As long as the Dodgers are winning, and the St. Louis Cardinals are losing, one day can make a tremendous bit of difference in the National League wild-card standings.
Saturday was one of those days.
The Cardinals, down 4-3, came back to tie the Washington Nationals in the ninth inning before losing 6-4 in the 10 th. The final score flashed on the video board in the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium, causing the announced crowd of 40,724 to voice its approval.
The Dodgers then proceeded to beat the Colorado Rockies 3-0 for their fourth straight win, pulling within two games of the Cardinals for the final wild-card berth with four games left in the season.
Starting pitcher Joe Blanton (10-13) didn’t see the score flash on the video board, but still managed to figure out the Cardinals had lost.
“It got pretty loud,” he said. “I figured it was something like that.”
His feeling in the moment? “No different.”
To make the playoffs, Blanton and the Dodgers know they’ll need more help from a Cardinals team that has won nine of its past 12 games. At least the Dodgers are suddenly helping themselves.
Matt Kemp hit his 21 st and 22 nd home runs of the season, and Blanton and three relievers combined on a seven-hit shutout – the Dodgers’ second shutout in as many days.
Kemp unloaded on a hanging curveball from Tyler Chatwood (5-6) in the fourth inning, launching the ball an estimated 461 feet to the upper reaches of the left-field pavilion. In the eighth inning, Kemp picked a more familiar trajectory – a lower arc over the right-field fence – for his opposite-field blast off Josh Roenicke in the eighth inning.
“It feels good to hit balls that hard,” Kemp said. “Hopefully I can do that the next four, five days.”
Kemp and Hanley Ramirez both went 3 for 4, A.J. Ellis and Adrian Gonzalez went 2 for 4, accounting for all of the Dodgers’ 10 hits.
Ellis’ fourth-inning single drove in Hanley Ramirez. The Dodgers have won their past four games by a combined score of 27-6.
This one was a bit closer than the past three, at least on paper. In reality, the Rockies never threatened, getting only one runner to third base against Blanton, Ronald Belisario, Kenley Jansen and Brandon League, who pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning for his sixth save.
“A.J. called a great game,” said Blanton, who won his first game since Aug. 29. “My cutter was good, curveball and slider were decent.”
It was the type of game the Dodgers were expecting from Blanton, who had more postseason wins than their other starters combined when the right-hander was acquired from Philadelphia on Aug. 3. It was the type of game Blanton was hoping to pitch in too – though as a Dodger he was 1-4 with a 5.57 ERA prior to Saturday as the team’s playoff hopes dimmed to a flicker.
Kemp’s multi-homer game was his second of the season, the other coming April 14. The same shoulder and knee ailments that were blamed for Kemp’s .159 batting average in 20 games after he crashed into the center-field wall Aug. 28 at Coors Field haven’t simply disappeared.
Said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, “we know Matt’s banged up but he’s ready to go every day. … ‘Banged up’ doesn’t mean that every swing hurts.”
It just means that he’s often sore the morning after a game, Mattingly said, and that trainers have to perform “some maintenance” before each game to get Kemp loose.
As Kemp goes, so do the Dodgers, and in their four straight wins Kemp is 9 for 17 with three homers, three doubles and seven RBIs.
Dodgers third baseman Luis Cruz left the game in the seventh inning after complaining of a headache, but expects to be OK to play today.
He said the headache was the result of getting hit by a baseball behind his left ear in the Dodgers’ indoor batting cage before the game.
Right-hander Josh Beckett will start today in search of a series sweep and his first win since Sept. 1. He’s allowed only two runs in two starts at home since he was traded to the Dodgers on Aug. 25. The Rockies will counter with left-hander Jorge De La Rosa, who is making his third start of the season.
Sometime during the game, the Dodgers figure to learn how the Cardinals fared in their series finale against Washington.
Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki, whose RBI double in the 10 th inning made the difference Saturday, was given the following message from Mattingly:
“Win tomorrow.”
jp.hoornstra@inlandnewspapers.com twitter.com/jphoornstra