The Los Angeles Dodgers rolled into Coors Field fresh off a sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates and in the midst of a season-best five-game winning streak. Hyun-Jin Ryu was reinstated from the 10-day disabled list after a brief hiatus to nurse a left hip contusion.
Ryu’s third time facing the National League West leaders yielded much of the same results from his two previous outings. The Colorado Rockies mounted two-out rallies in the first and second innings to jump out to a 7-0 lead.
If there was any silver lining to be had for Ryu, five of those runs were unearned. The Rockies eventually hung a total of 10 runs on him in just four innings of work. Scott Van Slyke pinch-hit for Ryu in the fifth and hit a solo home run.
While the game seemingly was slipping away from the Dodgers, manager Dave Roberts felt it best to stick with his starter for as long as possible even though Ryu wasn’t finding much success, via SportsNet LA:
“He just wasn’t sharp. He was missing out over the big part of the plate. You look at the first couple of innings, he had two outs. He just couldn’t get that last out. When you’re down 7-0 before you can really get going, at that point in time, I’ve got to think through a four-game series here in Colorado. To exhaust the entire bullpen to cover five or six innings versus feeling like he can get through four innings, and I felt he could.”
Josh Fields, Chris Hatcher and Grant Dayton combined for five strikeouts and allowed just four hits over four scoreless innings out of the bullpen. That allowed the Dodgers to continue chipping away at their deficit and bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning.
Fields threw 18 pitches in one inning, Hatcher 30 pitches over two frames, and Dayton 17 in one inning. That Roberts managed to avoid exhausting his bullpen in the opener, coupled with Clayton Kershaw taking the ball Friday, should suit the Dodgers well in the immediate future.
The team is currently carrying eight relievers on their active roster, as they did for much of last season and thus far in 2017.
