The Los Angeles Dodgers arrived in Colorado on Friday for the start of a seven-game road trip needing any combination of three wins and/or San Francisco Giants’ losses to clinch a third straight National League West title.
San Francisco lost Friday night to the Oakland Athletics, however the Dodgers were unable to make any headway on their terms as they were swept in the three-game set by the Rockies. It was another rough series for Los Angeles in which aces Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke did not pitch.
Alex Wood started Sunday’s game and was unable to build on the success from his previous two outings. He was charged with eight runs on 11 hits in just 5.1 innings and after the loss had strong words for the Dodgers’ poor showing, via Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times:
It’s pretty embarrassing to get swept this late in the year,” Wood said. “I think that if you look at the two teams and you know nothing about baseball, you would have guessed the Rockies were heading to the postseason and we weren’t.”
Despite some of his struggles, Wood pitched with a 4-1 lead in the third inning. The Rockies cut their deficit in half, then took a 6-4 lead in the fourth, thanks in large part to Nolan Arenado’s three-run home run, and they never looked back.
Arenado set a career high with five RBIs on Sunday, and wasn’t just a thorn in Wood’s side; the Rockies third baseman tagged Brett Anderson for a grand slam in the first inning on Saturday. For Wood, it was a disappointing showing when considering the third spot in the postseason rotation largely remains up for grabs.
Both Anderson and Wood have pitched well in certain stretches, but you’d be hard-pressed to say one is definitively a better option than the other for a Game 3 start in the NL Division Series.
