by Megan Garcia
The Dodgers patiently waited through a one-hour rain delay to finish what Max Muncy started in the sixth. And Wednesday showed that when it rains, it pours for the offense.
They are the first team in the National League to reach the 50-win mark after beating the Rockies 8–1 — and they did it at the halfway point of the season.
The Dodgers are tied with the Tigers for the best record in baseball at 50–31.
Unlike Tuesday’s back-and-forth scoreboard battle, the second game of the series had the Dodgers in the driver’s seat.
The path to 50 wins started in mid-March in Tokyo. It’s required a cast of up-and-coming core players and established veterans passing the baton to one another to assert themselves at the top in late June.
Muncy and Michael Conforto are two players who have taken the baton to swing the Dodgers into the win column recently.
Muncy’s six RBI were the result of a rain-aided, go-ahead single in the sixth inning and a grand slam in the seventh. Since Sunday, Muncy has hit two grand slams and driven in 13 runs in three games.
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“I was trying to get a couple of extra runs, get some insurance there,” Muncy said of his seventh-inning at-bat. “Tried to shorten up and really not do too much. I got one up in the zone and didn’t miss it on the pitch before when I fouled it off.”
The veteran slugger has been one of the National League’s best hitters in June. His .317 batting average in the month ranks 10th among qualified hitters. It’s been a steady climb for Muncy to replicate his production at the plate from previous years.
He batted .194 (18-for-93) with one homer in the first month of the season and improved to .250 (20-for-80) with five homers in May. His seventh-inning grand slam was his fifth homer in June.
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“He’s got a lot of confidence right now. I think the at-bat quality each time — it’s just good,” said manager Dave Roberts. “He’s seeing the baseball well, confident, taking good at-bats and driving in runs when we need them. (He’s) getting big hits and playing good defense and we need it. Not everyone is swinging the bat well, so to have that production from Max in the middle of the order has been paramount.”
It also put him closer to tying Matt Kemp on the Dodgers’ all-time home run leaderboard. Kemp ranks seventh with 203 Dodger career homers while Muncy ranks eighth with 202.
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Conforto’s second homer in two consecutive days was crushed to Coors Field’s right field bleachers. The 431-foot shot was the farthest-hit ball by Conforto this season.
Yamamoto’s rain-shortened start
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was limited to five innings against the Rockies due to the rain delay. Yamamoto gave up one hit, walked one and struck out six batters in his scoreless start. He threw 56 pitches (39 strikes) on Tuesday.
“I thought he was fantastic. This was a good one. Unfortunately, (it) got cut short because of the rain. I thought the strike-throwing was better,” Roberts said. “I thought Dalton (Rushing’s) fingers were great. I thought (Yamamoto) used the curveball the right way. His split was really good. I thought Yoshi was exactly what we needed tonight.”
June has been more challenging on the mound for the second-year pitcher. His ERA jumped from 1.97 at the end of May to 2.76 entering Tuesday.
But his outing resulted in his first win in June.
“I was feeling pretty good,” Yamamoto said. “I started feeling good last week and going into today’s game. Today I was attacking with the first-pitch strike pretty good.”
The Rockies scored one unearned run against Lou Trivino in the sixth once the bullpen took over. Alex Vesia, Michael Kopech and Will Klein recorded scoreless outings.
The Dodgers pour on the offense to reach NL-best 50th win was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.