LOS ANGELES — Yeah – but he didn’t hit a leadoff home run too.
Following on the heels of Shohei Ohtani’s six no-hit innings (and leadoff home run) on Wednesday, Justin Wrobleski didn’t allow a hit until the sixth inning and just one in his seven innings as the Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2, on Friday night.
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The win extended the Dodgers’ winning streak to a season-high six games, during which they have outscored their opponents 44-16.
It is part of a longer bulldozing that has seen the Dodgers win 13 of their past 15 by a combined score of 94-31.
Wrobleski showed a livelier fastball than he has had all season. His four-seamer averaged more than 95 mph through the first five innings on Friday and he even hit 97 mph multiple times, up from a season average of 93.7 mph. He retired the first 10 Phillies in order, striking out four.
The perfect parade was broken up by an error in the fourth inning when miscommunication between Andy Pages and Kyle Tucker led to Trea Turner’s fly ball glancing off Tucker’s glove and dropping to the warning track uncaught. He was stranded at second base when Wrobleski went back to setting the Phillies down in order, retiring the next seven. Five of those were strikeouts as he built a career-high total of nine.
Kyle Schwarber put an end to this night’s no-hit watch with two outs in the sixth inning when he sent a 1-and-1 fastball from Wrobleski on a 411-foot journey into the netting beyond the center field wall. It was Schwarber’s major league-leading 22nd home run of the season – and the Phillies’ only hit in seven innings against Wrobleski. The one-hit outing came after Wrobleski had given up 14 runs combined in his previous three starts.
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Phillies starter Zack Wheeler came into the game having allowed just one home run in his first 37⅔ innings this season. He gave up four in the first five innings on Friday, the Dodgers punching them out with regularity.
Freddie Freeman squeezed one inside the left-field foul pole in the first inning, his fourth home run in nine games (after hitting just one in the previous 35 games). Max Muncy went deep in the second inning and Ohtani made it back-to-back games with home runs (after he hit just two in his previous 26 games). After a brief pause in the fourth inning, Will Smith led off the fifth inning with the Dodgers’ fourth homer of the night.
Over the past three games, Dodgers hitters have dug the longball, hitting 12 home runs. They finished the night with just two non-homer hits – both singles by Ohtani in the fifth and eighth.
The Phillies closed the gap with a run off Edgardo Henriquez in the eighth. But Alex Vesia struck out Schwarber to end the eighth and Tanner Scott closed it out in the ninth.
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More to come on this story.