DENVER — The Dodgers escaped the House of Mile-High Horrors having to salvage a split against the less-talented Colorado Rockies, having played the coldest game in franchise history, having reliever Blake Treinen hit in the head by a batted ball during batting practice.
And most significantly, having to report Monday that star closer Edwin Díaz will have surgery to remove “loose bodies” in his right elbow, likely sidelining him for three months.
But the fourth and final game at Coors Field was more normal, more like it. More like the Dodgers, who dominated, 12-3.
They piled up 15 hits, five of them home runs and scored in every inning but the first and fifth.
Among the Dodgers’ many highlights: Miguel Rojas pumping his fists running to first base after smacking his 1,000th hit through the hole to left field.
And Shohei Ohtani extended his consecutive on-base streak to 52 with a single to right in the third, when the Dodgers pushed the lead to 4-1. That moved him within one game of Shawn Green’s mark, which is second all-time among Dodgers. Ohtani also stole his first base of the season.
Also, the Dodgers (16-6) had back-to-back home runs for the first time this season. Those came in the second, when Nos. 6 and 7 hitters Max Muncy and Rojas — who Roberts flipped in the lineup just before the game — hit solo shots to put their team in front, 2-1.
Muncy added another long ball in the ninth, yanking his eighth home run of the season 397 feet into the left field to make it 10-2 — and career multi-home run game No. 22, as well as No. 5 at Coors Field and No. 3 this season.
And then there was Dalton Rushing, who got in the lineup at first base instead of catching. He played solidly in the field in place of Freddie Freeman, who is on paternity leave. But more importantly, he continued to smolder at the plate, hitting his sixth and seventh home runs in just his 26th and 27th at-bats this season.
Rushing’s 385-foot blast to left field and Teoscar Hernández’s RBI single made it 9-1 in the eighth. And Rushing’s two-run, 421-foot bomb in the ninth made it 12-2 and gave him his second career multi-home run game.
The host Rockies (9-14) even contributed to the Dodgers’ cause, with three errors and an ill-timed balk on starter Jose Quintana that not only erased a double play but brought home Muncy to make it 5-1 in the fourth.
On the mound for the Dodgers, starter Justin Wrobleski shut down a Rockies team that just scored a combined 13 runs on their two wins against the Dodgers.
Wrobleski pitched seven innings, allowing eight hits but just one run. That came before he got his first out, when Jordan Beck and Brenton Doyle opened with consecutive doubles.
After that, sharp defensive plays by Rushing and second baseman Santiago Espinal got the Dodgers out of the first inning. The Rockies didn’t threaten again against Wrobleski until the fifth, when they put runners on the corners with one out but again couldn’t score.
The 25-year-old Wrobleski has given up just two runs in 20 innings through three starts — all wins — this season.
The Rockies’ only other runs came on TJ Rumfield’s 440-foot home run in the eighth, and in the ninth, when they scored one run on Jake Eder, the reliever who made his Dodgers debut after being called up in place of Díaz.
Up next for the Dodgers: A three-game series starting Tuesday in San Francisco.
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