After dropping the series opener on Friday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers combined to outscore the Arizona Diamondbacks, 13-3, over the final two games at Dodger Stadium to earn a series win.
Sunday afternoon’s victory was one of the easier contests of the season as the Dodgers scored early and often and then cruised to a 9-3 win.
Justin Turner has found his power stroke of late, and that continued on Sunday with two home runs to give him 19 on the year. Both were hit off Diamondbacks starter Mike Leake, and Turner now has 10 long balls in his last 29 games dating back to just before the All-Star break.
“Both of them were little cutters that leaked back over the middle of the plate,” Turner said. “The first one I got a tick off the end, I thought I flew out to left. I didn’t think it was a homer. The second one I got pretty good.”
Cody Bellinger has been in a bit of a slump as of late but broke out of that with a 2-for-4 effort. He followed up Turner’s first-inning home run with one of his own to go back-to-back and also added a double later in the game.
Bellinger has now gone deep 38 times on the season, which is one behind Christian Yelich and Mike Trout for the MLB lead. It also is one away from Bellinger’s career high of 39 set in 2017 and 11 shy of Shawn Green’s franchise record in 2002.
The final home run of the day came off the bat of Will Smith in the third inning. The rookie catcher has seven home runs and 23 RBI in his first 22 career Major League games and has shown no signs of slowing down.
All of those runs were more than enough support for Hyun-Jin Ryu, who made his first start since coming off the 10-day injured list. Ryu tossed seven shutout innings while allowing just five hits, and collecting four strikeouts against one walk.
He earned his 12th win of the season and lowered his Major-League leading ERA to 1.45. If it were not for one poor start of the season at Coors Field when he allowed seven earned runs, his ERA would be 1.04.
