The only good news is that the Rockies (40-106) don’t have to play the Dodgers (82-64) anymore in 2025. With Wednesday’s shutout, the Rockies were outscored in the three-game series 18-3, and Colorado lost the season series 11-2 to L.A. The Dodgers dominated the game, taking a 4-0 lead in the fourth and adding a Mookie Betts grand slam and Teoscar Hernández homer in the eighth for the final outcome.
Blanked By Blake
The Rockies offense was completely shut down by Blake Snell. That’s what Snell does against Colorado.
On Wednesday, he struck out 11 Rockies in six shutout innings, holding Colorado to two singles and two walks for absolutely no threats in six shutout innings.
Ezequiel Tovar was the only player to get to second base, and he did that by stealing second after a walk. Tyler Freeman and Hunter Goodman had the two hits and Kyle Karros drew the other walk. Jordan Beck struck out three times against Snell and Braxton Fulford fanned twice.
In his ninth start of the season, since he missed about three months with left shoulder inflammation, Snell reached 104 pitches in a strong outing that shows he’s closer to being back to his Cy Young form. Dating back to last season when he was with the Giants, Snell has now held the Rockies scoreless in 25 straight innings. During that time, he’s only allowed six hits, he’s struck out 46 batters compared to only eight walks and he’s produced 89 whiffs for a whiff rate of 52%.
Combined against Snell and four Dodger relievers, the Rockies struck out 17 times. Beck had four of those.
Defensive Blues (except for Doyle)
The Rockies, who rank No. 29 in errors per game in MLB at 0.7, didn’t play good defense on Wednesday.
It started with the Dodgers second hitter of the game, Betts. He hit an infield pop-up that should have been an easy out, but it wasn’t. Instead, the ball fell between first baseman Kyle Farmer and second baseman Orlando Arcia. Since no one touched it, it counted as a hit, but common sense would categorize it as an error. Remarkably, it didn’t come back to haunt the Rockies as Kyle Freeland was able to strike out Teoscar Hérnandez, before Colorado’s best play of the night happened and Brenton Doyle laid out to rob Freddie Freeman of a hit.
In the second inning, Karros missed a Tommy Edman grounder that took a high hop and was charged with the first error of his MLB career. It opened the door for a four-hit, four-run (only three earned for Freeland) inning that put the Dodgers up 4-0.
There were other odd plays that weren’t officially errors, but could have been better. Instead of making a play to catch it and end the inning, Beck was conservative, which perhaps was the correct way to play it, on a Betts hit that Beck played off the wall. It scored a run.
In the fourth, the Rockies almost lost a pickle. Ben Rortvedt hit a comebacker to Freeland, who threw it to second to put Kiké Hernandez in a pickle. When Hernandez jumped to evade a tag by Tovar, Tovar missed and didn’t see or hear that Hernandez was ruled out by jumping out of the basepaths. In the confusion, Rortvedt advanced to second. Luckily, the play didn’t matter as Shohei Ohtani grounded out to end the inning.
The bad D bug bit again in the eighth inning when it looked like Ohtani hit a fly out to Beck in left field, but catcher interference put Ohtani at first to load the bases after Pages and Kiké Hernández both singled. Mookie Betts then hit a grand slam to make it 8-0.
K-Free Hit With Tough 2nd
Freeland had a decent outing that would have been an outstanding outing if he could have skipped the second inning. After Karros’s error, Miguel Rojas singled, Andy Pages doubled and Kiké Hernández hit a sac fly to make it 2-0 L.A. Freeland got Rortvedt to ground out for the second out, but then Ohtani hit an RBI single and Betts hit an RBI double to make it 4-0. Only one run was earned. The Dodgers hit four of the nine hits against Freeland in the second.
Outside of that, Freeland struck out five batters and only had one walk in 5 2/3 innings.
Not Siezing the Day
In the seventh inning, after Snell came out, the Rockies finally got more than one base runner. Michael Kopech relieved Snell and started off strong by getting Tovar to ground out. Then he issued back-to-back-to-back walks to Karros, Michael Toglia (who pitch hit for Farmer) and Fulford.
That ended Kopech’s appearance, and Alex Vesia came in. Throwing triple-digit heat, Vesia walked Mickey Moniak, who pinch hit for Arcia, and Freeman to end the threat.
Up Next
The Rockies will head south to San Diego for four-game series against the Padres. Game one on Thursday night features a showdown between Colorado’s McCade Brown (0-3, 12.54 ERA) and San Diego’s Randy Vásquez (4-6, 3.91 ERA).
