Dodgers Get Another Win, And That's What Matters

Needing to string a few wins together, the Dodgers could hardly have asked for a more inviting opponent than the struggling, last-place Colorado Rockies. The caveat, of course, is that the game was being played a mile in the sky at Coors Field, where the visiting club might reasonably be issued a seat belt and a chin strap along with the lineup card.

Tuesday night provided another demonstration.

The Dodgers appeared to have things under control until the eighth inning, when Evan Phillips walked the leadoff hitter, surrendered two consecutive singles and watched Colorado cut what had been a comfortable lead to 7-5. With two outs and the tying run becoming considerably less theoretical, Tanner Scott entered to finish the inning.

Then Roberts sent him back out for the ninth.

It wasn't exactly a leisurely stroll to the finish line. Scott surrendered a double and a single, bringing the Rockies within one run and putting the tying run on base. But with the Mile High air doing its best to turn every routine fly ball into a potential adventure, Scott finally got T.J. Rumfield to pop out to shortstop, securing a four-out save and giving the Dodgers a 7-6 victory.

The Dodgers have now won the first two games in Colorado and have an opportunity Wednesday night to do something they need to keep doing: string together wins.

The Dodgers have now scored 18 runs on 24 hits with four home runs in the first two games of the series after scoring only 10 runs in four games against Milwaukee over the weekend. That qualifies as an offensive improvement.

Monday night, it was the top of the lineup doing most of the damage. Tuesday, the bottom half helped carry the load.

Tommy Edman doubled twice. Teoscar Hernández doubled and tripled. Kyle Tucker doubled in the fourth inning, and Hernández followed with another double before Freeman's sacrifice fly brought Hernández home.

Back-to-back doubles from Tucker and Hernández were particularly encouraging considering how long both have been searching for consistency at the plate. Nobody is suggesting the Boo Birds will permanently leave their seats just yet, but they can at least sit down for a couple of innings.

Shohei Ohtani supplied the big blow, launching a 448-foot, two-run homer in the third inning to give Los Angeles a 3-1 lead and reach 30 home runs for the sixth consecutive season.

Freddie Freeman added two hits and two RBIs, continuing to swing the bat well after his frightening fall into the Royals' dugout last week.

And Eric Lauer once again provided the Dodgers with a quality start, allowing four runs on six hits over five innings while striking out six. Lauer has become one of the more dependable pieces of the Dodgers' rotation since arriving from Toronto in May. He is now 8-6 with a 3.48 ERA in his first 12 starts with Los Angeles.

"Seems like every time I go out there, I get some great run support, so it takes a lot of the burden off me," Lauer said.

That is certainly one way to look at it. The other is that Lauer has given the Dodgers enough quality innings to allow the offense to do its thing without requiring perfection every night.

And then there is Scott.

With Edwin Díaz placed on the injured list Tuesday with inflammation in the right side of his neck, the Dodgers recalled Emmet Sheehan and moved Scott back into the closer role.

Considering what has transpired with Díaz recently, there is a pretty reasonable argument that Scott should have been the closer anyway.

Scott has been one of the more consistent members of the Dodgers' bullpen this season. He now has 17 saves, and his performance Tuesday was precisely what the Dodgers needed from the back end of the bullpen: enter when the game was in trouble, get the final outs of the eighth, come back for the ninth and finish it.

It wasn't pretty, but it was effective, and at this point, effective is a highly desirable quality.

"We had a rough couple of games, but move on to the next one," Scott said. "Tomorrow's a new day, just gotta win another one."

That sounds simple because it is.

The Dodgers have spent enough time recently trying to explain what went wrong. They don't need another dissertation. They need wins.

Roberts liked what he saw from the lineup.

"The bottom half fed into the top half. Shohei with the big homer and Kyle with the big double and Teo swung the bat well. Lot of good things."

Tommy Edman agreed.

"Hopefully we can keep the momentum going and just win a lot of ball games down the stretch."

That is the part that matters now.

The Dodgers have won two straight after dropping three of four to Milwaukee. They have scored 18 runs in two nights in Colorado, and for the first time in a while the offense looks like it is capable of making a game uncomfortable for the other team rather than only for its own dugout.

But Colorado is not Milwaukee, and Coors Field has a way of making baseball games behave badly.

So nobody should be writing the Dodgers' comeback story just yet. What they can do is keep adding chapters.

The Dodgers have two wins in Colorado. They have a chance to sweep Wednesday night. After that comes Pittsburgh, followed by Atlanta and Detroit. There are plenty of miles ahead for the team bus—or, more accurately, plenty of miles to cash in on the frequent-flyer account.

For now, though, the Dodgers have done something that has become surprisingly difficult.

They won another game.

Scott did his job. Now the Dodgers need to do theirs.

Loop it.