Lilly’s 7 Scoreless Innings Lift Dodgers at BetLM

Lilly’s 7 Scoreless Innings Lift Dodgers

LOS ANGELES –The Dodgers’ start­ing rota­tion has been doing a superb job of set­ting the tone in the first inning. Tim Hud­son has been hav­ing great dif­fi­culty keep­ing oppo­nents off the score­board early.

Those two trends con­tin­ued on Mon­day night, as Lilly pitched seven score­less innings and James Loney had two RBIs off Hud­son dur­ing a three-run first that pro­pelled Los Ange­les to a 4–2 vic­tory over the Atlanta Braves.

“It’s always nice to get early runs, espe­cially when it’s against a qual­ity pitcher like Hud­son,” Lilly said. “When you have a chance to jump ahead like that, you have to take advantage.”

Lilly (1–2) recorded his first vic­tory of the sea­son in four starts, after sign­ing a three-year, $ 33 mil­lion con­tract in Octo­ber. The 35-year-old left-hander scat­tered four hits, struck out six and did not allow a run­ner past sec­ond base.

“I was able to locate my fast­ball. For me, that’s the key to all my other pitches being effec­tive,” Lilly said. “Since the San Fran­cisco game (a 4–3 loss), I’ve made some adjust­ments mechan­i­cally which have allowed me to repeat pitches more consistently.”

Dodgers pitch­ers have given up only three first-inning runs through their first 17 games. Last sea­son, the staff allowed 98, the most they yielded in any inning.

Hud­son (2–2) gave up four runs and six hits in six innings and struck out four. All 13 runs allowed this sea­son by the right-hander have come dur­ing the first three innings. In his pre­vi­ous start against the Dodgers on Aug. 13 in Atlanta, Hud­son held them to three hits over eight innings in a 1–0 victory.

“I felt like I should have shut them down in the first inning, to be hon­est,” Hud­son said. “I felt really good. I felt like I had good stuff and that I was locat­ing pretty good. But they put together some good at-bats and found a way to push some runs across.”

Matt Guer­rier pitched a per­fect eighth and Jonathan Brox­ton gave up two runs in the ninth on an RBI ground­out by Fred­die Free­man and a dou­ble by Nate McLouth before get­ting the final out.

Andre Ethier sin­gled in the sev­enth against Jairo Asen­cio to extend his hit­ting streak to 15 games, the longest cur­rent streak in the majors and one shy of his career best in 2006. He was hit­less in three at-bats against Hud­son, and is 3 for 20 life­time against the three-time All-Star.

The Braves and Dodgers met for the first time since the off­sea­son retire­ments of man­agers Bobby Cox and Joe Torre, who are fourth and fifth respec­tively on the career vic­tory list and won a com­bined six man­ager of the year awards, five World Series titles and 11 pennants.

Matt Kemp, who gave the Dodgers a 2–1 vic­tory over St. Louis on Sun­day with a two-run homer in the ninth, opened the scor­ing against Hud­son with an RBI sin­gle in the first. Loney added a two-run sin­gle two bat­ters later, after enter­ing the game bat­ting .150.

Jerry Sands, the Dodgers’ minor league player of the year last sea­son, made his major league debut in left field and was 1 for 4 with a sac­ri­fice fly and two strike­outs. The 23-year-old outfielder-first base­man bat­ted .400 with five homers and 17 RBIs in 10 games before his con­tract was pur­chased from Triple-A Albu­querque. He was a 25th-round draft pick in 2008 out of Catawba Col­lege in Sal­is­bury, N.C.

Sands hit an opposite-field dou­ble to right his first time up and heard it from the crowd of 28,292—whose cheers quickly turned to moans when Loney was held up at third base by coach Tim Wallach.

The next time Sands came to the plate in the third, he was greeted with chants of Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” before dri­ving in Juan Uribe with his sac fly to right for the Dodgers’ final run. Those same chants started up again when Sands came up in the sixth, and Hud­son buzzed him with a first-pitch fast­ball that made him duck.

“He signed a ball and sent it over. It was a classy move by him and I appre­ci­ate that,” Sands said. “He said ‘Good debut’ and told me it got away from him a lit­tle bit. But I wasn’t look­ing into it at all. I watched him grow­ing up, so that’ll def­i­nitely go in the tro­phy case.”

Lilly sent the Braves a mes­sage in the sev­enth when he threw a pitch behind McLouth and to the screen with two outs and the bases empty. Both dugouts received a warn­ing from plate umpire Laz Diaz, and McLouth dou­bled on the next pitch.

“I think that’s just old school. The warn­ings were out, no big deal,” Atlanta man­ager Fredi Gon­za­lez said. “I don’t think any­thing else will hap­pen the rest of the series. Lilly did what he had to do, and that’s it. Go out and play baseball.”

Brooks Con­rad then bat­ted for Hud­son and took a called third strike, end­ing the sev­enth and strand­ing McLouth. Atlanta’s pinch-hitters are 0 for 25, includ­ing a game-ending strike­out by Eric Hinske while bat­ting for Asencio.

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