PHOENIX — If at first you don’t succeed – just keep loading the bases.
The Dodgers entered Monday’s game 4 for 27 (.148) with 13 strikeouts in bases-loaded situations this year, a starvation diet in the all-you-can-eat buffet of scoring opportunities. When Shohei Ohtani hit into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the second inning – albeit on a 106.7 mph ground ball – the kryptonite seemed to get stronger.
But they loaded the bases three times in the fifth inning and cashed in twice. Teoscar Hernandez and Andy Pages each had two-run doubles with the bases loaded in a four-run inning, helping to fuel an 8-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in their return to the scene of last year’s National League Division Series debacle.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has declined to characterize this visit to Chase Field as any kind of grudge match or chance to exorcise the memory of last fall’s sweep. The Dodgers’ recent playoff failures have been more about themselves than the opponents, he said Monday.
“I think that’s the right way to look at it, and I think that’s the way we look at it,” he said. “Because there’s a lot of things that, over the years when we’ve lost a playoff series, it’s more about how we’ve played. So I don’t look at it as, every team that beat us, we gotta get revenge on them. So I just really wholeheartedly believe it’s about you, what we’re doing. That’s most important.”
Revenge will have to wait for October anyway. But the Dodgers did defy two of their early-season nemeses Monday – they got hits with the bases loaded and didn’t strike out in the game. Forty-four batters went to the plate for the Dodgers without striking out, their first K-free game since 2006.
The four-run fifth inning made it a 6-1 lead before James Paxton’s ongoing command issues tightened the gap.
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Over his 11-year big-league career, Paxton has a walk rate of 2.9 per nine innings. But this year, he has walked 22 in 25⅔ innings including five in five innings against the Diamondbacks. Three of those walks came around to score runs and the Dodgers’ lead shrank to two runs, 6-4, after five innings.
But the Dodgers kept scoring and the Diamondbacks did not.
Will Smith added a solo home run in the seventh and Ohtani had an RBI single in the eighth.
Meanwhile, the relief relay of Daniel Hudson, Joe Kelly, Alex Vesia and Evan Phillips held the Diamondbacks to one hit over four scoreless innings.
More to come on this story.