The Dodgers honored the life and legacy of Jackie Robinson on Wednesday, and then proceeded to back Shohei Ohtani’s gem with four home runs as they swept the New York Mets with a dominant 8-2 victory.

Dodgers fans might have been disappointed that they weren’t afforded the opportunity to see Ohtani demonstrate his two-ways powers, but he certainly made up for it with another dazzling start.

Both team were held scoreless in the first inning for the first time in the series, but after Clay Holmes got two quick outs in the bottom of the second inning, Dalton Rushing continued his torrid start with a two-out double down the right field line. Hyeseong Kim attacked a sinker down the middle on a 1-1 count and sent it just past a leaping Carson Benge for his first home run of the season, giving the Dodgers an early two-run lead.

The Mets broke through against Ohtani in the top of the third as M.J. Melendez lined a double to the left-center field gap to bring up the potential tying run. Ohtani, who already had one strikeout in the inning, got Tommy Pham swinging for the second out. On the 11th pitch of his battle against Francisco Lindor, he side-stepped him, and blew a fastball at 100 miles per hour by him for his third strikeout of the inning to leave Melendez at second.

Ohtani had gone the first four innings without allowing a walk, but he immediately issued a free pass to Francisco Alvarez to begin the top of the fifth. Carson Benge would have made it two on with nobody out as he lined a would-be single to left field, but Alvarez thought that Teoscar Hernández had made the catch on a diving attempt. Hernández had actually trapped it, and he threw out the lead-runner with Alvarez retreated back to first.

The Mets made up for their base running blunder as Marcus Semien reached on Ohtani’s second walk of the inning, and Melendez connected for his second double of the game, driving home Benge and marking Ohtani’s first earned run of the season. Ohtani rebounded with another strikeout of Pham, and he kept the lead intact by getting Lindor to line out to left field.

The Dodgers had Blake Treinen warming up in the bullpen during the top of the fifth, but Ohtani stayed out for the sixth inning. The decision to keep Treinen from entering paid off, as Ohtani struck out the side in order to cap off the Dodgers’ third consecutive quality start against the Mets and a 10 strikeout performance from their regular leadoff hitter.

Teoscar Hernández greeted Mets reliever Tobias Myers rudely in the bottom of the sixth inning by connecting for a solo home run to the opposite field to give the Dodgers a two-run lead.

Blake Treinen eventually entered the game for the seventh inning, and he continued his impressive start to the season as he worked around a one-out double from Carson Benge to keep his ERA scoreless over 6 2/3 innings on the mound this year. Tanner Scott added to his turnaround start to the season with a perfect top of the eighth inning on just eight pitches.

The Dodgers looked to get some insurance against the former All-Star closer Devin Williams, and Teoscar Hernández beat out a routine ground ball to Lindor for an infield single. Things continued to unravel for the Mets, as Williams walked Muncy before Andy Pages drilled a ball over the head of Benge in right field, but both baserunners held on the play and were forced to advance just 90 feet. Dalton Rushing erased a possible save opportunity for Edwin Díaz by drilling a grand slam to center field to put the game out of reach.

In need of getting anything going his way offensively, and after lining out on a ball hit 107 miles per hour, Kyle Tucker connected for his first home run in front of the home crowd in a Dodgers uniform, giving the Dodgers a seven run lead and giving the Dodgers their fourth four home run game of the season.

Kyle Hurt made his long-awaited return from injury one day shy of two whole years since his last appearance, and it started off well with a strikeout of Brett Baty. Hurt allowed a single to Bo Bichette and then plunked Alvarez to put two on with one out, but recovered by striking out Benge. The Mets got back one run on a single from Marcus Semien, but Hurt struck out Melendez to finish the sweep and hand New York their eighth consecutive loss.

Game particulars

• Home runs— Hyeseong Kim (1), Teoscar Hernández (4), Dalton Rushing (4), Kyle Tucker (2)
• WP—Shohei Ohtani (2-0): 6 IP, 2 hits, 1 earned run, 2 walks, 10 strikeouts
• LP— Clay Holmes(2-2): 5 IP, 4 hits, 2 earned runs, 1 walk, 4 strikeouts

Up next

The Dodgers are off on Thursday as they fly out to Denver to open a four-game series against the Colorado Rockies on Friday (5:40 p.m. PT, SportsNet LA). Tyler Glasnow makes his fourth start while the Rockies have yet to announce their starter.

Padres 7, Mariners 6

I had some really good chart art cued up, too 🙁

A puffy vest giveaway on a chilly night: Emerson Hancock, +.18 WPA

Realizing a vest doesn’t have sleeves: José Ferrer, -.84 WPA

Game thread comments of the day:

I could not choose between these two, and my hubris has been punished by the baseball gods.

The Texas Rangers scored five runs but the Athletics of California, United States on planet Earth scored six runs.

The Rangers didn’t have many hits on the night — just five total — but two of them contributed to all five of their runs with Corey Seager hitting a two-run home run in the 3rd and Jake Burger continuing to feast in Sactown with a three-run shot in the 8th.

Unfortunately for Texas, the A’s got a couple of two-out, RBI hits early off a rather inefficient Kumar Rocker and then had their own big swings with a two-run home run off the bat of Rangers killer Shea Langeliers that broke a 2-2 tie in the 6th and a two-run home run from Jacob Wilson an inning later.

Despite being solid so far this season, both homers were given up by Cole Winn in what proved to be a bad moment for a poor outing as the 6-2 lead was exactly enough insurance for the A’s.

Nevertheless, the lack of production throughout most of the game (just one hit through the first five innings) ultimately feels like more of the deciding factor than anything else.

Player of the Game: Burger and Seager tried to make it happen with their home runs but I’d like to give a nod to Gavin Collyer who made his debut, threw three pitches, and picked up the first strikeout of his career.

Up Next: The Rangers close out this series in West Sacramento with RHP Jack Leiter set to make the start opposite LHP Jacob Lopez for the Athletics.

The Thursday afternoon finale from Sutter Health Park is scheduled for 2:05 pm CDT and will be aired on the Rangers Sports Network.

The Houston Astros beleaguered starting rotation was desperate for a strong starting performance.

Spencer Arrighetti, in his first start of the season, delivered.

Arrighetti gave the Astros their third quality start of the season, hurling 6 innings of 1 run ball while striking out 10 to lead Houston to a 3-1 victory over the Colorado Rockies.

Arrighetti was terrific, allowing only 2 hits on the night. He threw 100 pitches, 61 for strikes. He generated an incredible 20 swings and misses.

Arrighetti was backed by Yordan Alvarez, who was 2-for-3 with a double and his 7th HR of the season. He scored twice and also drew a walk.

Alvarez is now batting .333 on the season with a 1.250 OPS. He has 7 HR and 17 RBI.

Also of note, struggling reliever Bryan Abreu threw 1.1 innings of scoreless and hitless baseball. He walked one and struck out 2.

Enyel De Los Santos pitched a 1-2-3 9th for his second save of the season, and second in as many nights. He struck out 2, needing only 14 pitches to complete the inning.

With the victory, the Astros improve to 8-11 on the season.

The Astros will go for the sweep Thursday at Daikin Park. Ryan Weiss will get the start for Houston. First pitch scheduled for 7:10 P.M.

Tonight’s game felt almost like déjà vu from Tuesday. The Rays (10-7) once again put up eight runs while a prominent Chicago prospect made their major league debut, dealing the White Sox (6-12) back-to-back losses, 8-3.

Righthander Sean Burke was doing all right through four innings despite giving up a solo shot to Junior Caminero in the third, but the righthander had zero run support and started to fall apart in the fifth. Two hits in a row from Tampa Bay to begin the fifth kick-started their offense, with Caminero driving in his second run on an RBI ground out and Jonathan Aranda following that up with an RBI double to make it 3-0, Rays.

Attempting to come out for one final inning, Burke was unable to get it done and conceded a fourth run to Tampa on a leadoff home run from Jake Fraley to start the sixth. Burke was able to work around Cedric Mullins, but Richie Palacios’ base hit marked the end of the road. Until tonight, Sean hadn’t surrendered a single home run this year, and doing so ballooned his 3.60 ERA up to 4.43. Burke clearly didn’t have his A-game tonight, and his 17% CSW% (called strike plus whiff rate) was much lower than his previous two outings (averaging around 30%).

Notably, Burke’s fastball CSW% was only at 15% tonight, whereas in his previous start his fastball drew 13 called strikes + whiffs (35% CSW%), and a 44% CSW% from his April 3 outing. Burke ultimately allowed four runs on seven hits, and walked one more batter (three) than he struck out (two). At the very least, his average four-seam velocity was right in line with his 94 mph average, so hopefully it was just one of those days.

In for Sean, but not faring much better, was lefthander Tyler Gilbert, who was recalled from Triple-A Charlotte earlier today as Brandon Eisert was shuttled back down. This was Gilbert’s second appearance with the MLB squad this season, and just like Burke he surrendered four runs on two hits: a Yandi Díaz RBI double and a pinch-hit, three-run blast from Jonny DeLuca as a part of the Rays’ four-run seventh inning that made it 8-0.

It only took eight innings for a White Sox pitcher to make it through a frame unscathed — thank you, Bryan Hudson. Appearing in back-to-back games, Hudson put together a second consecutive clean inning tonight.

You’ll notice that I’ve only talked about pitching thus far, and that’s because up until the bottom of the ninth, there wasn’t much life coming from the South Side bats. Righthander Cole Sulser opened the game for the Rays and shut the Sox down for two innings before our old pal Jesse Scholtens took over for the next five. Scholtens ended up with the win in his one-hit outing against his former team, walking two and striking out three.

The Good Guys had posted just five hits and were facing an eight-run deficit through eight stanzas, and ended up waving the white flag given the starting catcher ended up pitching the last inning. Reese McGuire navigated a 1-2-3 inning, joining Hudson as the only other effective pitcher the White Sox used tonight, which is honestly kind of sad.

One of the (very few) positive offensive notes was that Sam Antonacci got a hit in his first major league at-bat — welcome to the show, Sam.

Antonacci also reached base a second time to start the ninth and ended up scoring for the first time as a White Sox. Rays reliever Ian Seymour began the ninth by walking both him and Tanner Murray. Derek Hill drove a base hit out to left to load the bases up for the Good Guys with nobody out; it finally seemed like they were getting something going, far too late. Antonacci crossed the plate on a wild pitch, which felt fitting. McGuire, the new star White Sox pitcher, yanked a single to drive in their second run of the game, 8-2.

Luisangel Acuña came up in another clutch situation and actually put up a decent at-bat, fouling off a few pitches and working a full count before grounding into a double play. Whomp whomp. A third run did score on the play, but going from zero to two outs with one pitch killed the momentum, and Andrew Benintendi struck out on three straight pitches to end the game.

Looking at the box score, the White Sox were outhit just 9-7, and going 2-for-6 with runners in scoring position doesn’t seem too bad. But they had just five hits and couldn’t convert a single run through eight frames, also leaving seven on base. On top of that, they struck out six times as a team, with four of them coming from Colson Montgomery in the cleanup spot — woof.

It was a rough showing from the Good Guys these last two games, given the mental gaffes, poor defense and lack of offensive production. Regardless of how the pitching does, they aren’t going to be able to win games without scoring runs. As Ozzie Guillén pointed out in the postgame show, the White Sox have seven players batting below .200, which is borderline horrific.

It would also be really nice if they started scoring runs earlier in the game rather than waiting until the very last minute to start stringing some hits together. The series finale will take place Thursday at 1:10 p.m., with lefthander Anthony Kay on the mound. Let’s hope the offense can wake up before then.

The Braves are cruising to start this season, with the second best record in MLB and the best run differential (pending the Dodgers game tonight). While there’s been some good fortune on the pitching side, there has also been some uncharacteristic underperformance from Chris Sale and some bad luck from a few of Atlanta’s bats. Dominic Smith is unlikely to be Aaron Judge all year, but on the whole this feels in the realm of sustainable, especially with reinforcements coming over the coming weeks and months. It would be especially useful if a few of Schwellenbach, Smith-Shawver, and Waldrep could come up and be productive, perhaps giving the team and opportunity to bump Grant Holmes and/or Reynaldo Lopez into an impact reliever spot. For now though, let’s just enjoy the team being in a good spot 10% of the way into the season, a stark contrast from last year.

Braves News

Martin Perez is back and expected to start Friday’s game, after being waived, electing free agency, and ultimately re-signing with Atlanta.

Luke Williams elected free agency after being DFA’d, but of course he could always sign back in Atlanta like Perez did.

We took a minute to appreciate what Dominic Smith has produced for Atlanta so far this season.

The Braves collected another series win, this one against the Marlins in a convincing 6-3 game behind Bryce Elder and some solid offense.

MLB News

Nick Pivetta will be sidelined for significant time with a flexor strain for the Padres.

Jorge Soler’s suspension for his brawl with Reynaldo Lopez was reduced to 4 games from 7, 1 fewer than Lopez got.

Young shortstop Kevin McGonigle signed an 8 year, $150 million extension with the Tigers.

The MLBPA continues to shake up its upper level management in the 11th hour of this CBA, as negotiations are set to begin in earnest on the new CBA.

After an off day Thursday, the Dodgers open a four-game weekend wraparound against the Colorado Rockies starting Friday night at Coors Field in Denver.

Tyler Glasnow takes the ball in the series opener on Friday. Right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano will be on the mound for Colorado.

Friday game info

• Teams: Dodgers at Rockies
• Ballpark: Coors Field, Denver
• Time: 5:40 p.m. PT
• TV: SportsNet LA
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

More game thread!