Last night the Colorado Rockies accomplished something that they took until August last season to do: defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Rockies finished the 2025 season with a 2-11 record against their dreaded big brother in the National League West. With a win this afternoon the Rockies can not only cement at least a series split, but also tie their win total against them with plenty of season left to go.

Making the start for the Rockies this afternoon is the right-handed veteran Michael Lorenzen. Lorenzen’s season has been extremely hot or cold thus far. He’s made it through five innings just once in four starts, and two of those starts got ugly fast. He currently holds the worst ERA on the team at 8.10 and is worth a rough -0.8 wins above replacement per Baseball Reference.

His last time out, Lorenzen pitched just 2.2 innings and faced 18 batters. He gave up seven runs—two of which were earned—with three strikeouts, one walk, and a balk.

Similarly struggling out of the gate this season is Roki Sasaki, who will be making the start for the Dodgers today.

The Japanese righty holds a 6.23 ERA over his first three starts. In 13 innings he has nearly half as many walks given up (10) and home runs allowed (3) that he yielded over 36.1 innings in his 2025 rookie season. His last outing came against the Texas Rangers, where he walked five batters compared to six strikeouts over four innings of work and gave up two earned runs on five hits.

The Rockies have never faced Sasaki before. Sasaki is currently utilizing a three pitch mix consisting of a four-seam fastball, a slider, and a split finger. Opposing batters have been hitting the fastball, which averages 97 MPH, at a .381 clip. However, he has gotten much better results from the slider and split finger. Both pitches currently carry a whiff rate over 30%.

Today’s #Dodgers lineup at Rockies: pic.twitter.com/GgOCSNEWMj

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