Roberts Shuffled the Lineup. Betts and Pages Dealt the Damage

Dave Roberts shuffled the deck Tuesday night, and the Dodgers responded by flattening the Rockies 15-6 at Dodger Stadium. Mookie Betts, moved into the cleanup spot for the first time since 2017, led the damage with two home runs and five RBI while Andy Pages continued his breakout season from the No. 2 spot in the order.

The Dodgers manager moved Betts into the four-hole for the first time since 2017 and bumped Andy Pages up to the No. 2 spot, a decision that worked out so well the Rockies probably spent the late innings wondering if Roberts had somehow gained access to the answers beforehand.

Betts responded with two home runs, five RBI and a visible release of frustration that had been building for weeks, while Pages continued his breakout season by going 4-for-5 with two doubles, a homer and enough RBI production to climb to the top of the league leaderboard.

Meanwhile, somewhere north of the border, an irritated Blue Jays fan was likely staring into a plate of poutine wondering why Toronto let Eric Lauer leave the building for essentially pocket change.

Because all Lauer has done since arriving in Los Angeles is look suspiciously like another Dodgers pitching reclamation project that somehow works out better than anyone expected.

Pressed into the rotation because Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow currently reside on the injured list, Lauer delivered six strong innings in his Dodgers debut, allowing one run on four hits while striking out four and walking one over 96 pitches. The left-hander kept Colorado quiet long enough for the lineup to eventually turn the evening into a demolition project.

And once the Dodgers offense got moving, it did not particularly care who was standing in the way.

Betts opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the first inning, his first multi-homer game since May of last season, and Pages followed later by launching a 418-foot shot to left-center that briefly looked like it needed FAA clearance before landing.

By the middle innings, the Dodgers had transformed a competitive game into batting practice with better lighting.

Kiké Hernández added a leadoff homer in the third inning during just his second game back from offseason elbow surgery, a moment that initially felt like the return of one of the roster’s emotional engines before the night abruptly shifted directions.

Hernández later exited with a left oblique strain and afterward delivered one of the more candid postgame explanations an athlete will ever give.

“I tweaked it in B.P. yesterday and I was pretty embarrassed about it,” Hernández admitted. “I thought it was weird tightness. I’ve never done an oblique before, so I really didn’t know what I was feeling.”

He tried to play through it anyway.

“The homer swing I felt awful,” Hernández said. “After that I went into survival mode.”

The honesty was striking because players almost never speak that plainly about fear, frustration or guilt, but Hernández did all three. What bothered him most was not even the injury itself.

“Me coming back, I got somebody off the roster,” he said, referring to Santiago Espinal being designated for assignment. “I was only able to give the team four at-bats.”

Then came the part that explained why he finally removed himself from the game.

“I felt like if I kept going, I was probably going to really put myself in danger of missing the rest of the season.”

That emotional whiplash somehow became a footnote because the Dodgers offense kept steamrolling forward.

Pages doubled home two more runs in the fourth inning before Freddie Freeman added a sacrifice fly. Miguel Rojas drove in another run in the fifth, Hyeseong Kim contributed a sacrifice fly of his own and Betts returned in the sixth to launch a three-run homer that effectively turned Dodger Stadium into an early checkout line.

Will Smith followed with a two-run blast because apparently everyone was participating at that point.

The Dodgers finished with 15 runs and 17 hits, tying a season high in both categories, while extending their winning streak to four games and improving to 11 wins in their last 13.

Pages said he feels like his swing is finally returning to where it was earlier in the season.

“I feel really good right now at the plate,” Pages said. “I’m coming off a really bad stretch, so I’m trying to put positive at-bats together. I feel like I’m coming back to where I started at the beginning of the season.”

The reshuffled lineup certainly reflected that confidence.

“I’m always ready for whatever situation I’m in,” Pages added. “Batting at the top or the bottom, I just want to put good at-bats together and do whatever is asked of me.”

Even Shohei Ohtani’s relatively quiet night somehow still became part of the story after he was hit on the hand by a pitch in the fourth inning. Roberts removed him early, mostly out of caution with Ohtani scheduled to pitch Wednesday.

“I think we’re in a good spot,” Roberts said. “I just want to make sure physically he feels really good on the pitching side of things.”

The Dodgers hope that is true, because their injury list already resembles a department-wide medical chart.

And yet, somehow, they keep winning anyway.

Colorado did manage five runs in the ninth inning against position player Miguel Rojas, including a home run from Kyle Karros — son of former Dodger Eric Karros — whose major league power résumé now consists almost entirely of damaging the franchise his father once represented.

Karros has only three career home runs.

All three have come against the Dodgers.

Baseball remains deeply weird sometimes.

The Dodgers, however, are starting to look increasingly familiar again.