The Los Angeles Dodgers began their homestand with a 15-2 blowout win over the Texas Rangers behind five home runs from Will Smith, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Jason Heyward.
The team received four of those blasts in a seven-run sixth inning that capped off a historic night for the offense. “You always hear it, hitting is contagious,” Freeman said.
“Once Mookie (Betts) worked the walk, Shohei hits a homer. You just want to try and keep it going and start the inning again. And you do that, and then Will gets to hit, and then Teoscar does it again, and Jason.
“Those are the innings that are fun, fun for fans to come to those games, glad they came tonight.”
The Dodgers have now won four of their last five games, scoring double digits in three of them. “It started in Pittsburgh, we sort of put better at-bats together off those tough pitchers,” Freeman said of the team’s recent offensive success.
“Kind of just carried it through the weekend, Had a nice day off yesterday, we needed it after getting home so late again. But a good start to our home stand, we’ve been swinging that’s pretty good for a couple weeks now.”
Freeman noted that the team has focused on making the opposing starting pitchers throw a lot of pitches in order to get to the bullpen quicker. “Our plan as an offense is always try to get that starting pitcher out in five innings or less,” Freeman began.
“It sets up getting to the bullpen, making it harder throughout the series, we were able to do that tonight. Put together good at-bats, made them use some relief pitchers that might be down the rest of the series, so it’s a good start to our series here.”
Dodgers offense ‘getting the hits’
When asked to explain the Dodgers’ offensive surge, Freeman said that the quality of at-bats have improved. “We’re hitting the balls,” Freeman joked. “I mean, I know it’s kind of cliche, but it’s the ebbs and flows of the season,”
“We’re going to go through stretches where you just don’t get the hits when you need to. And the last few weeks, we’ve been getting the hits. I’m sure you might ask us here in a month again, it’s just kind of how it goes throughout the course of the year.
“But like I told Kirsten in Pittsburgh, you can see the at-bats. Even though the Skenes game didn’t turn out like getting to him the way we wanted to, it’s just better at-bats, quality at-bats.
“And about 10 to 12 days now, we’ve been putting together good at-bats and kind of carrying over into hits.”
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