The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres played baseball for 30 innings this weekend and were separated by two runs or less in all but three. Friday’s game was 12 innings, with 17 pitchers and four ties. Saturday’s game ended after a dive ball from Mookie Betts with the tying run in scoring position. Sunday’s game was not decided until the bottom of the eighth. The Dodgers won 2 of 3, but the Padres took to the series final to break their seven-game losing streak against them.
The Dodgers, winners of eight consecutive games for Sunday, have a record of 13-3 in the Major League, 3½ games better than the Padres in the National League West. But the teams will meet again in four days for the start of a four-game series at Dodger Stadium.
“It’s a great preview for many more teams playing with a lot of energy and playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler. “There’s a lot of emotion, it’s great to get the energy from the fans, and just the back and forth fights. I know that for the guys who play, it’s really easy to get up and play. “There is a lot of adrenaline in the stadium, and you are almost forced to be locked up.”
Below is what we can take from an opening series that somehow surpassed incoming hype.
Lots of close games: Trevor Bauer pounded his chest and roared as he made his way back into the Dodgers dug-out at the end of the sixth inning on Sunday. He just had a 97 mph fastball past Fernando Tatis Jr. another great performance that lowered his ERA to 2.42 and increased his total strikeouts to a NL-leading 36. The six starting pitchers in this series – Bauer, Blake Snell, Clayton Kershaw, Yu Darvish, Walker Buehler and Ryan Weathers – combined for a 1.60 ERA over the weekend, which isn’t much of a surprise. These are arguably the two best starting rotations in baseball. That means we will likely continue to play these intense, intense games throughout the year.
If Snell matches up with Bauer again, he has a request.
“Bauer, he’s digging a lot in that hill,” Snell said. “Oh my god. It looked like something had just crashed on the hill. It was just the biggest hole. So Bauer, we have to work on that. I know you have to get a grip on the hill or whatever, but man, my foot was killing me. “
Machado still owns Bauer: It’s a running joke that has gained notoriety and is now downright ridiculous – Bauer can’t get Manny Machado out. No seriously. Machado hit .588 / .667 / 1.412 in 21 innings in his career against Bauer, then hit two basehits that traveled 104-plus mph. Bauer had a full count against Machado in the fourth, shaking off Will Smith and throwing an up-and-in fastball that was smoked past Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner’s glove. Machado has nine basehits in 12 at bats that ended with a Bauer fastball, five of them for extra bases. Rather, it was a funny quirk. Now, in the context of this rivalry, it is a problem.
Bauer’s takeaway?
“I kept him in the park,” he said, “so I’m heading in the right direction.”
Tatis is still figuring it out: The beginning of this series coincided with the return of Tatis from a shoulder subluxation. By the end it was clear that Tatis is still not quite right. The question is whether these are the usual struggles that happen to players over the course of a long season and are only magnified at the start, or whether that sensitive left shoulder really affects his production. Tatis hit a 410-foot homerun straight to midfield on Friday, but went 0-for-12 with six strikeouts and a walk. He added two errors on Friday – making him seven times in his first six games – and would have had another on Sunday if Eric Hosmer hadn’t made a nice choice at first base.
Tatis also took a walk, hitting a hardline drive and seemingly landed just below a potential homerun on a hanging breaking ball in the series final. Ahead of Saturday’s game, Tatis downplayed the severity of his shoulder problem and expressed confidence in his ability to handle it over the next six months.
“That’s something I can deal with very well,” said Tatis. “I don’t think that’s something that will bother me for the rest of the year.”
0:35
Clayton Kershaw believes that Jurickson Profar is deliberately trying to get the interference from a catcher and that the two will come over in a screaming game.
No love lost: You know it’s heated when Kershaw curses. On Saturday, Kershaw took an exception with the way Jurickson Profar waved late on a fastball with two strokes, made contact with Austin Barnes’s glove and was placed on first base due to catcher’s interference. “That’s a bulls — swing!” Kershaw screamed as he and Profar screamed back and forth across the field. The night before, Dennis Santana and Jorge Mateo got in on a hit by pitch in the 10th inning, which left both banks empty. Sunday didn’t cause any further animosity, but it was ready for fireworks nonetheless. This season there will be more of the same. You can count on that.
Hosmer comes up big: Perhaps the most encouraging sign from the Padres last year came in the form of Eric Hosmer, who hit .287 / .333 / .517 and was much more like the elite first baseman of his Kansas City Royals days. The first part of this season shows that those numbers for 2020 may not be the result of small sample sizes. Hosmer has a .986 OPS in his first 68 at bats this season. On Friday, he hit a two-out, game-tying single in the ninth. On Sunday, he hit the two-out, game-winning single in the eighth.
“Hos is, in my opinion, as good as everyone else in the game at those times,” said Tingler, “and I think a big part of that is he wants those at-bats, he wants those times when the game is on it. and stuff like that. He’s just as good as anyone else in the game to deliver it. “
Padres need to clean it up: The Padres could have won Friday’s game had it not been for three errors, bringing their total in the Major League to 16. Saturday’s game could have been very different if Trent Grisham had read the defense behind him on Machado’s single in the sixth inning. enabled him to score from second base instead of advancing just one base. The margin of error against the Dodgers is too small to make such mistakes.
“We just understand that we have to play great baseball against these guys,” said Hosmer. “We can’t afford to give up mistakes, we can’t afford to give them extra bases. We have to lock ourselves down defensively on the basic paths. We have to make sure we play good baseball. That’s what this is. series certainly proven; I think they have proven that in the playoffs too. We know we have to be at the top to beat those guys. “
A necessary head start: The Dodgers spent the off-season motivated by a desire not to get stale after a championship, a driving factor in their surprise bid to sign Bauer. During spring practice, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts consistently preached the importance of staying in the moment and maintaining a lead during a season that can often feel monotonous, especially for such highly skilled teams. The Dodgers, who started the sport with a plus-38 differential, clearly had no problems staying focused in the beginning. But the presence of the Padres could only help them all summer. LA is at a rate of 132 gains, and somehow reality doesn’t feel too far from that.
Roberts dismissed the Padres ‘presence as a motivational factor, in keeping with the Dodgers’ clear intention to downplay this rivalry. But he admitted that the Padres are “a hungry bunch.”
“I think they’ve looked at us and want to bring us down in the National League West, and they’re talented, they can pitch,” said Roberts. “Lots of talent there.”