Friday’s game lasted five hours, spanned 12 innings and included 17 pitchers.
Saturday’s game went down to an inch.
This was practically the distance between the Petco Park turf and the baseball that came out of Mookie Betts’ glove, barely enough to place another exclamation point in an exciting clash between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Fathers.
It was the end of the ninth, there were two outs, the Dodgers led by two, the Padres had two runners in scoring position and both teams had sailed for another April game with the intensity of biting their October nails. Betts, who was playing in the middle of the injured Cody Bellinger, broke left, made a seven-step leap and threw himself into Tommy Pham’s sinking line. If it falls, the game is at least tied. Give Pham the speed, maybe the Padres win in a home run.
Betts secured him in the heel of the glove, making it a play with a 10% chance of catching in the Dodgers ’2-0 victory. He got up on both knees, slapped his chest three times, and roared toward a crowd that had mostly been silent. Moments later, in a field interview with the Dodgers affiliate, Betts said he “turned off.”
0:35
Mookie Betts dives in to finish the game and get the Dodgers victory over the Padres.
It’s been that kind of series.
“It’s different,” he said through his interpreter Yu Darvish, head of Padres, who allowed only seven dominant innings to pass. “I saw it yesterday too.”
Friday’s madness was transmitted to Saturday’s classic pitcher duel between Darvish and Clayton Kershaw, which produced just one race for the first eight innings – on a walk full of Kershaw bases, of all people – and ended with a brilliant defense, the antithesis of carelessness 24 hours before.
The Dodgers have won eight in a row, continue to lead the major winning percentage and have won 13 of their first 15 games for only the second time in 100 years.
They have risen to match the intensity of a Padres team, so noticeably eager to leave them out of their position at the Western National League summit, but they have not necessarily forced it. They have rested their players in a position of discomfort, prevented overuse of their lifeguards and talked about this series with the deafness that could be expected for early season baseball, even if the games had nothing similar.
“It’s April,” Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner said. “The thing about this club and our team over the last two years is that we talk a lot about playing one game at a time and worrying about today and doing everything we can to win a game today, and not worrying about it. “We think a lot of teams are talking about it, but this team is one of the best teams I’ve ever had to run and not let the moment get too big.”
Kershaw played with Darvish regularly for the last three months of the 2017 season, but he had never faced him until Saturday, you know, as a batsman. He was retired on four pitches in his first appearance on the plate, and then got a 2-2 lead in the second. It was the fifth inning, the bases were loaded with two starts, Darvish was eliminated three batters from a perfect game in development, and so began one of the biggest sequences of Kershaw’s offensive career, a of four launches that embodied the intensity, unpredictability, and chance of this incipient rivalry.
Slide out onto the plate with the tip tilted.
Cutter very low and far, with tip tip.
Cutter up and away, taken for a ball.
Slightly set cutter, caught by a ball.
Kershaw made a run, in a perfectly placed cutter that only came out of the edges of the strike zone, to try a run, only the second time he did so in a 14-year career in the Major League. Until Turner threw a solo homer at the top of the ninth, it was the only roll of the game. Ultimately, it was also the difference.
“Really, it’s just trying to be annoying,” Kershaw said of his approach. “I wouldn’t get him any success. He’s got too good stuff. He’s trying to be a nuisance the best I can.”
The previous half-entry, Kershaw, yelled at Jurickson Profar: “This is a bull … swing!” barked: for swinging so late that he grabbed the bat in Austin Barnes’ glove and was awarded first base on receiver interference. Kershaw later complained that Profar turned “down and back,” adding that “it wasn’t a big league swing.”
Two innings later, Trent Grisham found himself in second base, but did not accurately read the defense behind him and broke late on Manny Machado’s sharp track across the field, advancing just 90 feet. The next hitter, Wil Myers, hit a 106 mph ground that came out of the mound and landed on Chris Taylor’s glove for a final double play.
Kershaw, who contributed six frames with no scores and has not been allowed to run in 18 consecutive innings, could not help but smile as he returned to the shelter.
Myers looked stunned.