The Los Angeles Dodgers earned a big win in their series opener against the Colorado Rockies on Friday night at Coors Field, hanging on for a 4-2 victory to move within 0.5 games for first place in the National League West.
The bullpen stepped up in a big way in Kenley Jansen’s absence, with five relievers combining to toss three scoreless innings to close out the win. That wasn’t the case during the Dodgers’ trip to Denver last month, when Jansen previously was unavailable.
In that series, the bullpen blew three of the four games, and Rockies infielder Ryan McMahon played a big part in that by coming up with late home runs in back-to-back games to power the Rockies to victories.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did not forget McMahon’s heroics, and said this time around he aligned his bullpen to avoid McMahon making a pinch-hit appearance, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“I wanted to keep (Ryan) McMahon on the bench,” Roberts said, the left-handed McMahon’s heroics against the Dodgers last month no doubt still fresh in his mind. “I wanted Alexander to get Iannetta and then have him for (Charlie) Blackmon. If we go to Kenta (Maeda) there to start the inning, then we’ve got McMahon and Blackmon to lead off the inning. I felt good about it the other way.”
Pitching at Coors Field is difficult enough, and when you take your All-Star closer out of the picture in perhaps the biggest series of the season to date, it makes it even more difficult.
The Rockies managed to put runners on base but weren’t able to get to Caleb Ferguson, Dylan Floro, Ross Stripling, Scott Alexander and Kenta Maeda, which is definitely a positive sign for the Dodgers going into the last two games of the series.
