The Dodgers got about as good of a pitching game as they could have hoped for in the series opener against the Minnesota Twins. Eric Lauer followed an opener on Monday, in part to avoid having him face Byron Buxton three times. Buxton proved why by hitting his 25th home run of the season in the first inning against said opener, Will Klein.
Lauer entered a 1-1 game in the second inning and got all the way through the seventh with no runs and no hits on his ledger, and a 2-1 lead.
The only other time a Los Angeles Dodgers reliever pitched at least six innings without allowing a hit was Dave Stewart on August 9, 1982, pitching the final six frames of a 13-inning win over the Cincinnati Reds at Dodger Stadium.
That Stewart performance was part of a chaotic pennant race for the Dodgers, who trailed the Atlanta Braves by 10 games as late as July 28. The Stewart game was the seventh straight win that brought them to within a half-game of Atlanta. The Dodgers would claim first place the next day, only 13 days after that 10-game deficit.
The longest of these hitless relief outings was by Bob Milliken in 1953. He took over for rookie Johnny Podres with two outs in the first innings — looked like an injury of some sort, as Podres didn’t pitch again for 13 days — then finished out the game by recording the final 25 outs.
