The Los Angeles Dodgers secured a series win over the Arizona Diamondbacks with an 11-6 win on Labor Day that created further separation in the National League West standings.
The Dodgers went into the pivotal four-game set at Chase Field with a four-game lead over the Diamondbacks. They proceed to take the first two matchups before suffering a blowout loss on Sunday and then bouncing back in the series finale.
The Dodgers now hold a six-game lead over the Diamondbacks with 24 games remaining on their regular-season schedule, which essentially becomes a seven-game lead due to the tiebreaker.
Arizona dropped to third place in the division, with the San Diego Padres between the two teams.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is pleased with his team’s performance and believes they did what they had to do at an important time in the season, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“It was an important series, a big series,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Obviously you could see the urgency with both clubs, how they played. For us to win three here is a tough feat. It took some big hits, some big pitching. Overall, to come out of here up six games on these guys – we took care of business.”
Roberts was proud that the Dodgers found success against many of the players from last year’s Diamondbacks team that eliminated them in the playoffs:
“It’s a lot of the same guys (Diamondbacks pitchers) that we saw last October that we didn’t have success with and even some parts of this year,” Roberts said. “So to come here into their backyard and swing the bats like we did and beat the starter, tax the ’pen – I thought we had a great offensive gameplan throughout.
“The big players, the big stars performed.”
As Roberts noted, the Dodgers found success against Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly in the first two games. The team also got to the Diamondbacks bullpen on several occasions throughout the series.
The Dodgers’ offense scored a total of 32 runs in the four games, including double digits twice. The series finale saw Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández go a combined 11-for-16 with two doubles, one triple, two home runs, eight RBI and nine runs scored.
Dodgers clinch season series over Diamondbacks
By taking three of four games at Chase Field, the Dodgers clinched a series win against the Diamondbacks, and thus head-to-head tiebreaker. That could become key if Arizona climbs back into the NL West race and catches L.A. in the standings.
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