Ohtani Goes 4-5 With Two Bombs, LAD Rolls 11-5
Shohei Ohtani went 4-for-5 with 2 home runs, 3 RBI, and 4 runs scored as the Dodgers dismantled Colorado 11-5 on August 18. The game was effectively over by the third inning, and Ohtani spent the next six frames just adding punctuation.
Los Angeles wasted no time. Mookie Betts doubled to center in the second to plate Max Muncy, and then the third inning turned into a demolition. Andy Pages singled to center to score Ohtani, Freddie Freeman moved to second, and then Muncy launched a 461-foot shot to right center that cleared the bases — Freeman and Pages both scored. Just like that it was 5-0, and Colorado's win probability cratered from 20% to 7% on that single swing. The Rockies managed one run back in the third on a fielder's choice, but the damage was done.
Ohtani then took over personally. He homered to left center at 428 feet in the fifth to push it to 6-1, and a Betts groundout later in the same inning scored Pages to make it 7-1. In the sixth, Ohtani went back to work — a 452-foot shot to center scored Edman and put Los Angeles up 9-1. Pages added a single to center that scored Freeman, and suddenly the Dodgers were sitting on a 10-run lead. Blake Snell did his part on the mound, going 6.0 innings and allowing just 2 hits and 1 earned run while striking out 5. Colorado's Tomoyuki Sugano lasted only 5 innings, surrendering 7 hits and 6 earned runs. Freeman doubled to left in the eighth to score Ohtani again, capping the Dodgers' scoring at 11.
Colorado's ninth-inning rally — three runs on an Adael Amador single, a Tovar sacrifice fly, and a Veen double — made the final 11-5 but was purely cosmetic. Evan Phillips closed it out with a clean inning, 0 hits and 1 strikeout. The story of the night was Ohtani operating at a level that looks unfair even by his own standards: two home runs covering 428 and 452 feet, four runs scored, and a line that dominated every column of the box score. Pages (3-for-4, 2 RBI) and Freeman (3-for-5, 1 RBI) gave the Dodgers a deep, relentless lineup that appears to have no soft spots on a night like this.