June 20th, 2019 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka For the second time in as many nights, the Dodgers scored nine runs to beat the hated San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium – on Tuesday night by a score of 9-0 and on Wednesday night 9-2. Wednesday’s win was their 50th of the season against 25 losses; a rather significant feat. This from the Dodgers public relations staff:
“At 50-25, the Dodgers are tied with the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers for the second-best start in Los Angeles Dodgers history…only the 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers got off to a better start (51-24).”
Of those nine runs on Wednesday, Dodgers shortstop Chris Taylor was responsible for four of them, courtesy of two home runs – a two-run shot to left-center field in the bottom of the first inning, and a solo shot to left field in the bottom of the fifth. It was the first career multi-home run game for the 28-year-old Virginia Beach, VA native.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
Dodgers right fielder Cody Bellinger also homered, his 24th of the season, and rookie outfielder Kyle Garlick hit the first of his major league career in only his 15th major league at-bat.
But Wednesday’s win came at a cost … a huge cost.
After a quick 1-2-3 top of the first inning that included two strikeouts on 15 total pitches, 39-year-old Dodgers left-hander Rich Hill came back out for the top of the second inning.
There would not be a 16th pitch.
Instead, the extremely popular Boston, MA native and 15-year MLB veteran had to leave the game for what was reported as “left forearm discomfort.”
“I’m pretty confident the MRI will show something, but not in the concerning category of missing a tremendous amount of time,” Hill told reporters after the game. “Time away, get it right and come back and get back to pitching.”
The veteran left-hander, who underwent Tommy John surgery in 2011, said that he noticed the discomfort as he began to warm-up for the second inning.
“The third warm-up pitch everything tightened up and I didn’t feel it would be a wise move to keep going,” Hill said. “I felt it was something more severe than something I can pitch through. Just knowing your body and being smart, as opposed to having something that could be disastrous for the rest of the year.
“You know that the next pitch could be the one where it could be a season-ending issue. In that situation, before where I had blown my elbow out in 2011, I felt immediately where it was a pop and knew that something was massively wrong, and this time around it was definitely not that severe,” he added. “I’m pretty confident that it is more of a strain situation.
“All things, right now, are much more positive than that. We did a preliminary ultrasound on it and the ligament looked good, intact, everything fine there. Maybe a forearm strain,” Hill concluded.
Per Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, Hill will undergo an MRI on Thursday morning. He also made it perfectly clear that his veteran left-hander will be placed on the 10-day injured list. What he did not say is who will fill Hill’s spot in his starting rotation, although a corresponding move is also expected on Thursday morning.
Stay tuned.
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Tough to lose Hill, at least for a while, hoping the MRI doesn’t show anything bad. I’m sure everyone’s mind was on that as we watch the Dodgers take the Giants apart again last night.
Doesn’t surprise me to see Hill back on the IL again since he enjoys pitching like he’s still in the prime of his youth (lol). If it’s just forearm “tightness” as he claims, a couple months off would definitely serve him well at this point. He was originally brought in to beef up the rotation for the playoff stretch, anyway. Silver lining is that the Dodgers can finally get another bullpen arm in there from their AAA ranks (Chargrois most likely, but I’d rather see one of the stretched-out homegrown kids get a crack at it like Gonsolin for instance) while reinserting Urias into the rotation where he truly belongs. Like I said before, these things tend to happen for a reason as far as baseball goes…
Manuel, Urias is of course starting tonight against Bum and the Giants. If I were to guess, eventually or sooner rather than later Dodgers will fill Hill’s spot with someone else because the intentions are to limit the innings Urias’ pitches to preserve him for the late season and possible October runs
If that’s the case, they’ll just go with Stripling as he’s already stretched out enough to start without burning up the pen in the process. I wouldn’t be surprised if they begin stretching out Ferguson little-by-little while Hill’s busy recuperating from his forearm strain. I still see him as future starter material despite being stashed in the pen for the moment. Dark horse candidate could very well be that Gonsolin kid I previously mentioned. Dodgers currently have him building up his innings in their AAA OKC rotation since returning from the IL a few weeks back.