LOS ANGELES — It’s possible the Colorado Rockies are doing everyone a disservice by distracting us from just how bad the Chicago White Sox still are.
The Dodgers continued their tour of baseball’s lower latitudes with an easy 6-1 victory over the White Sox on Tuesday night, featuring seven strong innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani’s 30th home run of the season.
The Dodgers have won eight of their past 10 games while playing three last-place teams (the Washington Nationals, Rockies and White Sox) plus the Kansas City Royals, prevented from being a last-place team by the presence of the White Sox in their division.
Their run through the lesser lights of MLB has allowed the Dodgers to recapture the best record in baseball (54-32) – moving ahead of the Detroit Tigers, who were rained out Tuesday – and pull away in the NL West. When they lost to the San Diego Padres 10 games ago, the Dodgers’ lead in the NL West was 3½ games. After Tuesday’s win against the White Sox, the Dodgers lead the Padres by eight games and the San Francisco Giants by nine.
They wasted no time declaring their supremacy Tuesday, scoring four times in the first inning. All of the damage was done after White Sox starter Shane Smith retired the first two batters. But he walked Will Smith and Max Muncy back-to-back and gave up three consecutive hits – an RBI single by Teoscar Hernandez, an RBI double by Andy Pages and a two-run single by Michael Conforto.
That allowed Yamamoto to cruise through the White Sox lineup in comfort.
In his previous start, Yamamoto relied heavily on his curveball, throwing it more often than his four-seam fastball in five one-hit innings at Coors Field (a start cut short by rain).
Against the White Sox, Yamamoto used his fastball much more extensively, setting up a splitter that got six of his 10 swings-and-misses. He struck out eight in his seven innings and retired the last 10 batters he faced after giving up a two-out, RBI double to Lenyn Sosa – the last of the three hits Yamamoto allowed.
The Dodgers added single runs in the third inning on Pages’ RBI single and the fourth on Ohtani’s home run, both coming with two outs in the inning.
This is Ohtani’s fifth consecutive 30-homer season and the third time he has reached the mark before the All-Star break. He had 33 at the break in 2021 (and finished with 46) and 32 in 2023 (on his way to 44).
He had 29 at the All-Star break last year when he finished with a career-high 54. He is the fastest Dodger ever to reach 30 home runs in a season (86 games).
More to come on this story.