Sunday was gut-check time for the Dodgers.
Even before they blew a late-game, three-run lead.
As a clearly frustrated Dave Roberts put it ahead of first pitch, the team needed to “not get embarrassed” in the face of a potential three-game sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks, and play with a level of “pride” that had been missing the previous two nights in this unexpectedly challenging weekend series.
“Whatever it is, we've got to do it right now,” the manager said. “We've got to win today. We've got to play better baseball. ... There's more in there. There just is."
In the 5-4, walk-off win over the Diamondbacks that followed, his team finally delivered despite self-inflicted adversity.
After letting the Diamondbacks (68-70) get back into the game, and nearly squandering Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s seven-inning gem, the Dodgers prevailed on Will Smith’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, moving two games up in the National League West standings after the San Diego Padres’ rubber-match loss to the Minnesota Twins earlier in the day.
The win should have been simpler.
Yamamoto gave up just one run and tied his career-high with 10 strikeouts without conceding a single walk. The Dodgers' lineup, meanwhile, wore down Arizona starter Brandon Pfaadt with competitive early at-bats. They scored twice in the first after leadoff hits from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, plus an RBI double from Freddie Freeman, and again in the fourth and fifth when Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages each delivered full-count singles to score a run.
“I thought today there was a lot of fight,” Roberts said. “Today was a good sign. I was pleased with today.”
Tanner Scott, however, almost wasted the good vibes.
In the eighth, he gave up a pair of two-out singles before Corbin Carroll took him deep for a tying three-run blast. The long ball was the ninth Scott has surrendered this year, compared to the 11 total he had yielded over the past three seasons. It came on the kind of misplaced, center-cut fastball that has plagued him repeatedly, leaving the $72-million offseason acquisition to be booed on his way off the mound as his ERA rose to 4.44.
“You never want to see the ball leave the park, especially in that situation,” Scott said. "It's super frustrating.”
Yet, at what felt like another inflection point in the season, the Dodgers responded.
And, in an unexpected turn, it was Smith who saved the day.
After leading the NL batting race for much of the season, the veteran catcher had been mired in a deep slump. He was batting .147 in August. He had hit only two home runs in his previous 28 games.
Behind the scenes, though, coaches continued to praise his work. When pressed on his struggles, Smith pointed to mechanical flaws he was trying to iron out.
“I always say the game honors you, and Will has been going through it,” Roberts said. “But he’s been working his tail off. And today he reaped some benefit.”
Indeed, his reward came in the form of a 420-foot, stinging missile of a walk-off homer — driving the second pitch he saw into the left-field pavilion.
"We needed it. We needed a win in this series,” said Smith, who has four career pinch-hit, walk-off homers — the second most in MLB history.
“The first two [games of this series] got away,” Smith added. “Had the early lead [today]. Yoshi pitched really well, gave us a great start. Unfortunately, they got back in it, tied it up. But yeah, we were able to come up on top. ... Every win going forward is going to be huge.”
Granted, any feeling of progress from the Dodgers (78-59) will remain tempered for now.
Whether Sunday proves to be a momentum-builder — or just another flash of promise that once again fizzles — remains to be seen as they enter September.
Coming into the weekend, the Dodgers appeared to be riding high. They had won four straight games, including a three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds. Their offense looked to be rounding a corner, finally pairing up with a strong run of pitching the way the front office envisioned when they built this supposed juggernaut in the winter.
But then, Friday and Saturday produced the kind of maddening, reality-check performances that have dogged the club repeatedly over the second half of the season.
There was listless offense at the plate both nights, amounting to one run off Arizona’s beleaguered pitching staff in 18 innings. There were fundamental miscues on the bases and on defense, lapses Roberts boiled down to a simple lack of focus.
"I wish I had an answer for you,” Rojas said of the team’s struggles to find consistency. “We're all frustrated. Coming out of the off-day [on Thursday, we played] pretty flat the last couple days.”
It was yet another unexpected drop in the team’s roller-coaster season.
Another example of the team taking two steps forward, then one stark jump back in their efforts to try and protect first place in the division.
Read more:Hernández: Everyone can stop wondering. Mookie Betts isn't moving back to right field
“There has to be a point where that has to be sharpened,” Roberts said. “And that’s where, I feel, the time is now.”
Asked before the game why his team has wavered so much, Roberts struggled to find an answer.
He alluded to a potential World Series hangover, noting “when you’re playing a long season, you’re defending champions, people are coming after you — which we know and understand — it’s just hard to keep that dialed-in focus every single night. That’s just reality.” (Rojas also mentioned that dynamic, though insisted it’s “not an excuse.”)
Roberts highlighted the lack of reliable production from veteran players, as well — coinciding with his decision Sunday to leave Teoscar Hernández on the bench, in favor of Alex Call in right field, amid a recent three-for-27 slump that has been compounded by persistently shaky defense.
“He's an everyday guy,” Roberts said of Hernández, whom the team hopes will benefit from a “two-day reset” between Sunday’s day off and Monday’s travel day. “But I do think that where we're at, you've got to perform too, to warrant being out there every single day.”
Roberts said that thinking would apply to the rest of the lineup, too, in an aim to raise his players’ late-season urgency and steady their ever-teetering focus.
“I do think that a flip can be switched,” Roberts said. “Each day should be equally important. Every little play, pitch, should be equally important. ‘How you do anything is how you do everything,’ that kind of adage, I believe in that.”
And on Sunday, at least, his team managed to persevere.
“It's just really focus on this last month, just go pitch to pitch ... and do what we need to do, do the little things,” Smith said. “We can't try to win the game in one pitch. All the little things add up each and every day, each and every inning. That's how you win baseball games."
The challenge will be replicating that formula over the season’s final month, and ensuring Sunday’s gut-check victory is not wasted on clunkers marred by self-inflicted mistakes.
“It's going to take every little ounce of us to do what we want to do,” Rojas said. “I feel like we should be playing way better baseball than what we did the last couple days, and today we showed that we play a really quality game.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
