BALTIMORE — Take two for what ails you.
Shohei Ohtani homered in each of his first two at-bats Sunday afternoon. And if that wasn’t enough to treat the Dodgers’ persistent headaches, Clayton Kershaw struck out a season-high eight and took a shutout into the sixth inning and three rookie relievers combined to get the final 10 outs as the Dodgers snapped their five-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
“We don’t lose a whole lot around here. Not something to get used to obviously,” Kershaw said. “But when it does happen, baseball is not as much fun. You’ve got to get to the field ready to work, ready to get going. You can’t dwell on it. You’ve just got to get here, start a new day.
“That’s the great thing about baseball and the worst thing about baseball – that you play every day. It’s a new opportunity every day and sometimes it’s hard. But that’s why not everybody plays it. You’ve got to put on your big boy pants and go play.”
The Dodgers spent the week getting undressed by a pair of last-place teams in Pittsburgh and Baltimore. They had to rebound from back-to-back walkoff defeats Friday and Saturday to win Sunday and go 1-5 on the tour of baseball’s less fortunate, returning home with their lead in the National League West intact nonetheless.
“Look – when you struggle it’s not fun,” Kershaw continued. “It just seems like anything that can happen happens. It’s the same thing when you’re winning. It feels you can’t do anything wrong and you’re going to win every game you play. It’s hard to break those cycles either way.
“Yama’s performance last night was incredible. Obviously a tough one last night but everybody came in here with a good mindset. Everybody came in here ready to win a game today. That’s really all you can do. Keep showing up, keep going on the field, keep playing. We’re too good for it not to turn around.”
Ohtani certainly showed up. He helped the Dodgers start to put Saturday’s disintegrating no-hitter and bullpen implosion behind them when he led off the game with a 411-foot home run off Orioles starter Tomoyuki Sugano.
It was Ohtani’s 12th leadoff home run of the season, tying Mookie Betts’ franchise record (set in 2023). It is also the third most all-time behind Kyle Schwarber’s record 15 last year and Alfonso Soriano’s 13 in 2003.
Two innings later, Ohtani launched another solo home run off Sugano for his 22nd career multi-home run game (fourth this season). Betts followed with another home run, the second time this season Ohtani and Betts have gone back-to-back.
“It was a tough loss yesterday,” Betts said. “Especially what Yoshi did, everybody was so excited and happy for him and to lose, that was tough. So it was pretty down (after the game). There’s a lot of vets in here and a lot of guys that know how to handle bad situations. So this morning everything was great. The vibes were high.
“Obviously it’s Shohei, right? But it just shows the vibes were high today. There was a really good energy before the game. We had 22 taking the mound obviously that builds a lot of confidence there. Shohei jump-starting it lets us know we’re fine.”
A scratch run in the fourth inning – singles by Miguel Rojas and Hyeseong Kim, a stolen base and a wild pickoff throw – gave the Dodgers a 4-0 lead and delusions of cruising to victory without any drama.
The way Kershaw was pitching through five innings, those thoughts were justified. He retired 11 of the first 12 batters he faced and struck out three in a row before the Orioles’ first hit of the game, a two-out single by Emmanuel Rivera in the fourth inning.
Kershaw’s curveball and slider were as sharp as they have been this season. He got 16 swings-and-misses in the game, 14 on those pitches (nine on the slider, five on the curveball).
“I thought overall it was a decent day stuff-wise,” Kershaw said. “I think my curveball was maybe a little better today than it has been. Putting it in some good spots too which is helpful. I think the slider – there were some good ones and bad ones, kind of inconsistent at times. I fell behind a lot of hitters early but I was able to get some fly outs in bad counts which is nice to help the pitch count. Then I started to get on a roll in the middle innings which helped.”
After retiring the first two batters in the sixth, though, he gave up a single to Gunnar Henderson and an RBI double to Rivera. The Dodgers have handled the 37-year-old with care this season and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled him after 5 ⅔ innings and 83 pitches.
“I just think that he’s got a lot of mileage, and he’s going to always want to stay in the game,” Roberts said of the decision. “He’s the only pitcher, I think, that we’ve had that has gone regular (four days’ rest) a few times. So we’re asking a lot of him. And I just thought that the base hit, the breaker wasn’t sharp, and then the double. And then I just felt that at that point in time, how far am I going to push him? And I felt that we have to have guys behind our starters, at some point, to do their jobs.
“I got to make sure that I do right by him. And he’d probably argue against that, but that’s just my opinion.”
Asking the bullpen to get one out Saturday night was too much, Roberts was asking for 10 this time.
Edgardo Henriquez gave up an RBI double to Alex Jackson before getting the final out of the sixth inning. Two hits put the tying runs on base with one out in the seventh but Justin Wrobleski struck out Jeremiah Jackson and Ryan Mountcastle then struck out the side in the eighth, getting favorable calls to finish off Henderson (on the 10th pitch of the at-bat) and Alex Jackson and make it five consecutive strikeouts.
“Obviously it hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to the last couple weeks. But our job is to go out there and hang up zeroes,” Wrobleski said of a bullpen that posted a 4.40 ERA in the 30 games before Sunday. “There’s going to be tough times for every team, for every bullpen, for every starting rotation, for every whatever. I think it’s just trusting each other and going out there and picking up the last guy if they did poorly or just continuing if it went well. That’s been our MO. Go out there and continue to try and put up zeroes.”
The offense added some insurance in the top of the ninth inning on Ben Rortvedt’s single, Ohtani’s third walk of the game, and an RBI single off the wall by Betts.
That made it easier for Jack Dreyer to retire the Orioles in the ninth and collect only the third save by a Dodgers reliever since August 3. After signing Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates over the winter and returning Michael Kopech, Blake Treinen and Evan Phillips (now out following Tommy John surgery), it wouldn’t have been a plausible scenario in spring for Roberts to envision closing out critical games in September with three rookies.
“I wouldn’t have thought it,” he said. “But that’s the thing with baseball, the long season, you just never know.”
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