Slammed Diego.
Those pesky rivals from down south staggered away from their weekend stay at Dodger Stadium Sunday with spirits bruised, egos bloodied and Manny Machado flattened.
Canned Diego.
Arriving here shortly after stealing first place, little brother spent the next three days giving it back to a Dodger team that met the moment while the Padres recoiled from it.
Fanned Diego.
It was a sweeping sweep of a sweep, the Dodgers winning their third consecutive game from the Padres Sunday by a 5-4 margin that does not begin to elucidate the difference between these two teams.
The Dodgers now lead the National League West by two games, but it feels like 20. Both teams have 38 games remaining in the season, including three next weekend in San Diego, but any sort of real challenge by the Padres feels fabricated.
The Dodgers are the deeper team. The Dodgers are the more focused team. The Dodgers are the better team.
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The final weekend blow was an eighth-inning, game-winning drive into the left-field pavilion by Mookie Betts, but this series wasn’t nearly that close.
The Dodgers did everything right, and the Padres did everything dumb.
The Dodgers charged, and the Padres choked.
“Didn't play as well as we'd like to have, and the series didn't go like we wanted it to,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “But ... this team is more than in a great place.”
That would nonetheless currently be second place, which, after this weekend, seems like an appropriate spot.
Meanwhile, for one of the few stretches in this curious summer, the Dodgers behaved like the first-place tenants they are.
“I don’t think anyone in that clubhouse doubted our abilities and how good we can be,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Honestly, it was just good to play a really good series, start to finish.”
Truly, from start to finish. The injury-prone Dodgers starters allowed just three runs in 17 innings, the much-maligned Dodger bullpen finished with just three allowed runs in 10 innings, and the Padres were bad enough that nothing else mattered.
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On Friday, Machado gave the Dodgers a run when he botched a bunt, and later hastily popped out on the first pitch in the eighth inning with two out and the tying and go-ahead runs on base.
On Saturday, the Padres were thrown out attempting to steal three times in the first two innings while center fielder Jackson Merrill added to the madness by dropping a fly ball that cost them two runs.
Then on Sunday, the Padres outhit the Dodgers 10-6 but couldn’t get out of their own way long enough to ever pose a real threat.
In the third inning, Freddy Fermín ran into an out on a single to right-center, Andy Pages nailing him by a mile. Then, with a runner on third and two out, Machado swung at the second pitch and grounded out to first.
Two innings later, Machado stranded two more runners with a groundout, but his humiliation was just beginning. In the seventh, Machado threw his bat and walked toward first on a strike call. After sheepishly returning to home plate amid a taunting roar from the hostile Dodger Stadium crowd, he flied out with a runner on second.
Machado wasn’t done yet. Appropriately, he was the final out of the game, swinging wildly at an Alex Vesia fastball for a strikeout on a foul tip that left the former Dodger one for 12 for the weekend.
“We can blink, and I'm pretty confident within a week or so, we'll be talking and be like, 'Man, Manny's got eight RBIs in the last five days,' so we're not concerned about it,” said Shildt, who claimed his star was stung by bad calls by home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak. “Unfortunately, some pitches that are outside the strike zone got called on him. Which, again, is unfortunate when they're not trying to throw strikes all the time to him. They're taking their chances and to get rewarded on balls that are outside the zone is a little frustrating.”
Before the series, in the wake of four consecutive dispiriting losses, Roberts called on his team to show more focus and urgency. Their final answer, on a day they could have easily shrugged off after winning the first two games of the series, came quickly and dramatically.
Tyler Glasnow, pitching in his biggest game as a Dodger, struck out three in the top of the first en route to eight strikeouts in five innings.
Then, in the bottom of the first against the Padres’ Yu Darvish, Shohei Ohtani singled, Betts walked and Freddie Freeman blasted a home run over the right-center field fence. One out later, Pages homered to left and the tone had been set.
“I think we all know who we are in here, in this team and how good we can be,” said Freeman. “We just gotta play good baseball like we did this weekend ... we know who we are inside. And gotta keep it going.”
Roberts was as good as any of them, doing a masterful job all weekend handling his outmanned bullpen, succeeding again Sunday by listening to his most reliable reliever.
After finishing up an eighth inning during which the Padres tied the game on a Jose Iglesias grounder, Vesia was promptly told he was done for the day, as Justin Wrobleski was scheduled to pitch the ninth.
Read more:Dodgers capitalize on Padres' sloppiness to retake sole possession of first place
But Vesia had a better idea. He told Roberts he wanted the ball if the Dodgers took the lead in the eighth, and when Betts homered, Vesia was ready.
“So I told Doc, I walked up to him and said, 'Hey, like, if we're up, I want it.'" Vesia recalled. “He was like, 'OK, you got it.' Sure enough, Mook, bang, homers. Sweet, let's go.”
Sweet indeed. Vesia’s hitless ninth was symbolic of a bullpen that spent the weekend making every big pitch ... while the Padres missed every big pitch.
“It's the dawg, right?” said Vesia. “We still have that. That doesn't just go away. Every single one of us, we're leaning on each other. And we know as a group how good we are.”
So, too, do the Padres.
Done Diego.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
