Dodgers score 9 runs in 1st inning, rout Angels in Freeway Series

LOS ANGELES — You don’t get the worst record in baseball by accident. You have to earn it.

For the first time in the first five Freeway Series games this year, the Angels did take a lead, scoring in the first inning against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

That lasted about 10 minutes.

The Dodgers sent 12 batters to the plate in their half of the first inning and scored nine runs, never looking in the rear-view mirror on their way to a 9-2 victory over the Angels Saturday night.

“Some soft contact mixed with some hard contact, mixed with some misplayed balls and it’s 8-1 before you know it,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said.

“Momentum, with this team more than anyone, once they get the line moving, it gets going fast. It’s one of those nights. You’ve got to try to execute when it gets rolling, try to really focus on executing. That’s all you can do.”

The Angels somehow beat the Dodgers in all six Freeway Series meetings last season. This year, the Dodgers have punished them for their temerity, winning the first five meetings by a combined score of 41-5.

During the three-game series in Anaheim last month, the Angels never held a lead at any point. They at least managed that in the first inning Saturday when Wade Meckler beat out a bunt single and Oswald Peraza sent a deep drive over Andy Pages’ head in center field. Pages reached up and got his glove on it near the wall but couldn’t make the catch. It dropped for an RBI triple.

“It was a tough play,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It was a 1-2 fastball that Yama made a mistake and Peraza put a good swing on it. (Pages) got a glove on it, didn’t come up with it. But for him to come back in that bottom half and home, it was great to see.”

The Angels’ highlight package for the night could have ended right there.

The first six Dodgers in the bottom of the first and nine of the first 10 reached base. All of them scored, making it the Dodgers’ biggest inning since they also scored nine against the Washington Nationals in the seventh inning on July 2, 2021.

Pages and Shohei Ohtani each hit two-run home runs in the inning. Ryan Ward had a two-run double.

“That’s a lot of fun,” Ward said. “You can kind of pass it along, too. You can kind of feel them start to speed up a little bit, and we’re starting to calm down and enjoy it. And it’s easy to pass it along when you have a lot of runners on, and then just keep it going.”

The Angels did make things worse for themselves. With the bases loaded, Angels shortstop Zach Neto made a wild throw to second base on a potential inning-ending double play. Three runs scored.

“We always say, you can’t give good teams extra outs. And so, to give us extra outs just makes us really tough to beat,” Roberts said.

Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz made 38 pitches to eight batters, retiring just one (Alex Call struck out) before he was pulled from the game.

A pleasant surprise when he had a 3.05 ERA over his first seven starts this year, Kochanowicz has followed that with an 11.51 ERA over his past six, making his status in the Angels’ rotation as uncertain as most attempts to pronounce his name.

“We’ll talk about it and see what our options are,” Suzuki said when questioned about Kochanowicz’s status. “He’s obviously struggling a little bit. At the same time, the stuff looked like it was still there. It’s just finding a way to get him executing pitches, and keep developing that.”

All drama drained from the game after one inning; the two sides played out the remainder of the required nine innings, presumably out of contractual obligation or just force of habit.

Yamamoto retired 22 consecutive Angels after Peraza’s triple, allowing no more baserunners while completing eight innings for the first time this season. Over his past four starts, Yamamoto has been outstanding, allowing just three runs on 16 hits over 27⅓ innings.

“We kind of knew we were going to have the flexibility to get guys in and out of the box as quick as possible. He did that,” Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing said.

“I think you get up big like that, you don’t want to get too cute to an extent.”

Yamamoto struck out only four in the game. But he got guys in and out of the box fast enough to retire the side on 10 pitches or fewer five times, keeping his pitch count a tidy 93 over his eight innings.

“He looked like he was just playing video games out there with his stuff. Moving it around, sinkers, cutters, splits,” Suzuki said.

That doesn’t make him unique in the Dodgers’ starting rotation these days.

Over their past 23 games, Dodgers starters have a 1.95 ERA and an 0.89 WHIP. The starting pitchers have gone at least six innings 15 times during that stretch and held opponents to two runs or less in each of their past 13 games.

Not entirely coincidental – the Dodgers have won 18 of those 23 games.

Neto finally ended the string of Angels batters retired in a row when he homered off Dodgers reliever Jack Dreyer in the ninth inning. But the Angels lost for the fifth time in their past six games and remain tied with the Colorado Rockies for the worst record in baseball (24-41).