Neither the final line nor the final score fully depicted the dominance of Julio Urías’ Sunday afternoon outing at Oracle Park, which helped the Dodgers sweep a Giants team that entered the series atop the division standings.
Urías had a perfect game going until one out in the sixth inning, when Mike Tauchman dribbled an infield single up the middle. The Giants struck for two runs in the inning on an Austin Slater homer, but an early 11-run Dodger lead ensured the sweep was already in hand by that point in an 11–5 win.
“You could just see today everything was working,” said manager Dave Roberts. “Delivery was really good, clean. His entire mix was working. It was just really a pro outing.”
Those have come in droves for a Dodger rotation that’s been so overpowering in recent weeks that the two runs Urías surrendered Sunday were tied for the most by a Dodger starter in the club’s last nine games. Over that time, Dodger starters have allowed a combined six earned runs in 49 2/3 innings for a 1.09 ERA.
That work has helped the Dodgers take 11 of their last 12 games, including seven straight. Through much of that time, wins stacked up despite only a few runs of support for the starters. On Sunday, Urías helped himself at the plate.
Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani had not allowed more than three runs in a game this year, but the Dodgers struck for that many in the second inning alone. Yoshi Tsutsugo, who has knocked in runs with each of his two hits as a Dodger, started the scoring with an RBI single. Then, Urías ripped a double 104.4 mph off the bat for his first career extra-base hit to drive in two runs.
The Dodgers followed their three-run inning with a seven-run third inning, capped by the second grand slam of the week from Gavin Lux, which knocked DeSclafani out of the game. The middle infielder recorded his ninth multi-hit game of May and is hitting .324 with 14 RBI in 20 games this month.
“Feel pretty locked in mechanically,” Lux said. “I feel like I can just go see ball, hit ball, basically. That’s really been it. I’ve been in a rhythm.”
