J.D. Martinez homered twice among his three hits and drove in five runs as the Los Angeles Dodgers opened their final homestand of the regular season with an 8-3 victory Monday against the Detroit Tigers.
Miguel Rojas added a home run for the Dodgers, who clinched the National League West title Saturday. They won their fourth game in a row.
Los Angeles (92-57) is 3 1/2 games behind Atlanta in the chase for the best record in the NL, with the Braves holding the tiebreaker.
Lance Lynn (12-11), who is expected to be one of the Dodgers’ top three starters heading into the postseason, allowed three runs — all on a fifth-inning home run by Jake Rogers, in five innings. He gave up six hits and two walks while striking out six.
Lynn has served up a major-league-leading 42 homers this year.
Four Dodgers relievers followed with one perfect inning apiece.
Left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez (11-9) gave up five runs in three-plus innings for the Tigers (70-80), who saw their four-game winning streak end. He departed in the fourth with an undisclosed injury, having yielded five hits and a walk with one strikeout.
The Dodgers had a deal in place just before the trade deadline to acquire Rodriguez from the Tigers, but he used his no-trade rights to nix the move.
Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera singled in the fifth inning to give him 3,166 hits, tying him with Adrian Beltre for 17th all-time, according to baseball-reference.com.
The Tigers fell to 3-1 at the start of a 10-game California road trip.
Martinez gave the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the second inning when he lined a home run over the wall in right-center off Rodriguez.
The Dodgers loaded the bases in the third inning before Will Smith turned a 12-pitch at-bat into a sacrifice fly to right field for a 2-0 advantage. Martinez followed with his second home run of the game for a 5-1 lead, his 28th of the season and fourth multi-homer game of the year.
Rogers got the Tigers within 5-3 in the fifth inning with his 20th home run, his fourth in his past three games.
The Dodgers received a sacrifice fly from Enrique Hernandez in the sixth inning and Rojas’ home run in the seventh, his fifth of the season, for a 7-3 lead. Martinez added an RBI single in the seventh.
–Field Level Media
