LOS ANGELES — Blake Snell continued the Dodgers’ run of great starting pitching with 11 strikeouts in six scorreless innings, and Mookie Betts drove in five as the Dodgers blanked the Colorado Rockies 9-0 on Wednesday night to finish off a three-game sweep at Dodger Stadium.
Coupled with the Padres’ home loss to the Reds, the Dodgers lead the National League West by three games with 16 left to play.
Snell allowed a single in the third inning, which stood out on the staff after the team took no-hitters
into the ninth inning on both Saturday and Monday, followed by Emmet Sheehan retiring his first 15 batters faced on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Snell settled for plain old dominance. After striking out one in the first inning, he fanned two in each of his next five frames to get through six innings on 104 pitches. He allowed only two singles and two walks to snap a personal three-game losing streak.
Dodgers starters over the last five games have a 1.31 ERA in 34 1/3 IP allowing only five runs on 10 hits, with nine walks and 49 strikeouts.
Betts continued his rampage with four more hits, including an RBI double in the second inning. His grand slam in the eighth inning doubled the Dodgers’ advantage. The Dodgers shortstop has eight extra-base hits in his last seven games, and has 12 hits in his last 24 at-bats.
He has driven in multiple runs in five straight games, one shy of the franchise record set by Roy Campanella from May 4-12, 1953 for Brooklyn.
“There’s real confidence, there’s edge. Just letting his ability to just play,” manager Dave Roberts said earlier Wednesday. “I think we’re seeing that at shortstop, and in the batter’s box there’s that edge. He’s not in between like he was during a lot of the season.”
On August 4, Betts had a .657 OPS and an 83 wRC+. Thirty-two games later, he’s now at a .737 OPS and 105 wRC+.
Shohei Ohtani scored on the double by Betts in the second inning, his 130th run scored of the season. He set the Los Angeles Dodgers record with 134 runs scored last season, and now has 16 more games to add to his totals. Ohtani is the first Dodgers player in the modern era (since 1900) to score 130 runs in a season twice. He’s the first major league player to scored 130 runs in consecutive seasons since Albert Pujols in 2003-04.
A trio of 19th-century Brooklyn players scored 130 or more runs twice — Mike Griffin (1895, 1897), George Pinkney (1887-88), and Hub Collins (1889-90). Collins holds the Dodgers franchise record with 148 runs scored in 1890, the team’s first season in the National League.
Ohtani, who also scored on the Betts grand slam, has 131 runs on the season, and is on pace for 145.
The Dodgers only scored in the second inning but still managed to mostly cruise in this one. The only turbulence on the ride came in the seventh inning, when reliever Michael Kopech walked three of his four batters faced in what was still just a 4-0 game. But Alex Vesia entered to extinguish the fire with two strikeouts, preserving the shutout.
The Dodgers finished the season 11-2 against the Rockies, including three-game sweeps in both series at Dodger Stadium. That .846 winning percentage is the team’s best in its 33 seasons of playing against Colorado, surpassing the two 15-4 (.789) season series against them in 2006 and 2019. The Dodgers’ previous best 13-game season series against the Rockies was 10-3 (.769), done in both 2023 and 2024.
Wednesday particulars
Home runs: Mookie Betts (18), Teoscar Hernández (24)
WP — Blake Snell (4-4): 6 IP, 2 hits, 2 walks, 11 strikeouts
LP — Kyle Freeland (4-15): 5 2/3 IP, 9 hits, 4 runs (1 earned), 1 walk, 5 strikeouts
Up next
The Dodgers have their penultimate off day of the regular season on Thursday before opening up a three-game series against the Giants in San Francisco. Yoshinobu Yamamoto starts the opener on Friday night (7:15 p.m., SportsNet LA), with Justin Verlander on the mound for the home team.
