Dodgers come up swinging after weather delay to rout Rockies

The start of Thursday night’s game between the Dodgers and Colorado Rockies was delayed for 1 hour and 50 minutes while members of the Coors Field grounds crew shoveled piles of hail from a late-afternoon storm into wheelbarrows and used leaf blowers to dry the remaining moisture from the outfield grass.

A heavy thunderstorm three hours before the scheduled first pitch turned the steps from the Dodgers’ dugout to the clubhouse into a water feature. Rain then morphed into macadamia-nut-sized hail that pelted the stadium, leaving what looked like foot-high snowdrifts on the floor of each dugout.

But once the crazy weather conditions cleared and the field was deemed playable, baseball’s most hitter-friendly park returned to its normal self, yielding a flurry of hits and runs, sending outfielders scurrying into the cavernous gaps and pitchers ducking for cover.

The teams combined for 14 runs and 19 hits … in the first five innings — the Dodgers doing most of the damage with a six-run, four-hit fourth. That outburst helped propel the Dodgers to a 14-3 victory over the Rockies and their sixth win in eight games.

“You know, I wasn’t too encouraged about the possibility of playing, but the grounds crew was pretty optimistic that they could clean some things up, that the field would dry, and they were right,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And to the guys credit, they weren’t fazed by the delay.”

The Dodgers amassed 18 hits in the game, eight for extra bases, and scored in six of nine innings. They went 11 for 23 with runners in scoring position. J.D. Martinez had four hits, including a two-run homer, and scored twice, and Jason Heyward had three hits, including two doubles, and two runs.

“We were all saying, ‘We’re here, might as well go for it,’ first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “Two hours of rain — I don’t know if you call that rain, it was like snow pretty much. They were talking about how we might have to make it up on our one [common] off day and play, like, 20 days in a row, so we were all ready to roll. The bats came out hot.”

Freeman, Mookie Betts and Martinez, who were all named All-Star starters earlier Thursday, combined for eight hits and eight RBIs, with Betts doubling to spark rallies in the first and third innings.

“It starts with Mookie,” Freeman said. “When he doubles off the right-center field wall [to lead off the game] and we’re able to get him in, that’s huge, to get a run after a two-hour delay. J.D.’s been swinging the bat well all week. It was just a good overall performance by everyone, not just us three.”

The Rockies scored twice off Dodgers rookie right-hander Emmet Sheehan to take a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the third, with cleanup man Elias Díaz driving in both runs with a 258-foot bloop single to shallow left-center field.

But the Dodgers loaded the bases with no outs in the top of the fourth against Rockies starter Chase Anderson on Heyward’s leadoff double to right-center and walks to Miguel Vargas and James Outman.

Austin Barnes struck out, but Bettsdrove a sacrifice fly to center for a 3-3 tie. Freeman, with chants of “Freddie! Freddie!” filling the visiting park, lined an RBI single to right for a 4-3 lead.