Dodgers get good news on injury front before soundly defeating Guardians

The Dodgers are tied with the Philadelphia Phillies for the best record in baseball heading into the final three weeks of the regular season, and it hasn’t guaranteed them much, not with San Diego and Arizona breathing down their necks in the National League West.

“We’re feeling the Padres and Diamondbacks right behind us, but there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of pressure — I feel like it’s going to help us get to the playoffs and perform well in the playoffs,” shortstop Miguel Rojas said. “But we want to secure one of the top two spots [in the league], so we can’t really let our foot off the gas pedal right now.”

The Dodgers did ease up on the throttle Saturday night, but only after they shot out of the gates like a Top Fuel dragster, scoring six first-inning runs en route to a 7-2 victory over the Cleveland Guardians in front of a crowd of 48,690 in Chavez Ravine.

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With San Diego losing to San Francisco and Arizona losing to Houston, the Dodgers (85-57) pushed their division lead to five games over the Padres and 6½ games over the Diamondbacks with 20 games to play.

“Anytime we can put together a big inning like that,” right fielder Mookie Betts said, “it's going to be a good recipe to win.”

Shohei Ohtani made the first and last outs of the first inning, but in between, the Dodgers pounded Guardians starter Gavin Williams and reliever Pedro Avila for six runs and four hits, a rally that was set up by three straight one-out walks issued by Williams.

Tommy Edman sliced a two-run, ground-rule double to left, and a Gavin Lux sacrifice fly to left made it 3-0. Rojas slapped an RBI single down the right-field line for a 4-0 lead, and Andy Pages, filling in for the injured Teoscar Hernández, greeted Avila with a two-run homer that traveled 432 feet to center for a 6-0 lead.

The early outburst eased the burden on a pitching staff that has been so ravaged by rotation injuries that the Dodgers used seven relievers — Ryan Brasier, Michael Grove, Justin Wrobleski, Blake Treinen, Alex Vesia, Michael Kopech and Brent Honeywell — to cover nine innings Saturday night.

“I don't want to put it solely on the offense, because the guys we’re running out there still have to do their jobs on the pitching side,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But I do know that the offense is aware of what we've been going through as a staff. They can't take nights off, at-bats off. When we need to add on or fight to get back into a game to give it to guys in the bullpen, we need to do that.”

The Guardians trimmed the deficit to 6-2 in the second on Lane Thomas’ two-run homer off Grove. Wrobleski threw two scoreless innings, escaping a two-on, one-out jam in the third and a based-loaded, two-out jam in the fourth, and Betts pushed the lead to 7-2 in the bottom of the fourth with a two-out solo homer to left, his 16th of the season.

Betts is batting .311 (38 for 90) with six homers, seven doubles, 23 RBIs and 23 runs in 24 games since returning on Aug. 12 from a left-hand fracture that sidelined him for two months. The Dodgers are 16-8 in those games.

“Given the time off, it's hard to imagine getting hot from the outset, but he's in playoff mode,” Roberts said of Betts. “He's taking great at-bats. He's really taken to right field and made another great play out there tonight. Guys are following his lead.”

Treinen escaped a second-and-third, one-out jam in the fifth by striking out Daniel Schneemann with an 84-mph sweeper and Thomas with an 85-mph sweeper. Vesia (sixth) Kopech (seventh) and Honeywell (eighth and ninth) threw clean innings for the Dodgers, who held the Guardians hitless in 13 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

“There was some good, there was some not so good, but we managed to make pitches when we needed to,” Roberts said. “It seemed like there were a lot of stressful innings and a lot of traffic tonight, but the guys made pitches when they needed to.”

The Dodgers got some good news on the injury front before the game, with Hernández saying he will avoid the injury list after getting hit on the left foot by a pitch Friday night and ace Tyler Glasnow throwing off a bullpen mound for the first time since he went on the injured list because of elbow tendonitis in August.

Roberts feared Hernández would have to go on the IL after being hit by an 81-mph slider and exiting the game in the first inning, but an X-ray after the game and a CT scan Saturday showed no broken bones, and the swelling subsided.

“Very relieved,” Roberts said. “Obviously, if it was a fracture, that was probably going to be the end of the season for him, and it would have been a huge loss.”

Hernández is batting .266 with 28 homers and 87 RBIs, and his loss would have left a gaping hole in the middle of the lineup.

“I thought it was worse, honestly, when I got hit — after a couple of hours, the pain wasn’t going away,” Hernández said on Saturday. “But it’s way better than it was [Friday] night. Nothing is broken, and maybe Monday or Tuesday I’ll be back on the field. … Thank God it was an off-speed pitch and not a fastball.”

Glasnow threw about 20 pitches, all fastballs, during a session Roberts said “went very well.” He will throw a more aggressive bullpen Tuesday, mixing in his secondary pitches, after which he will likely throw a simulated game of two or three innings, leaving time for the right-hander to make two abbreviated regular-season starts before the playoffs.

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“Just looking at the calendar, there's only a few opportunities, so we might be in that situation where it's three or four innings,” Roberts said. “You have to take what you can get at this point, if he's healthy, and just go from there.”

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is scheduled to return from a rotator-cuff strain Tuesday night, will also be limited in his first few starts back, which, combined with Glasnow’s short starts, could require an overworked bullpen to throw more innings.

“It’ll be tough, but honestly, it’s nothing we haven’t done all year,” Roberts said. “If that’s the case, then we’ll figure it out.”

Short hops

Reliever Brusdar Graterol, sidelined for the first four months of the season because of a shoulder injury and the last month because of a hamstring strain, completed his two-appearance rehab stint with triple-A Oklahoma City with a scoreless inning on Friday. The right-hander will be activated either Sunday or Monday, Roberts said.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.