For nine innings on Tuesday night, the Dodgers played with their food at Angel Stadium.
Only in extras, thanks to a four-run rally keyed by Mookie Betts’ three-run homer, did they finally assert their dominance over the last-place Angels.
In the first of this week’s two-game Freeway Series, the Dodgers won 6-2 in front of a sold-out crowd of 44,731 in Anaheim, one split between Angels fans and a rowdy contingent of visiting Dodgers fans all there to witness Shohei Ohtani’s return to his old home stadium.
Ohtani provided some fireworks in the third inning, lining an RBI triple into the right-field corner and scoring on a Betts RBI single.
After that, however, the Dodgers went quiet, striking out 12 times (including 10 against Reid Detmers, the Angels starter who entered with an ERA over 6.00) before finally breaking a 2-2 tie in the top of the 10th inning.
Miguel Rojas got the scoring started, hammering a first-pitch sinker into left field for an RBI single.
After an intentional walk to Ohtani, Betts then provided the knockout blow, crushing a hanging first-pitch slider to left for his 15th home run of the season.
The late scoring barrage erased the Dodgers’ barrage of empty swings earlier in the game, as their season-high 16 strikeouts extinguished a lineup that entered red-hot coming off last weekend’s series win in Arizona.
In the end, however, it mattered little, as the Dodgers stretched their National League West lead to 5 ½ games with just 23 games to go this season.
In his first regular-season game in Anaheim since signing with the Dodgers this winter, Ohtani attracted all of the early attention.
His first trip to the plate netted only a mild response from a still filing-in crowd — and from Ohtani himself, who didn’t so much as doff his helmet as a graphic listing his Angels’ accomplishments quickly flashed on the board.
After grounding out in that initial at-bat, Ohtani’s second trip to the plate drew a bigger reaction.
With one out in the third, he lined an RBI triple into the right-field corner, his seventh three-bagger of the season. He then scored on an RBI single from Betts, giving the Dodgers an early 2-1 lead.
The advantage could have been bigger, but the Dodgers (84-55) stranded runners on the corners to end the inning.
Outside of that, they struggled to generate anything against the Angels (57-81) and their left-hander starter, Detmers, who racked up his 10 strikeouts (his second-highest mark of the season) in a six-inning start.
Read more: Could Angels have kept Shohei Ohtani? Their non-offer lingers ahead of his Anaheim return
Walker Buehler took a more stressful route to a five-inning, two-run start, working around five hits and two walks to post his second solid outing in a row.
Like last week, when Buehler said he finally felt “like I’m somewhat myself again,” the right-hander was more efficient early in counts (12 of 21 first-pitch strikes) and was particularly effective with the curveball, which accounted for four of his six strikeouts in an 83-pitch outing.
Buehler’s two mistakes: Home runs from Logan O’Hoppe in the second inning (on a 2-and-2 cutter that caught too much of the plate) and Taylor Ward in the fifth (on a fastball that Ward sliced just inside the right-field foul pole the other way).
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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