Dodgers Rout Nationals 10-5, Glasnow Shines Despite Betts Injury Scare

Mookie Betts walked off the Nationals Park field in the first inning Saturday with right lower back pain, replaced at shortstop by Miguel Rojas. The lineup kept right on going.

Los Angeles finished with a 10-5 victory over Washington on April 4, their second consecutive double-digit run output against a Nationals pitching staff that surrendered 23 runs on 32 hits across the first two games of the series. The Dodgers improved to 5-2, maintaining sole possession of first place in the NL West, while Washington fell to 3-4 in the NL East's basement.

The offensive standout was neither Shohei Ohtani nor Kyle Tucker nor Freddie Freeman, though all contributed. It was 25-year-old center fielder Andy Pages, who went 3-for-5 with a three-run homer in the fifth inning, pushing his batting average to .500 (15-for-30), the best mark in the majors. Pages now has 10 RBI on the season. Manager Dave Roberts cut to the chase when asked: "Andy is swinging the heck out of it." Pages, who spoke to reporters through a translator after the game, has quietly built the best early-season average on a roster where Ohtani, Tucker, Betts, and Freeman absorb most of the spotlight.

Freeman was no quiet contributor himself. The first baseman went 2-for-5 with two doubles and four RBI, giving him nine RBI across the two-game series. His second double pushed him past 550 career doubles, clearing former Atlanta Braves teammate and mentor Chipper Jones for 32nd place on the all-time MLB doubles list. Freeman reflected publicly on his relationship with Jones after reaching the mark, a milestone he needed just 41 doubles to reach entering the 2026 season, a total he cleared in fewer than 10 games. Pages and Freeman combined for seven of the team's 10 RBI on Saturday. Will Smith added three hits, while Ohtani, Tucker, and Alex Call each contributed two in a 16-hit collective effort.

Tyler Glasnow made sure the afternoon's pitching held up. The 6-foot-8 right-hander from Newhall, California, threw 101 pitches across six innings, allowing four hits and two earned runs with nine strikeouts. His ERA sits at 3.00 through two starts, both quality outings, making him one of only two Dodgers starters alongside Yoshinobu Yamamoto to produce back-to-back quality starts to open 2026. His first run allowed came on a triple down the line by Luis García Jr.; the second on a double down the third-base line. Glasnow acknowledged post-game, with evident candor, that it would "suck" to be a pitcher facing this lineup, then added: "I feel good, and I think each start I'm just trying to take that into the next [one]." Losing pitcher Jake Irvin fell to 1-1. C.J. Abrams provided Washington's most notable individual moment with a two-run homer in the eighth, his second of the season, but by then the Nationals were chasing a deficit that had been sealed since the fifth.

The scale of the two-game output demands context. In Game 1 on April 3, Los Angeles won 13-6 as Ohtani, Tucker, Betts, and Freeman each homered, five Dodgers home runs total, more runs in one night than the team had scored in their previous four games combined. Saturday's follow-up, with Betts absent for nearly the entire contest, revealed lineup depth that no single pitching change could contain. For Washington, permitting 23 runs at home in back-to-back April games is not merely a rough series; it is a stress test exposing how far the Nationals' rotation remains from competing against a fully assembled superteam. Foster Griffin, entering Sunday at 1-0, faces that question against Roki Sasaki as Los Angeles pursues a sweep.