LOS ANGELES — Bring in the noise, break out of the funk.
With milestone home runs from Shohei Ohtani and Andy Pages and eight scoreless innings from Tyler Glasnow, the Dodgers routed the New York Mets, 10-0, on Sunday afternoon, adding a life-affirming conclusion to a disappointing homestand.
The Dodgers had lost five of their six games before Sunday and went just 3-6 on the homestand.
“Honestly, if I’m being honest, I really wasn’t ever super-worried about it,” Glasnow said of the slide at home. “I think we all know how talented our team is. It’s obviously important. But with it being this early in the year, I was never too worried about us not hitting for the rest of the year. I knew it was going to come back eventually.”
It came back in a big way Sunday.
Ohtani’s two-run home run in the third inning was the 176th of his career (fifth as a Dodger), moving him past Hideki Matsui for the most home runs in MLB by a Japanese-born player.
“Honestly, I’m relieved and happy. It took a while to get to this point, since my last homer, so just honestly happy and relieved,” Ohtani said through his interpreter.
“(Matsui’s record) is not something I was cognizant of when I first started my career here, but as I’ve gotten to know where he was, then yes (it became a goal).”
Pages, meanwhile, had a double and a three-run home run in the Dodgers’ eight-run fifth inning. The home run was Pages’ first in the major leagues.
“It’s very exciting to hit a home run against the best players in the world,” Pages said through his interpreter. “It’s very special.”
All of that was comfort food for a Dodgers team that had to swallow a steady diet of underperforming offense and spotty starting pitching on this homestand. Their starters had a 5.11 ERA over the previous eight games, leaving the bullpen to cover nearly as many innings as the starters (36 to 37).
Glasnow turned that around, rebounding from a poor start against the Washington Nationals (six runs allowed in five innings) when he was feeling ill and turning the clock back to his dominant start in Minnesota the turn before.
“I definitely felt better physically,” said Glasnow who fell victim to the flu-ish, head cold-ish illness that has bounced around the Dodgers since the last week in Arizona. “I was sort of sick against Minnesota too. So I don’t know if the sickness was a thing. I did feel way better this one than last time.”
He looked way better. Glasnow retired 10 of the first 11 Mets batters and faced the minimum 15 through five innings thanks to a pair of runners caught stealing by catcher Will Smith. That kept his pitch count down low enough for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to send him out for the eighth inning and spare the bullpen more work.
“Today was a great one,” Roberts said. “Starting pitchers that have been around, they understand what’s at stake when they take the baseball that particular start. Today, we were in the middle of it as far as workload in the ‘pen recently, going into an off day to give our guys a chance to reset and have two days down was huge.
“Today obviously the fastball played, but the curveball was so good today — in the strike zone, down below when he needed to and it just kept them off balance. They didn’t square too many balls up today and he was efficient.”
Glasnow allowed seven hits (three in his final inning) and finished with 10 strikeouts and no walks while becoming the first Dodgers starting pitcher to pitch into the eighth inning of a game since Clayton Kershaw in July 2022. It was only the third time in his career (and first since May 2021) that Glasnow completed eight innings.
“Honestly, for the most part, I just try to keep it as consistent as possible. I try not to have too much external stuff. It’s obviously there. But I think for the most part … I can’t worry about it. I just try to make it like every other start,” he said of playing the stopper role.
“Today I just tried to keep the rhythm the same. Working on stuff throughout the week since my last start, I think being relaxed and rhythmic always helps me be in the zone a lot longer with all my pitches. So I think today rhythm-wise and how my body was moving was efficient and I was able to get out of innings quick.”
Ohtani gave the Dodgers the lead in the third inning with his 110-mph laser into the right field pavilion off a hanging slider from Mets starter Adrian Houser.
Things came crashing down on Houser in the fifth inning.
Pages led off with a hard ground ball down the third-base line for a double. After Gavin Lux walked, Mookie Betts drove Pages home with a single. Ohtani reached base on an infield single when his ground ball up the middle deflected off Houser’s foot.
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Freddie Freeman and Smith followed with back-to-back, two-run doubles. For Freeman, it was the second of two doubles in the game. Paired with two hits (and two walks) Saturday, it’s a positive sign after his 3-for-27 start to the homestand.
Grant Hartwig replaced Houser and walked Max Muncy. Two batters later, Pages drove a 1-and-1 fastball at the bottom of the strike zone 413 feet over the wall in center field for his first homer in the big leagues. Since being promoted from Triple-A a week ago, Pages has gone just 4 for 18 (.222) but three of those hits have been for extra bases (two doubles and the homer).
“You know what? It’s the first complete baseball game I can recall,” Roberts said. “We were clean defensively. I thought the at-bats throughout the game were really good — especially the guys at the bottom of the order. They did a fantastic job of kind of leading into the top part of the order and scoring some runs. And then obviously what Tyler did. Just overall, it was fun to just watch a clean baseball game.”