Dodgers are back on the field after 72-hour break

A day game followed by a scheduled day off and a rainout means when the Dodgers take the field on Saturday afternoon against the Giants it will end a roughly 72-hour drought without baseball for LA.

If we’re trying to get cute here we could point out that the Dodgers’ break might have been more like five days or more rather than three, with LA nursing a three-game losing skid heading into this abbreviated series at AT&T Park.

The Dodgers scored two runs in their final 23 innings in Arizona, including another shutout loss on Wednesday afternoon. It was the third time the Dodgers were shutout already this season, something that took 55 games to reach in 2017. This year is just the fifth in the 135-year history of the franchise that the Dodgers offense was shutout three times in their first seven games.

The paucity of runs was first prevalent in a pair of dead ball era years (1907 and 1913) and the third instance was 1968, a year that was so pitching heavy it was called “The Year of the Pitcher” and spurred lowering of the major league mound in order to tilt the scales back toward offense.

On Saturday the Dodgers will face a pitcher they have seen already this season for the first time, with Chris Stratton on the mound for the Giants. Stratton allowed three runs in his 5⅓ innings last Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, and the Dodgers tacked on late for a 9-0 romp that also happens to be their last win.

Rich Hill, who started that Sunday game and pitched six scoreless innings, will start Saturday for the Dodgers, who are trying to avoid their first 2-6 start or worse since 1976, when the team was 1-7 out of the gate.

Friday’s rainout, the first in San Francisco in 12 years, wasn’t the only schedule alteration this weekend. With rain continuing into Saturday morning, this game was moved from a 1:05 p.m. start to 3:05 p.m. PT.

Game info

Time: 3:05 p.m. PT

TV: SportsNet LA, KTLA