The Dodgers Swept The Padres To Regain First Place, But All Is Not OK

Sometimes a team needs to get punched in the mouth. Sometimes a team needs to be knocked down a peg or two. Sometimes a team just needs a change in perspective. When the Los Angeles Dodgers faced off against the San Diego Padres on Friday night, the Dodgers had been punched in the mouth – losers of four straight games; they had been knocked down a peg – out of first place for the first time since April 26^th; and their perspective had changed – they were now looking up at their Southern California rivals.

Had the Padres come into Chavez Ravine and swept Los Angeles, they would have left town with a four game lead in the National League West and asserted some dominance over the World Series champs. Alas, that is not what happened.

In an old-fashioned pitcher’s dual on Friday night, old-fashioned pitcher Clayton Kershaw showed the world – and the Padres – why he is the best of his generation and the last of his kind. Six innings, two hits, one earned run, and the Dodgers beat San Diego 3-2 to move into a tie for first place in the division.

On Saturday night, the Padres essentially beat themselves. To wit, three runners reached base in the top half of the first on three hits, but no runs scored as two runners were caught stealing. In the bottom half, San Diego’s ace (?) Dylan Cease walked the first three batters he faced, then, after a sacrifice fly, walked another. A two-run single gave Los Angeles a quick 3-0 lead.

The second inning was more of the same. Xander Bogaerts led off the frame with a single, only to be caught stealing on the next pitch. In the bottom half, two more Cease walks both came around to score on an error by center fielder Jackson Merrill. The Dodgers tacked on another run in the fifth inning, and won the game 6-0 to retake first place.

On Sunday, the Dodgers broke out to a quick 4-0 lead on two first inning homers from Freddie Freeman and Andy Pages. But the scrappy Padres battled back – little by little. A single and a double in the third got them on the board, making the score 4-1. And then A.J. Preller’s trade deadline acquisitions kicked into gear. Ramón Laureano homered in the fifth to make it a two-run game. In the sixth, doubles by newly acquired Gavin Sheets and Ryan O’Hearn cut the lead to one. Laureano struck again in the eighth, with a double to put runners on second and third. A grounder by Jose Iglesias tied the game at four.

In the eighth inning, Mookie Betts – maybe starting to get some traction after a season’s-long slump – slammed a 2-0 fastball into the bleachers to give the Dodgers a 5-4 lead that they would not relinquish, allowing them to complete the sweep.

When Sunday ended, supremacy was restored – the Dodgers were back in first place in the NL West, and the Padres were licking their wounds, wondering what just happened. The teams will face off again this coming weekend in San Diego, so nothing has been settled yet.

One situation that bear observation is Teoscar Hernández. On Sunday, with the Dodgers clinging to a one-run lead in the sixth inning, Hernández hit a high pop fly to center with two outs. He jogged out of the box, loafed down to first, and was standing there when Laureano (a) could make the catch and (b) kicked the ball away as he tried to make a dazzling play. Had Hernández been even moderately hustling, he would have been standing on second base when Laureano finally corralled the ball. That would have allowed him to score an insurance run when Pages singled to center on the next pitch. At this point in the season, with mouths being punched and perspectives being changed, lapses like that simply cannot happen.

And then, on Monday night in Colorado, with the game tied at three in the bottom of the ninth inning, Ezequiel Tovar hit a soft fly to right. According to MLB.com, the ball was hit at 77.3 MPH with a 52 degree launch angle, and traveled only 224 feet. According to publicly available Statcast data, that ball should be caught between 98-99% of the time. For whatever reason, Hernández did not catch it. And Tovar, unlike Hernández, hustled out of the box and found himself safely on second base. He then scored the winning run two pitches later on a Warming Bernabel single.

It has been reported that manager Dave Roberts, Betts, and Freeman met in a closed-door meeting after the game. The agenda of the meeting is unknown, but there is a high likelihood that they discussed the possibility of Betts moving back to right field with Hernández (with his 1^st percentile range factor and -7 run value) moving over to left. There are six weeks left in the season, and the Dodgers cannot afford to take any more punches or deal with any further changes in perspective.