Dodgers 4, Phillies 3

Andre Ethier gets the big hit in the ninth to win it, but what shouldn’t be lost after this game is the effort of relievers Joe Beimel and Hong-Chih Kuo — and that’s on the heels of another solid start by Clayton Kershaw. Beimel (perect seventh inning) and Kuo combined to retire nine of the final 10 Phillies batters without allowing a hit, and Kuo pitched around his leadoff walk of Jayson Werth in the ninth. The Dodgers’ bullpen has had a rough past few days, but there is no getting around the fact that these guys have been one of this team’s biggest strengths — if not its biggest strength — all season. Another key to tonight’s game was that while the Dodgers couldn’t do much against Cole Hamels, what they did do against him was make him work. The result was that they got him out of the game after seven innings and 111 pitches on a night when he otherwise was so dominating that he might have been allowed to go much deeper. The sixth inning, one of only two frames in which Hamel didn’t set the Dodgers down in order, was critical because although the Dodgers got only one run and left the bases loaded, they sent seven batters to the plate. Then, after setting them down in order again in the seventh, Hamels was done. After that the Dodgers scratched out the tying run against Chad Durbin in the eighth and the winning run against J.C. Romero in the ninth. Dodgers to go 60-59 and stay a game behind the Snakes.