Carl Crawford and Nick Punto combine for 7 hits in the Dodgers’ 7-4 Victory!

The Dodgers scored early in the game in the 2nd inning on catcher Tim Federowicz’s sacrifice fly to center and scoring Ethier to make it 1-0. Center fielder Andre Ethier hit his 31st double of the season and second baseman Mark Ellis walks and the Dodgers have 2 guys on 1st and 2nd. With right fielder Skip Schumaker, giving Yasiel Puig a day off, getting on an infield single to Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, Federowicz,who gave A.J. Ellis the day off, came up and hit a sacrifice fly to center to score Ethier. With one out, Dodgers starting pitcher Ricky Nolasco made a sacrifice bunt that moved the runners over to second and third base. With two outs, Crawford comes up with his second hit of the day, hitting a long single to left to increase the Dodger’s lead, 3-0. Shortstop Punto, who gave Hanley Ramirez a day off continues to match left fielder Crawford and comes up with his second hit of the game and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez flies out to end the innning.

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In the 5th inning, Crawford and Punto hit consecutive singles with Crawford moving to third on Punto’s single. Gonzalez hits a sacrifice fly to center to score Crawford to increase the lead to 4-0. In the top of the 9th, Punto gets his fourth hit of the night, his seventh 4 hit game of his career. With 2 outs, new Dodger, Michael Young made his first Dodger start at third base, got his first hit as Dodger on a hard line drive to center and went 1 for 5 in the game. A wild pitch by Rockies reliever Rex Brothers moved the runners up 90 feet. Ethier walked to load the bases. Ellis hits, what should have been out number three, a deep fly ball to left, but was dropped and cleared the bases to increase the score to 7-3. Punto was 4 for 5 and Crawford was 3 for 5 in the game. Nolasco, who is coming off a hot start against the Chicago Cubs, throwing eight innings given up three hits and had ten strike outs, threw for six innings and given up five hits, one walk and two earned runs against the Colorado Rockies. He also had five strike outs and got his 13th win of the season. His counterpart, Rockies starting pitcher Jhoulys Chacin threw seven innings, gave nine of the the 12 hits gave up four earned runs and two walks. Nolasco started the game off hot, only needing five pitches to get through the second inning and seemed to run out of gas towards the 7th inning. Relievers J.P. Howell, Paco Rodriguez, Ronald Belisario and Chris Withrow combined to pitch 3 innings and giving up 3 hits (one of the three hits was a home run), one walk and two earned runs and one save.

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Pitcher Edinson Volquez will be making his first start as a Dodger, taking the hill against Jorge De La Rosa tomorrow night, trying to extend the six game winning streak. It will be interesting to see how Volquez pitches tomorrow because he has had control problems earlier this year with the Padres. Hopefully, Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt figured out what was wrong with Volquez’s mechanics. If Volquez pitches well, Honeycutt is a HUGE GENIUS! The game will be on KCAL at 5:40 PM. GO BLUE!