Dodgers blast Austin Gomber, get revenge on Rockies for walk-off in series opener

Kyle Newman, The Denver Post on Aug 19, 2025

Published in Baseball

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DENVER — The Dodgers re-asserted the parameters for their relationship with the Rockies on Tuesday.

A night after the Rockies walked off Los Angeles to snap a 10-game losing streak against the NL West juggernauts in a performance in which Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said his team “let our guard down,” Los Angeles crushed Colorado, 11-4, at Coors Field.

Colorado, ever the little brother to the boys in blue, hasn’t won consecutive games in a single season against the Dodgers since October 2022. And the Rockies haven’t won two in a row against L.A. at Coors Field since about three months before that.

The Dodgers showed their dominance over Colorado on Tuesday by pummeling Austin Gomber. L.A. lit up the southpaw for seven runs on nine hits and two walks in three innings. The parade of hard-hit balls featured a pair of solo homers in the second inning, first by leadoff batter Alex Call and then Shohei Ohtani’s 44th homer this season a few batters later.

In between those two bombs that traveled a combined 866 feet, Los Angeles also plated two runs in the first and three runs in the third. All five of those runs came with two outs.

In the first, a two-out walk to Will Smith opened the door for RBI doubles by Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández. Then in the third, Call, Miguel Rojas and Buddy Kennedy all notched RBI singles to extend the lead to 7-0.

Gomber’s ERA now stands at 7.49. He remains winless in ’25, and the only pitcher in the majors this season to have 12 or more starts with no quality outings. The rest of the rotation hasn’t been any better: After Gomber’s outing on Tuesday, the ERA of Colorado starters is 6.59. The club record for highest starters’ ERA is 6.19, set in 1999 before the humidor came to Coors Field.

The Rockies offense finally woke up in the fourth as Brenton Doyle mashed a two-run homer to left-center off Emmet Sheehan to cut the deficit to 7-2.

That continued the center fielder’s hot second half. Entering the game, Doyle was slashing .387/.418/.587. He has the third-highest batting average in the majors since the All-Star break, and the fifth-highest OPS (1.004) among players with at least 80 plate appearances.

In the sixth, the Rockies cut into the lead again with another two-run homer. This time, two rookies who have impressed since debuting in the last month combined to get to Sheehan again. Warming Bernabel walked, then two batters later, Kyle Karros mashed his first career homer 381 feet into the left-field bleachers to make it 7-4.

The Colorado bullpen (which has pitched well lately with a 3.35 ERA in the last 11 games coming into Tuesday) held the fort for a little while after Gomber got blasted.

Anthony Molina worked around three hits and a walk over three scoreless innings, but ran into trouble in his fourth frame. He departed with runners on second and third with one out in the seventh.

Nick Anderson spelled Molina, and his first pitch was a passed ball by Hunter Goodman that scored a run to make it 8-4. A walk followed, then Ohtani grounded into a fielder’s choice to score a run and Smith followed with an RBI single to make it 10-4. Smith added another RBI single in the ninth off Dugan Darnell.

While the Dodgers remain in a tight race with the Padres for the NL West, the Rockies’ magic number to avoid matching the 2024 White Sox’s modern record of 121 losses remains six. With the way Colorado has played of late (14-16 since the All-Star break), it’s likely the Rockies avoid that infamy, though they remain on pace to book a third straight 100-loss season and the club’s worst year ever.