As Mookie Betts reflected on his two-homer performance in the Dodgers’ 15-6 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night, he paused to glance to the opposite side of the room.
“It sucks, it sucks,” Betts said as he looked in the direction of Hernández’s locker.
Just two days into his return to the Dodgers, Kiké Hernández was heading back to the injured list with a strained left oblique. Hernández missed the first two months of the season rehabilitating his surgically-repaired left elbow.
Alex Freeland will be called up from triple-A Oklahoma City to replace Hernández on the active roster, manager Dave Roberts said.
The news could have been even worse for the Dodgers, as Shohei Ohtani remained on track to pitch on Wednesday after being hit by a pitch on his right hand.
The fourth-inning changeup by Kyle Freeland that struck Ohtani on his pitching hand, Roberts said, “got him on the pad” and “clipped his pinky a little bit.” With the Dodgers ahead by a 10-1 margin, Roberts said he pinch hit for Ohtani the next inning to better prepare him to pitch the next day.
Roberts said he was uncertain whether Ohtani would also be the Dodgers’ designated hitter.
“Want to make sure he feels really good on the pitching side of things,” Roberts said.
The injury to Hernández and the scare to Ohtani nearly overshadowed a breakout game for Betts, who started the day with a .165 average.
Wanting to give Betts “a different look,” Roberts removed him from his customary place in the two-hole and drew up a lineup in which he was the cleanup hitter.
Betts homered in the first inning and again in the sixth. He finished with his first three-hit game of the season.
He was slowed down by an oblique strain of his own, the injury costing him five weeks. Before Tuesday night, he’d been hitting .157 in the 12 games he played after his return.
“The work that we put in finally translated,” Betts said.
The Dodgers matched their highest run total of the season and finished with a total of five home runs, as Hernandez, Andy Pages and Will Smith also went deep. The game wasn’t as close as the score indicated, as the Rockies scored five runs in the ninth inning, which was pitched by utilityman Miguel Rojas.
What it means
The Rockies are bad. They’re Arte-Moreno-owned-Angels bad. But the games against them count as much as the games against any other team, and the Dodgers have taken advantage of that to widen their lead in the National League West.
They came into this series ahead of the second-place San Diego Padres by 1 ½ games. The margin has increased to 3 ½.
Who’s hot
Bargain-priced pickup Eric Lauer was more than suitable in his role as a stand-in for the sidelined Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, as he limited the Rockies to a run and four hits over six innings.
Lauer was 1-5 with a 6.69 earned-run average this season with the Toronto Blue Jays, who tossed him to the Dodgers for cash considerations.
Maybe he really just needed a change of scenery. Or a game against the Rockies.
Whatever the case, he made only one major mistake: a middle-middle 91-mph fastball that Hunter Goodman deposited over the center-field wall.
Who’s not
Hard to pick anyone when every starter besides Ohtani collected at least one hit, but it’s clear now that a two-hit game on Sunday in Milwaukee wasn’t an inflection point in Kyle Tucker’s season.
While Tucker has taken better at-bats in recent games, he is 1 for 9 in this series. His only hit was a single in the sixth inning.
He is batting .245.
Up next
The series concludes on Wednesday, with Shohei Ohtani (4-2, 0.73 earned-run average) taking his turn in the rotation against fellow countryman Tomoyuki Sugano (4-3, 3.86).
