LOS ANGELES — The recipe to overcome what was starting to look like a championship hangover was to add a little spice.
Less than a week ago, the Dodgers were on the hunt for offensive consistency. A 15-2 victory over the Miami Marlins on Tuesday night was the most definitive example yet that the flavor has returned.
“From the beginning of the season, it was like one side or another,” said outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, who had a season-high four hits with two doubles and four RBIs. “It was like, if the pitching was there, we didn’t hit, or when we hit, the pitching wasn’t there. So today was the first game that I remember that everything was working out from all over. So pitching, defense, base, running, hitting, everything is good today.”
Shohei Ohtani’s leadoff home run sure looked like 2024 again. The flashbacks continued with 18 total hits from the lineup, five doubles in that total, and eight walks that were the most telling sign of all. The Dodgers were back to waiting out the bad pitches, driving up pitch counts and hammering the strikes.
Over their current four-game winning streak, they have averaged 9.8 runs per game.
“Just recently, it just seems like team wise we’re beating a starter, creating stressful innings, we’re taking walks, situationally we’ve been good, and this is all while a few guys are still just trying to find their footing and getting on track,” Manager Dave Roberts said. “This is what we potentially can do, and you just give yourself a fighting chance when you can kind of take those at-bats.”
But the similarities to 2024 did not end there. The Dodgers also used a bullpen game for success, just like they did in last year’s postseason run when they used three starters and a pile of relievers to get through the San Diego Padres, New York Mets and New York Yankees for the eighth title in club history.
While they used an opener and mostly one-inning contributions while winning in the playoffs, the Dodgers turned this bullpen game on its ear with two innings from rookie left-hander Jack Dreyer and five from right-hander Matt Sauer (1-0), who was called up from Triple-A Oklahoma City on Tuesday specifically to take down as many innings as possible. Utility man Kiké Hernandez closed it out with a scoreless ninth inning from the mound.
After the first win of his career, Sauer is expected to be sent down in advance of Tony Gonsolin’s return to the major leagues Wednesday, but the outing is sure to earn him another call in the near future.
“Even when we’re down in OKC, you still follow the big-league club,” Sauer said. “And I knew the bullpen has been used a lot. So coming into today, I had a goal of at least five innings, help the boys down in the pen a little bit. Just happy I was able to do that.”
Sauer gave up one run on five hits with no walks and four strikeouts. And it was nearly a scoreless outing, with the Marlins only scoring a run against him on the second to last of the 19 batters he faced.
“I can’t say enough about his performance,” Roberts said. “Got his first major league win, which was great, and to chew up five innings was big. (We) needed every bit of it, considering where our pen is at, the leverage guys and with another game to play and then going into 10 in a row (on the road), so what Matt did today picked us up big time.”
Ohtani’s seventh home run of the season came on the first pitch of the game from Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara, who allowed seven runs on seven hits in 2⅔ innings with five walks and two strikeouts.
Alcantara’s outing can serve as a cautionary tale. It was his sixth outing since returning from 2023 Tommy John surgery. He now has an 8.31 ERA.
Gonsolin also will be returning from 2023 Tommy John surgery on Wednesday afternoon.
If the Dodgers can continue to produce on offense, it should be an eventful return for the right-hander.
In the same week Hernandez hit his 200th home run, he hit his 200th career double Tuesday with two runs scored. Freddie Freeman also had two doubles with two runs. Will Smith had a double among his two hits with two RBIs, while Tommy Edman drove in three runs, one game after his game-ending two-run single in the 10th inning.
After the Marlins scored a run in the top of the first inning off Dreyer, the Dodgers responded with three in the bottom half, getting a Hernandez RBI double and a run-scoring fly ball from Edman after Ohtani’s home run. It was Ohtani’s first home run in eight games since returning from the birth of his daughter.
“It was a good home run to get back on the board for this game,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “Haven’t hit one since being a father, so it’s a really nice one to be able to do that.”
Ohtani’s leadoff home run was his second of the season and the 14th of his career. After a 1-for-16 dry spell, Ohtani is now 7 for 15 over his last four games with six runs scored.
“I think we feed off Shohei, certainly, at the top of the order,” Roberts said. “And for him to (tie it) after the first pitch that their starter throws certainly gets some life into our offense, and we just took it from there. When he’s going, you can see our offense sort of follows suit.”