LOS ANGELES (AP) - The best the Los Angeles Dodgers can do before the end of this 10-game homestand is clinch a tie for the NL West title, so there won’t be any champagne party in front of the home fans.
The Arizona Diamondbacks took care of that little detail on Monday night with an 8-4 victory in the opener of a four-game series. That left the Dodgers’ magic number for clinching their third straight division crown at seven.
Paul Goldschmidt homered for the Diamondbacks after Yasmany Tomas and Aaron Hill gave them the lead with leadoff homers in the fourth and fifth innings against Brett Anderson (9-9). The left-hander was charged with five runs and 10 hits in 4 2-3 innings.
“When he gets the ball up, he’s going to get hit hard,” manager Don Mattingly said. “You worry about him when he gets the ball up in the zone. This is a good offensive club over there. They’ve got a group of guys that hit everybody.”
Anderson has allowed 17 home runs, the most on the Dodger staff. He came in leading the majors in ground-ball percentage (66.7) and groundball-to-flyball ratio (4.29).
“When I’m going right I’m going to get ground balls regardless of who the team is,” Anderson said. “The home run-to-fly ball ratio is skewed just because I get so many ground balls. It seems like every ball that is hit is a homer, which is kind of an anomaly I guess.”
Arizona right-hander Jhoulys Chacin (1-1) escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second by retiring Howie Kendrick on a flyball. A.J. Pollock got the Diamondbacks on the board in the third with a sacrifice fly, and they tied it 2-all when Tomas lined Anderson’s first pitch of the fourth inning to left-center for his ninth home run.
The Diamondbacks scored three more runs in the fifth, extending their lead to 5-2. Anderson yielded four consecutive hits with none out, including Hill’s sixth homer and Welington Castillo’s RBI single.
The whole momentum of the game changed in the second inning,” Mattingly said. “We don’t get any runs there, they get a run the next two innings. We hit some balls hard early and didn’t seem to square as many balls up after that.”
Chacin gave up four consecutive two-out hits in the first inning, starting with Adrian Gonzalez’s 28th homer and ending with rookie Corey Seager’s RBI double inside first base.
Seager became the first Dodger to reach base with a hit or a walk in each of the first 16 big league games he started since Jim Gilliam in 1953 (24 straight). The 21-year-old shortstop, who was the 18th overall pick in the 2012 draft, is 23 for 61 with 11 RBIs, eight doubles and a home run.
Chacin allowed two runs, six hits and four walks over 5 1-3 innings in his fourth start for the Diamondbacks, one day after they were mathematically eliminated from postseason contention.
The Diamondbacks’ bullpen came up big in the sixth after Chacin walked two batters and was pulled with one out. Andrew Chafin struck out pinch-hitter Scott Van Slyke and David Hernandez fanned pinch-hitter Scott Schebler.
Goldschmidt made it 6-2 in the eighth with his 29th homer, a line drive off the left field pole against Joel Peralta.
Yasmani Grandal cut the margin to 6-4 in the bottom half with his career-high 16th homer, a two-run shot off Matt Reynolds. But David Peralta helped Arizona put it away with a two-run single in the ninth against Ian Thomas.
TEACHING AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS
Thirteen-year veteran 2B Chase Utley played third base for the first time in 1,575 big league games, due to 3B Justin Turner’s sore knee and 2B Howie Kendrick’s return from the DL on Friday. The 36-year-old Utley had three assists and no putouts.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Dodgers: SS Jimmy Rollins didn’t start for the 13th straight game because of a sprained right index finger. During that stretch, he has pinch-hit three times and was used as a pinch-runner three times.
UP NEXT
Diamondbacks: LHP Robbie Ray (4-12) is 1-8 with a 4.99 ERA over his last 12 starts. The only win during that stretch was against the Dodgers at Chase Field on Sept. 11, a 12-4 rout.
Dodgers: LHP Alex Wood (11-10) will get a rematch against Ray. He is coming off a 2-0 home win against Colorado last Wednesday, when he gave up just one hit and no walks in eight innings while throwing only 78 pitches.
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