Ryu, Ramirez Lead Dodgers Past Rockies

Stats rarely explain everything, but these should give you a good sense of what happened to the Rockies Tuesday night in Los Angeles against the Dodgers:

5 hits, 13 strikeouts.

One can hardly expect the Rockies to have much of a chance to win with those numbers.

Ramirez. Image: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

Hyun-Jin Ryu accounted for 12 of those strikeouts in 6 innings of work, thoroughly outdoing his counterpart Jorge De La Rosa. Coming off a stretch of strong performances, De La Rosa surrendered 6 runs on 9 hits. Monday night it was the Rockies who cruised to victory; Tuesday the Dodgers were in control.

Hanley Ramirez made his first start of the season on the night that Dodgers fans received bobble heads in his honor. In turn he delivered the type of flourish that those in L.A. hope to see often from their new flashy and well-paid roster. Ramirez set the tone with a soaring home run off of De La Rosa, later doubled, and then squashed the Rockies’ final hope for a rally when he made a diving stop and started a 6-4-3 double play in the 8th inning.

In addition to Ramirez, Jerry Hairston Jr. and Nick Punto did a lot of damage at the top of the lineup with 5 hits between them. Because of course they did.

Oh, and Psy was there. Yes that Psy (in case there was any confusion between the Psy who has over one billion hits on YouTube and, you know, some other dude named Psy). So that’s something too.

Teams win and lose games, but it felt like two marquee players essentially put the Rockies away by themselves on this night: Ryu on the mound and Ramirez everywhere else. The Rockies will try to snag the rubber game Wednesday night with Juan Nicasio on the mound opposite Josh Beckett.