LOS ANGELES — Dustin May was about to throw a warm-up pitch before the second inning on Monday night when an insect appeared to fly into his face, causing the Dodgers pitcher to abort his windup as he swatted the bug away.
It was with similar ease that May shooed away the Colorado Rockies, the lanky right-hander continuing his early season dominance by allowing one run and three hits in six innings of a 5-3 Dodgers victory before a sellout crowd of 52,693 in Chavez Ravine.
The top four batters in the Dodgers’ lineup – Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith – combined to go 9 for 17 with two home runs, five runs and five RBIs, as the Dodgers snapped a two-game losing streak.
Reliever Kirby Yates escaped a two-on, two-out jam in the eighth by getting Michael Toglia to ground out to first, and left-hander Tanner Scott escaped a first-and-third, one-out jam in the ninth by striking out Sean Bouchard and getting Jacob Stallings to ground out to second for his fifth save.
May, mixing his 94-mph sinker and 95-mph four-seam fastball with his 85-mph sweeper, struck out seven, walked none and needed only 76 pitches – 52 of them strikes – to complete six innings and earn his first win since May 6, 2023. He induced 14 swinging strikes and allowed only one runner to reach second base before Colorado nicked him for a run in the sixth.
May, who underwent his second Tommy John surgery in 2023 and suffered a life-threatening esophagus tear when a piece of lettuce from a salad got lodged in his throat last summer, has allowed two earned runs and 11 hits, struck out 14 and walked six in 17 innings of his first three starts.
The Dodgers had lost three straight series and were 3-6 since their 8-0 start, mustering five runs and scoring in just three of the 26 innings they came to bat in a three-game weekend series against the Chicago Cubs.
But opposing them Monday night was a 3-12 Rockies team that ranked 28th in baseball with a 5.02 ERA and sent a pitcher (Antonio Senzatela) to the mound who was 0-2 with a 5.14 ERA in his first three starts and yielded a .415 batting average and a 1.026 OPS in 14 innings.
The Dodgers wasted no time teeing off on Senzatela, Ohtani opening the bottom of the first with a single to right and Betts lining a two-run home run, his fourth of the season, to left field for a 2-0 lead.
They pushed the lead to 3-0 in the third when Ohtani obliterated a 98-mph fastball that was up in the zone, sending a 112-mph drive 408 feet over the center-field wall for his fifth homer of the season.
Ohtani came within a few feet of doubling the lead in the fourth when, with runners on first and third and two outs, he sent a 382-foot drive to the gap in right-center that right fielder Nick Martini caught at the wall, narrowly avoiding a collision with center fielder Mickey Moniak.
The Dodgers tacked on in the fifth, Betts leading off with a double off the glove of third baseman Ryan McMahon, taking third on Freeman’s groundout to first and scoring on Smith’s RBI single through a drawn-in infield for a 4-0 lead.
Michael Conforto and Max Muncy drew walks off Rockies left-hander Luis Peralta to load the bases with two outs for Kiké Hernández, who flied out to center to end the inning.
The Rockies, who did not score during a three-game weekend sweep at the hands of the San Diego Padres, avoided what would have been a major league record-tying fourth consecutive shutout when they scored off May in the sixth.
Martini reached on a two-out infield single off the glove of third baseman Max Muncy and scored on Kyle Farmer’s RBI double down the left-field line to make it 4-1.
The Dodgers added an insurance run in the sixth with the help of Colorado second baseman Adael Amador, who was unable to get Freeman’s potential inning-ending double-play grounder out of his glove for an error, allowing the Dodgers to load the bases. Smith followed with a sacrifice fly to left for a 5-1 lead.
The Rockies trimmed the lead to 5-3 when Moniak singled with one out and Hunter Goodman drove a two-run homer to center off reliever Anthony Banda. Zac Veen walked, but Banda got Amador to ground into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.
More to come on this story.
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