PITTSBURGH — There was a 10-run pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow.
A brief rain shower passed through Pittsburgh as the seventh inning started at PNC Park, leaving a rainbow in the sky over the left field seats. By the time it faded into the dusk, the Dodgers had broken open a tie game by scoring 10 times in the inning and routed the Pirates, 12-3, on Tuesday night.
The 10-run inning was the Dodgers’ biggest since they scored 11 runs in an inning against the St. Louis Cardinals on June 2, 2021.
“That’s a special inning,” Freddie Freeman said. “When you have an offense like we do – can look over a baseball, take walks, string things together. I thought we did an amazing job with (Paul) Skenes tonight. … I know he got through six innings tonight but I think that’s a big win for us.
“Eric (Lauer) matching him, to have it 2-2 going into the seventh inning and then what we did when we got to the bullpen – I thought we did an amazing job tonight.”
The first nine Dodgers reached base in the inning. When the 10th batter (Dalton Rushing) struck out for the first out of the inning, the diminished number of Pirates fans still on hand gave a sarcastic cheer for their team’s stick-to-itiveness.
The inning featured seven hits, including a two-run home run by Andy Pages and four walks including, back-to-back bases-loaded walks. But it was a very special inning for Freeman whose RBI single was his 2,500th hit (not all in that inning). Freeman is the 102nd player in baseball history to reach the milestone.
“It means a lot,” Freeman said. “Yeah, there’s always another goal to get to (3,000 career hits). But to step back and realize how long you have to play, the consistency over that – to play at a high level over many, many years to get there, it does mean a lot. I just try to play this game the right way, to the best of my abilities every single day. To reach some of these cool milestones over the course of your career is really great.”
As they do whenever a member of the team reaches a career milestone, the Dodgers saluted Freeman with a champagne toast. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts “ended it with, ‘You’d better get 500 more.’”
“Yeah, that’s a challenge, a tall order. But I’m not gonna bet against him,” Roberts said. “For us, we go through the grind every day, so you have to celebrate certain moments. And that’s a big moment for him. It just speaks to the longevity and consistency from Freddie.”
The Pirates contributed to the plunder with two errors in the inning (both of which produced runs). It took three Pirates pitchers to complete the 15-batter inning.
“We were able to take walks, hits,” Mookie Betts said. “We kind of did everything that inning.”
The win was the Dodgers’ fifth in their past seven games, 14th in their past 19 and 19th in their past 25 – yeah, they’ve been rolling for awhile now.
Pirates starter Paul Skenes was a threat to slow their roll. The Dodgers didn’t score a run in 12 innings against Skenes during his 2025 National League Cy Young Award season.
But Dodgers starter Eric Lauer outpitched Skenes – and might have done even better if the forecasted thunder showers had arrived on time and washed away the first inning.
Lauer gave up back-to-back home runs in the first. Bryan Reynolds jumped on a hanging first-pitch curveball and lined it 422 feet into the left-field stands. The next batter, Ryan O’Hearn, took longer. He got a 1-and-2 slider down and in and powered it over the wall in right field.
“I think a couple of those got away from me,” Lauer said. “The one – I tip my hat to Reynolds, he was ready for an 0-0 curve ball, which, good hitters are, and I kind of hung it a little bit. The other one, it’s a kind of a newer pitch that I’m working on to lefties, and didn’t quite get the action on it that I wanted to, so I think it kind of hung a little bit, and probably wasn’t a great pitch to throw in that situation. But you’re out there and try some things sometimes.
“But then not focusing on that too much, and making sure that I’m going back to execution, and how I’m going to navigate the rest of the game, I think that’s the biggest part for me.”
It worked. The Pirates had just one more hit off Lauer who retired 15 of the next 16 batters after the back-to-back home runs.
Skenes, on the other hand, was dodging danger throughout his six innings. The Dodgers had runners on base in five of the innings, in scoring position in four of those.
Betts led off the second inning with a double. Max Muncy singled him to third and Kyle Tucker drove him in with a sacrifice fly.
Alex Freeland was stranded at second in the third inning and Muncy went nowhere after his second hit of the game, a fourth-inning double.
Any potential scoring opportunity in the fifth inning disintegrated after Dalton Rushing’s leadoff walk. He was out at second on a forceout that turned into a double play when Rushing was called for interference when he slid into Nick Gonzales as the shortstop was trying to turn a double play.
The Dodgers finally matched the Pirates’ early getaway in the sixth inning. Freeman doubled with one out, went to third on a ground out and scored on Muncy’s third hit of the game, a bad-hop single through second baseman Brandon Lowe.
When Skenes left the mound after completing the sixth, he got a standing ovation from the fans near the Pirates’ dugout – almost as if they knew the enjoyable part of their evening was over.
“He’s as tough as they come,” Roberts said. “The first couple innings, I thought it was going to be tough. But we scratched one across early to answer back from that two-run inning they had, with the Mookie double and situationally we got a run across, which is big. And then we tacked on another one. So that was big. To get him out of the game after the sixth inning was a big feat. You just never know what to expect from that guy.”