LOS ANGELES – At one point during the Dodgers’ scrappy final home game in April, Dave Roberts said he couldn’t remember the last time the Dodgers played a complete game.
His memory is regularly refreshed these days.
Max Muncy hit three home runs and Shohei Ohtani and Andy Pages added one each to support Tyler Glasnow’s latest strong start as the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves, 11-2, on Saturday night.
It was the Dodgers’ second straight win over the Braves this weekend and 10th in the last 12 games overall.
Over these dozen games, the Dodgers have looked like the complete team Roberts (and the front office) thought they had.
They dominated their opponents 78-24. Eight times in the 12 games, their pitchers allowed two runs or fewer. Six times the offense put up eight or more points. Four times they reached double digits.
The Dodgers offense struggled against Braves starter Bryce Elder, chasing him from the game with seven runs over the first four innings.
Muncy led off with its first home run, a two-run drive in the second inning.
Ohtani led off the third inning with his eighth home run of the season, passing Roberts for the most home runs by a player of Japanese descent in franchise history. The circuit also continued to deliver on promise during the offseason.
As the Dodgers acquired Glasnow from the Tampa Bay Rays and negotiated what would ultimately be a five-year contract extension worth $136.5 million, Glasnow said he received a recruiting video from Ohtani during of which the two-time MVP said he “hopes to hit some homers for me.”
Saturday marked the third time in Glasnow’s first eight starts that Ohtani made hope a reality.
Pages, meanwhile, has been everything the Dodgers could have hoped for when they promoted him from Triple-A. He led off the fourth inning with his fourth home run in 16 games and extended his hitting streak to 10 games, adding a single later in the game for his sixth multi-hit game since his arrival.
Just for good measure, Pages added a nice running catch on Marcell Ozuna’s strike in the corner to end the eighth inning.
Walks put Elder in deeper trouble in that fourth inning and three straight singles from Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith made it a four-run inning.
Ohtani and Freeman each had three-hit games. Muncy had a four-hit, three-homer game by going deep into left-handed seventh reliever Tyler Matzek and again in the eighth against right-hander Jackson Stephens.
It was the first three-homer game by a Dodger since Trayce Thompson on April 1 of last season.
It was more than enough for Glasnow who held the Braves to two runs on five hits and one walk while striking out 10 in seven innings.
It was the third time in his last five starts that Glasnow went at least seven innings, the fourth time during that stretch he struck out at least nine, and the sixth time in eight starts as a Dodger that he awarded two points or less. He continues to lead the majors in wins (six), innings (50) and strikeouts (63), with a 2.70 ERA alongside those stats.
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