The Los Angeles Dodgers and Colorado Rockies met again Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, and the matchup tilted toward Los Angeles before the first pitch. Michael Lorenzen was on the mound for Colorado after left-handed hitters carved him up this season, giving the Dodgers a clear edge in a game that followed a thriller the night before.
That edge started with the numbers. Left-handed hitters were batting.365/.423/.640 against Lorenzen this season, and they had also produced a 1.94 HR/9 mark against him. Over the past month, his 5.07 xFIP against left-handed hitters pointed to the same problem, while a 37.5% fly-ball rate and a 4.8% HR/FB rate showed how often contact could leave the yard. The Dodgers were heavy favorites Tuesday and were expected to cover the run line against him.
The Rockies still carried some force into the night. Colorado's.566 slugging percentage led the majors over the past month, which is the kind of burst that can keep a game moving even when the pitching setup looks shaky. That mattered because the Rockies bullpen had already thrown 32 2/3 innings over the past week, the fifth-most in baseball, and posted only a 14.4% strikeout rate, the lowest in the sport over that span.
That is where the game stopped being only about Lorenzen and became about everything behind him. The Rockies were expected to tack on runs after Justin Wrobleski exited against a Dodgers bullpen that had logged the same number of innings over the past week as Colorado, which left both sides leaning on tired arms. Even with clear skies, low-to-mid 70s temperatures and little to no wind expected at Dodger Stadium, the setup still pointed to offense, and the Rockies had hit the total Over in eight of their last 12 games.
So the question in Los Angeles was not whether the Dodgers had the better side of the matchup. It was whether Colorado could stay close long enough for Lorenzen to survive the left-handed bats and for an exhausted bullpen to avoid turning a difficult night into a long one.
