If you said that Dodgers pitchers would throw a near perfect game one night and then throw a near combined no-hitter two nights later, there’s a pretty good chance that you would have been the laughing stock of the baseball world. Yet this is exactly what happened.

On Wednesday night, Dodgers left-hander Rich Hill came a Logan Forsythe error away from baseball immortality and a devastating 10th inning walk-off solo home run by Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Josh Harrison away from a no-hitter at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. And then on Friday night, Dodgers right-hander Kenta Maeda allowed only one hit – a second-inning solo home run to Milwaukee Brewers right fielder Domingo Santana – and then Dodgers left-hander Tony Cingrani, and right-handers Josh Ravin and Kenley Jansen allowed zero runs and zero hits in their subsequent innings of relief at Dodger Stadium in the eventual 3-1 Dodgers win, their MLB-best 91st of the season and their MLB-best 52nd at home.

Maeda was one pitch away from a no-hitter on Friday night in front of a sold out Dodger Stadium crowd of 52,455. It was the Dodgers second one-hitter in three days. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

“There are times when he starts to be a little too fine, but when he’s on the attack, he’s special,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Maeda after the game. “The two walks he fell behind, but when he goes after guys, his stuff and command is so good. When he trusts that, he can get major league hitters out consistently.”

Those two walks came back-to-back with two outs in the top of the fourth inning and it appeared as though Maeda’s night was going to be a short one. But the 29-year-old Senboku-gun, Japan native got the next batter he faced, Brewers catcher Stephen Vogt, to pop out to Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner to end the threat. Only one other Brewers player would reach base on the night, a seventh-inning / one-out walk to Santana by Cingrani.

The under-the-radar hero on Friday night was Dodgers right-hander Josh Ravin, who not only struck out the side in his one inning of relief in the top half of the eighth, but he did so on exactly 11 pitches – two shy of an extremely rare immaculate inning.

Of course, no matter how good the Dodgers pitching has been – and it has been stellar – their offense needs to put runs on the board in order to win regardless of how few runs or hits their pitchers allow, as was so painfully obvious in Hill’s should-have-been perfect game on Wednesday night. Hill’s teammates stranded 11 runners on base and were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position.

Ironically, it was the guy who blew Hill’s perfect game on Wednesday that gave Maeda his first run of support on Friday when Forsythe slugged his fourth home run of the season, a solo shot midway up the Left Field Pavilion in the bottom of the fourth inning off of Brewers starter Chase Anderson to tie the game 1-1.

Adorned in his ‘Logie Bear’ Player’s Week uniform, Dodgers second baseman Logan Forsythe slugged his fourth home run of the season on Friday night to tie the game 1-1 in the eventual 3-1 Dodgers win over the Brewers.
(Photo credit – Mark J. Terrill)

An RBI single one inning later by Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal would make it a 2-1 ballgame, and a monster 414-foot solo home run to straightaway center field by a smoking hot Yasiel Puig in the bottom of the sixth would prove to be all the offense necessary to give the Dodgers their 91st win of the season in their first 127 games – the earliest that they have done so in franchise history.

Stellar indeed.