The Dodgers were coming off a dominant performance by Clayton Kershaw entering the rubber match of the three game series vs. the Washington Nationals. The stadium was scattered with a decent crowd with the beautiful 2 new updated scoreboards shining behind the right and left field bleachers. On a nice May night, LA welcomed Zach Greinke back as he started for the first time since hurting his shoulder in the brawl against Carlos Quentin in San Diego about 6 weeks ago. The team is in big need of some quality starting pitching depth to get out of last place.
The Dodgers got a break with Bryce Harper not being able to play in the last 2 games of the series after crashing into the wall Monday night. Jason Werth is on the DL till May 18th and LA was lucky to avoid pitchers Strasburg and Gonzalez. LA has had their own injury issues with Hanley Ramirez on the DL most of the season. Chad Billingsley may be out for the year with an injury to his pitching arm and Josh Beckett was just placed on the DL with a strained groin after getting routed Monday and his 0-5 record this year.
The Dodgers took an early lead with a double by Kemp and a bloop single by Adrian Gonzalez, who is leading the team in hitting average. They made it 2-0 as Ethier lined a single to right trying to prove he can hit left hand pitchers and scored on a single to right with two outs by Greinke.
Adam LaRoche hammered a long homerun to right center in the 4th to make it a 2-1 game. Starter Ross Detwiler only went 3 innings giving up 6 hits and 2 runs and was replaced by Craig Stammen, who leads their relief pitchers with 19 strikeouts this season to go along with a 2.65 ERA in 10 games. Detwiler seemed to get injured while covering first base on the backend of a potential double play in the 3rd inning.
The score remained 2-1 and the Nationals had 1st and 3rd with nobody out in the 8th inning and failed to score when LaRoche flied out to short left field, Desmond stuck out and Suzuki flied to right all off of reliever Kenley Jansen. Manager Don Mattingly took out Greinke in the 5th in his first game back and brought in JP Howell to face LaRoche who he struck out. Washington also used Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen in relief as part of their strong bullpen. The Nats signed Yankee closer Rafael Soriano in the off season to get even deeper as he was expendable with Mariano Rivera coming back.
The Dodgers loaded the bases in the 8th with Kemp leading off with a single, Gonzalez walking, Ellis sac bunting, Ethier intentionally walking before Carl Crawford pinch hit sac fly to make it 3-1.
Brandon League came in to save the game in the 9th before giving up a leadoff single to Danny Espinosa. Roger Bernadina, who looked over-matched all night, weakly grounded back to the mound for the first out. Bryce Harper pinch hit and grounded to first for the second out. It was up to Denard Span and League got him to ground out to short to end the game.
