The Dodgers are heading into the final week before the All-Star break with a chance to keep piling up wins, and the next test comes against a Rockies club that has quietly found a little life in July.
Los Angeles opens the series at 59-32 and is one victory away from becoming baseball’s first 60-win team this season. Colorado arrives at 37-54, sitting 22 games back in the NL West, but the Rockies have gone 4-1 this month and just took a series from the San Francisco Giants.
These teams have already seen plenty of each other. They split a four-game set at Coors Field in April, then the Dodgers swept three games at UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium in late May. The season series wraps up in August when Los Angeles heads back to Colorado.
Monday’s opener is a left-on-left matchup, with Eric Lauer set to face Kyle Freeland. Lauer has been sharp since the Dodgers picked him up after he was designated for assignment by the Toronto Blue Jays, posting a 3-0 record with a 2.88 ERA over 34.1 innings. His first Dodgers start came against the Rockies on May 26, when he worked six innings of one-run ball in a 15-6 LA win.
Freeland was on the other side of that game and took the hit, giving up eight runs on nine hits in four innings. He’s in the middle of a rough year, sitting at 2-7 with a 7.25 ERA in 77 innings.
Tuesday brings Justin Wrobleski against Michael Lorenzen. Wrobleski has put together a strong season at 10-2 with a 2.80 ERA across 93.1 innings, and he’ll be looking to make another statement after being left off the NL All-Star team. He already handled Colorado once in April, throwing seven innings of one-run ball in a 12-3 Dodgers victory at Coors Field.
Lorenzen has had a tough first season in Colorado. He’s 3-9 with a 6.91 ERA over 86 innings, and his 124 hits and 66 earned runs are the most in MLB. Against the Dodgers in April, he allowed three runs in five innings.
Wednesday’s finale features Roki Sasaki and Ryan Feltner. Sasaki needs a bounce-back outing after a difficult stretch; over his last four starts, he’s 0-2 with a 10.06 ERA and has worked just 17 innings.
For the season, he’s 3-5 with a 5.40 ERA in 75 innings. He saw the Rockies in April and allowed three runs in 4.2 innings.
Feltner enters with a 4.27 ERA in 12 starts and 59 innings. He faced the Dodgers in April as well, giving up three runs, two earned, over 5.2 innings in a 4-3 Rockies win.
All three games are set for 7:10 p.m. PT/10:10 p.m. ET, with SportsNet LA and the MLB app carrying the broadcasts.
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The challenge, of course, is that Colorados draft board is never quite the same as everyone elses. Pitching at altitude remains a special case in Denver, and the club is digging into why some arms translate there while others do not. Recent draft history also gives the front office plenty to weigh, with only Gabriel Hughes on the active roster among the teams recent first-rounders while Chase Dollander is coming back from Tommy John surgery and Jordan Beck and Sterlin Thompson are still in Triple-A. [Read more 🡒]