the rest of the way to a third consecutive one-run win in this series, escaping a bases-loaded jam in the top of the ninth when Alex Vesia struck out Cedric Mullins with a full-count slider.
“There’s not a lot of situations where you feel 100%,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “So I just took it as that. It’s big that … we were able to win a game like this.
”Wednesday, it turned out, would become the latest example of the Dodgers quickly flipping the script, with Freddie Freeman keying the club’s eventual 5-4 win with a go-ahead two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth.in more than a month to the White Sox last week, the Dodgers bounced back in impressive fashion against the Rays . They picked up their first series sweep since the Rockies came to town last month and their first against a team with a winning record since a trip to play the Nationals in early April.
It was only a month ago that Freeman seemed to be struggling, mired in a mid-May slump that had dropped his season batting average to .254 and OPS to .737. As he has so often done over his 17-year career, however, Freeman didn’t panic, looked for tweaks to his swing and trusted his process. With Wednesday’s go-ahead home run, Freeman is now batting .323 in 27 games since May 19.
In that time, he has eight home runs, 14 extra-base hits, 20 RBIs and an OPS over 1.000. It has helped raise Freeman’s season-long numbers closer to his norm and catapulted him into the early lead for All-Star Game voting among National League first basemen, as he looks for a 10th career selection to the Midsummer Classic.
Will Smith is making progress from his neck injury, Roberts said before Wednesday’s game, and has been going through on-field activities throughout the week. However, the catcher is unlikely to be activated from the injured list when he’s eligible Friday, dashing hopes he would only miss the minimum 10 days as he deals with inflammation in a disk.
“We’re just trying to get him to a place where he doesn’t regress with it once he comes back,” Roberts said. “So I guess he’s not out of the woods yet. ”The Dodgers are off Thursday and continue this homestand Friday by opening a three-game series against the Orioles. Shohei Ohtani, making his 12th pitching start of the season as scheduled despite last week’s knee injury, had his worst inning of the season.
Wednesday, it turned out, would become the latest example of the Dodgers quickly flipping the script, with Freddie Freeman keying the club’s eventual 5-4 win with a go-ahead two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth.
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