The decisive blow in the Dodgers’ 12-4 win against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday at Dodger Stadium was the kind of unrelenting rally they hadn’t mustered since leaving Colorado on Monday.
The Dodgers were trailing by a run going into the bottom of the fourth inning. Then they put together a six-run rally.
They stacked up six hits, only one of which was for extra bases, and two walks in the inning, to knock Cubs starter Colin Rea out of the game before piling on against long reliever Javier Assad.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged Friday that the offense hadn’t been clicking as a whole for much of the week. That changed Saturday, with contributions from across the lineup.
Shohei Ohtani snapped a three-game hitless streak (0 for 12) with a single in the first inning. He went on to draw to walks and reach base three times.
Max Muncy — batting third because he was feeling under the weather and Roberts wanted to take advantage of the matchup with Rea before replacing Muncy with Santiago Espinal — drove in the Dodgers’ first runs. Muncy’s two-run blast in the third inning was his ninth home run of the season.
Dodgers No. 8 hitter Hyeseong Kim started the fourth-inning rally with a line-drive single up the middle. Then Alex Freeland, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, Dalton Rushing and Andy Pages combined for six RBIs.
They kept applying pressure against the Cubs’ injury-depleted bullpen, putting together a four-run sixth inning that added two more RBIs to Pages’ tally.
The Dodgers forced the Cubs to use two multi-inning relievers, which could affect the rubber match Sunday.
Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki gave up three home runs, but they were all solo shots since he limited traffic on the bases. Sasaki surrendered four runs, each in different innings, and left the game in the sixth after putting two runners on base with a walk and single.
Left-hander Jack Dreyer entered and immediately walked designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros to load the bases. But he struck out the next two batters, and right-hander Will Klein finished the escape job.
The bullpen, with Kyle Hurt and Jake Eder also contributing, held back the Cubs the rest of the way. The Dodgers’ victory snapped the red-hot Cubs’ 10-game win streak.
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