Teoscar Hernández delivered a go-ahead solo home run in the eighth inning, and the Los Angeles Dodgers added insurance with a three-run pinch-hit blast from Kiké Hernández, securing an 8-4 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday night at Dodger Stadium. The win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Dodgers and evened the weekend series.
The Dodgers entered the game as favorites, with betting lines across most sportsbooks placing them at approximately -190 on the moneyline. The Pirates, coming off a strong offensive showing the night before, were listed around +160. The run total was projected at 8.5, a figure surpassed following the Dodgers’ late-inning offensive outburst.
The game began with a dramatic start as Oneil Cruz launched the first pitch from Dodgers rookie right-hander Roki Sasaki over the center-field wall for a solo home run. Cruz’s eighth homer of the season gave the Pirates an immediate 1-0 advantage. Los Angeles responded in the bottom half of the first inning. Shohei Ohtani doubled, Teoscar Hernández followed with an RBI double of his own, and an error by Pirates second baseman Adam Frazier allowed Hernández to score, giving the Dodgers a 2-1 lead.
The Pirates regained the lead in the fifth inning after Cruz drove in another run with a hard-hit RBI single, clocked at 111 mph off the bat. Pittsburgh went up 3-2, but the Dodgers responded again. Ohtani tripled in the sixth inning and scored on Freddie Freeman’s two-out RBI single to tie the game at 3-3.
In the top of the seventh, the Pirates took a brief 4-3 lead on an RBI groundout by Bryan Reynolds. The Dodgers answered in the bottom half when Ohtani delivered a run-scoring double, his third extra-base hit, to level the score again. Ohtani’s breakout performance came after a slow stretch following his return from paternity leave, during which he had gone 2-for-16 with six strikeouts. His wife, Mamiko Tanaka, gave birth to the couple’s first child on April 19.
The game remained tied until the bottom of the eighth. Teoscar Hernández led off the inning by lining a solo home run to left field off Pirates reliever Colin Holderman. It was Hernández’s 11th homer of the season and gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead. Later in the inning, Kiké Hernández, coming off the bench as a pinch hitter, drove a three-run homer over the left-field wall off Joey Wentz, extending the Dodgers’ lead to 8-4. It was the eighth pinch-hit home run of Kiké Hernández’s career.
Kirby Yates pitched a scoreless eighth inning to earn the win and improve to 1-0 on the season. Evan Phillips and the Dodgers’ defense preserved the tie in the seventh with a key play by Freeman, who made a diving stop at first base and delivered a throw from his knees to record the inning’s final out.
The series concludes Sunday afternoon with Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow scheduled to start. Glasnow enters the matchup with a 1-0 record and a 3.71 ERA. The Pirates will counter with left-hander Bailey Falter, who holds a 1-2 record and a 5.19 ERA. Both teams will look to close the series with momentum before continuing their respective schedules.
