Five days ago, the Dodgers finally seemed to be building some late-season momentum.
In the span of a week, however, they have once again squandered any real forward progress.
Coming off a sweep of the San Diego Padres at home last weekend, the Dodgers appeared to be in strong position for the stretch run. They’d built a two-game lead in the National League West. They had the last-place Colorado Rockies up next on the schedule. And even with a trip to San Diego looming after that, they were primed to potentially take a stranglehold in the standings.
Instead, the team split its four-game set in Denver, giving a game back to the Padres while San Diego took three of four from the San Francisco Giants in the same span.
Then, in Friday’s series-opener at Petco Park, the Padres punched back in a rivalry the Dodgers had owned for most of this season, winning 2-1 to draw even for first place in the National League West.
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"I think when you're in it, you don't really have the time to think about disappointment and what could've been,” manager Dave Roberts said of so quickly squandering a division lead they worked so hard last weekend to build.
“You've got to just go out there and deal with what's going on right now. We're tied in the standings and we've got to win a game tomorrow. There's just no other way to look at it."
Before Friday, beating the Padres (73-56) was the one thing this year’s underwhelming Dodgers team had consistently done well. They had taken eight of the previous 10 matchups. Their sweep at Dodger Stadium last week felt like a statement, one that looked to have the club poised to break out of an extended summer funk.
But after a disappointing week against the Rockies, the Dodgers (73-56) once again fell flat in front of a sold-out Petco Park crowd. They managed just three hits, and only one before a failed rally in the top of the ninth inning. They got seven productive innings out of Blake Snell, yet couldn’t get him off the hook for a standings-swinging loss.
“It’s hard for us, not giving him the support he deserved,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said. “But it’s baseball. He threw the ball really good today. We didn’t get the job done.”
Rookie infielder Alex Freeland hit his first career home run in the third inning, opening the scoring on a hanging sweeper from Yu Darvish. But after that, the veteran Japanese right-hander went on the attack, retiring 10 of the final 11 batters he faced in a dominant six-inning, one-walk, five-strikeout start.
“It’s just one of those days you just tip your cap,” Hernández said of Darvish, who kept the Dodgers guessing with his unpredictable seven-pitch repertoire. “You don’t know where to look. You don’t know what pitches to look for. He was using all the pitches today. Hitting the spot, corners really good with all of it.”
Snell, meanwhile, started strong in his first outing at Petco Park since leaving the Padres at the end of 2023. Through three innings, he had silenced his former club beneath a barrage of curveballs, changeups and sliders, showing more progress in his fourth start back from a three-month shoulder injury.
"I thought Blake was fantastic tonight,” Roberts said of Snell, who left the ballpark immediately after the game for the birth of his second child. “Just a really stellar performance.”
A turning point, however, arose at the end of the third.
With Ramón Laureano on second with two outs, Snell thought he had struck out Fernando Tatis Jr. on a curveball in the dirt. Tatis and Laureano evidently thought the same, with Tatis briefly starting toward the dugout and Laureano walking casually off second. But at first base, umpire Chris Guccione ruled that Tatis checked his swing. The play was still live. And catcher Will Smith alertly threw to third, where Laureano was hung out to dry.
That might have ended the inning. But it also meant Tatis was back at the plate to begin the fourth. This time, the Padres star managed to work a walk from what started as an 0-2 count. And from there, the home side built a rally.
Luis Arráez executed a sacrifice bunt (one of three the Padres executed in an apparent pre-determined game plan). Manny Machado followed with an RBI single. Ryan O’Hearn moved him to third with another base hit. Xander Bogaerts then flipped the score with a sacrifice fly to make it 2-1.
“We have a lot of different styles. ... We can beat the other team in a lot of different ways,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Tonight, it was more of an old-fashioned recipe.”
Snell was excellent the rest of the way, completing seven innings for the first time in his Dodgers career with six hits, two walks and five strikeouts.
Alas, it didn’t matter.
Because even after Darvish left the game, the Dodgers’ offense couldn’t claw back.
Their best opportunity came in the eighth, when hard-throwing Padres deadline acquisition Mason Miller walked Michael Conforto and Freeland to create a jam. With one out, however, Dalton Rushing came to the plate as a pinch-hitter, rolled a ground ball on a 101-mph fastball to the right side, and couldn’t get to first in time to beat out a double play (he was initially called safe, but a Padres challenge overturned the call).
The inning ended with Shohei Ohtani waiting on deck. And while he came up to lead off the ninth, he watched a towering fly ball die at the warning track.
“We were fighting,” Roberts said. “Tonight was one of those things where good pitching beat good hitting."
The Dodgers nonetheless mounted one last rally, recording their first hits since Freeland’s homer on singles from Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman against Padres closer Robert Suarez. But with runners on the corners, Hernández struck out to end the game — leaving the Dodgers once again on the back foot, just days after they had finally seemed to have found solid ground.
“Obviously, we’re fighting for the division, but this one is in the past,” Hernández said. “One day you have it. Next day you don’t. You just gotta grind through it, and keep playing.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
