Rich Hill tries to finish off another Dodgers home sweep

The Dodgers try to finish off a sweep of the Diamondbacks on Thursday night, and will send Rich Hill to the mound with a clear rubric to follow.

After lining up their best three pitchers to start against the division rivals, the Dodgers saw Clayton Kershaw and Alex Wood each pitch seven scoreless innings against Arizona, on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. Kershaw struck out 11, and Wood struck out 10.

Hill in his last start, on Saturday in San Diego, tied a career high with 11 strikeouts and pitched seven scoreless innings of his own. He’ll try to go seven innings for a third straight start in the series finale, after tweaking his delivery to help improve his command.

Hill last pitched seven innings in three straight starts from Sept. 13-25, 2015 with the Red Sox, which were his first major league starts in six years, and were his first three major league outings since returning from independent ball with the Long Island Ducks.

Gauntlet

The Dodgers have won the first two games of this six-game homestand heading into the All-Star break, and on second glance this week’s schedule is even tougher than originally thought.

Over the last roughly four weeks, dating back to June 9, the Dodgers have the best record in baseball at 20-4 (they have actually won 22 of their last 26). The next two best records come from their two opponents this week. The Royals, in town for three over the weekend, sport a 18-6 record during that span, and the Diamondbacks — even with these two losses so far in this series — are 15-7.

Game info

Time: 7:10 p.m. PT

TV: SportsNet LA