Rain shapes night with Muncy's funky hit, Yamamoto's gem cut short

DENVER -- The rain giveth, and the rain taketh away.

A sudden storm over Coors Field directly contributed to the Dodgers getting on the board first in Wednesday's 8-1 win over the Rockies, but the ensuing one-hour, 27-minute rain delay meant that they didn't get as much coverage as they would've liked out of ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Even so, the Dodgers used a bizarre turn of events to their advantage, scoring a pair of runs before the rain delay. When all was said and done, they became the first in the National League to 50 wins.

"It certainly changed the momentum because their guy, we couldn’t figure him out," manager Dave Roberts said. "They couldn’t figure Yamamoto out. So if you end that top half of the sixth, tie game with no runs, it might have been a different ballgame."

It was the top of the sixth inning, and the game was in a scoreless tie. Both Yamamoto and Rockies starter Chase Dollander had been dealing before the skies opened and changed the course of the evening.

The Dodgers had the early makings of some action going against Dollander, with Dalton Rushing drawing a leadoff walk and Shohei Ohtani following with a base hit. Around the same time, the Rockies announced over the P.A. system that they were asking fans to clear the upper-deck seats due to "possible weather" in the area.

Soon after, rain began to fall and a message on the scoreboard warned of "severe weather."

By that point, Rushing and Ohtani were both in scoring position with two outs. Rain was coming down hard, and Max Muncy lifted a popup to the right side of the infield. It could have easily been the third out of the inning -- but no one seemed to be able to distinguish the ball among the heavily falling raindrops.

Second baseman Thairo Estrada seemed to think he was right under it. First baseman Michael Toglia watched as Estrada tried to track the ball -- only for it to drop a couple of feet in front of Toglia. Rushing and Ohtani came in to score on what was ruled a base hit for Muncy, and the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead right before the grounds crew brought out the tarp.

“I was just happy I made contact," Muncy said. "My glasses were pretty full of water at that point, and it was just kind of praying to put the ball in play. Hit it to the right spot, I guess. It’s hard to argue that when you get it in the air, when rain is falling that thick, it’s really hard to look up and find a baseball.”

Muncy later padded his team's lead without an assist from the weather, hitting his second grand slam in the past three games in the seventh inning.

It had been shaping up to be a dominant start for Yamamoto. He tossed five scoreless innings on 56 pitches, striking out six against one hit and one walk.

In a sense, the 26-year-old right-hander was merely taking care of business against an 18-62 Rockies club that has scored the second-fewest runs in the National League. But Yamamoto was in need of a strong outing after posting a 5.23 ERA in four previous June starts, and pitching at altitude is no easy task.

Hitters tend to benefit from playing at Coors Field far more than pitchers. With his rain-shortened outing, Yamamoto became the 14th Dodgers pitcher -- and the first since Clayton Kershaw on June 27, 2023 -- with a scoreless start of at least five innings at the Rockies' home ballpark.

Yamamoto has been the Dodgers' most reliable starter this season, but he hadn't consistently looked "Yamamoto-like," as Roberts put it the night before, in some time. The common thread Roberts has seen is Yamamoto being "too fine" and trying to paint the corners rather than challenging hitters in the zone.

On Wednesday, Yamamoto came into his start focused on getting ahead of hitters.

"I started feeling good last week, and going into today's game," Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. "And then today, I was attacking with a first-pitch strike pretty good."

It was right in line with what the Dodgers wanted to see from Yamamoto.

"I thought he was fantastic," Roberts said. "This was a good one. … He used the curveball the right way. The split was really good. And the fastball. I thought Yoshi was exactly what we needed tonight."