The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres played 30 baseball innings over the weekend and were separated by two or fewer runs in all but three. Friday’s game covered 12 innings and consisted of 17 pitchers and four draws. Saturday’s game ended in a Mookie Betts dive catch with the tie tied in scoring position. Sunday’s game was not decided until the end of the eighth. The Dodgers won 2 of 3, but the Padres reached the end of the series to get the seven-game losing streak against them.
The Dodgers, winners of eight straight games before Sunday, hold the best league record of 13-3, 3½ games better than the Western National League Padres. But the teams will meet again in four days to begin a four-game series at Dodger Stadium.
“It’s a good preview for many more to come: both teams play with a lot of energy and play the game the way it’s supposed to be played,” said Jayce Tingler, Parents manager. “There’s a lot of excitement, it’s great to get the energy out of the fans and just the back-and-forth battles. I know that for the guys who play there, it’s very easy to get up and start. There’s a lot of ‘adrenaline in the stadium and they almost force you to be locked up’.
Below is what we can get out of a first series that somehow surpassed the hype and publicity.
Close games in gallery: Trevor Bauer hit his chest and roared as he returned to the Dodgers dig at the end of the sixth Sunday in. He had just flown a 97 mph fast ball ahead of Fernando Tatis Jr., scoring another stellar start that lowered his ERA to 2.42 and raised his attack total to a 36th lead in the National League. The six starting pitchers in this series: Bauer, Blake Snell, Clayton Kershaw, Yu Darvish, Walker Buehler and Ryan Weathers, combined with an ERA of 1.60 over the weekend, which is no surprise. These could be the two best starting rotations in baseball. This means that we will probably continue to get these intense and close games throughout the year.
If Snell matches Bauer again, he has a request.
“Bauer, he’s going to be digging a lot in this mound,” Snell said. “Oh my God. It looked like something crashed to the top of the mound. It was just the biggest hole. So Bauer, we have to work on that. I know you have to control the mound or whatever, but man, my foot was killing me. “
Machado still owns Bauer: It’s a joke that has gained prominence and is now ridiculous: Bauer can’t get Manny Machado out. No, seriously. Machado hit .588 / .667 / 1,412 in 21 appearances in the race against Bauer, and then attacked two singles against him that traveled more than 104 km / h. Bauer had a full count against Machado in the fourth, then left out Will Smith and threw a quick ball that was smoked past the glove of Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner. Machado has nine hits in 12 bats that have ended with a quick Bauer ball, five of them for extra bases. It used to be a fun grace. Now, within the context of this rivalry, it is a problem.
Bauer’s takeaway?
“I kept him in the park,” he said, “so I’m going in the right direction.”
Tatis still finds out: The start of this series coincided with Tatis ’return of a subluxation of the shoulder. In the end, it was clear that Tatis is still not entirely right. The question is whether these are the usual struggles that players have over a long season and only widen at the beginning or whether this tender left shoulder really affects their production. Tatis hit a 410-foot local run in midfield immediately Friday, but otherwise was 0-for-12 with six tackles and one walk. He added two errors on Friday, giving him seven in his first six games, and would have another on Sunday if it weren’t for a good selection from Eric Hosmer at first base.
Tatis also worked on foot, hit a hard drive and apparently just passed under a potential home run with a ball hanging at the end of the series. Prior to 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 handle really well,” Tatis said. “I don’t think that’s going to bother me the rest of the year.”
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Clayton Kershaw believes that Jurickson Profar is intentionally trying to receive an interference call from a receiver and that the two enter a match by calling on the field.
No lost love: You know it heats up when Kershaw curses. On Saturday, Kershaw made exceptions with the way Jurickson Profar spun late with a quick two-shot ball, coming into contact with Austin Barnes ’glove and placing at first base due to receiver interference. “This is a bull — swing!” Kershaw shouted as he and the Profar shouted back and forth across the field. A night earlier, Dennis Santana and Jorge Mateo came in with a 10th-inning goal, causing both benches to be emptied. On Sunday he provided no further animosity, but was prepared for fireworks. There will be more of the same this season. Count on it.
Hosmer arrives a lot: Perhaps the most encouraging sign from the Padres last year came in the form of Eric Hosmer, who hit .287 / .333 / .517 and looked much more like the first elite base of his Kansas days. City Royals. The first part of this season shows that these 2020 figures may not be the result of small samples. Hosmer has a .986 OPS in his first 68-plate appearances this season. On Friday he reached a two-run single in the ninth. On Sunday, he beat the eighth single winner of the match.
“In my opinion, Hos is as good as anyone in the game right now,” Tingler said, “and I think a big part is that he wants those bats, he wants those moments when the game is online and stuff for style. He’s as good as anyone in the game at delivering them. “
Parents need to clean it: The Padres could have won Friday’s game if it weren’t for three errors, which surpassed their Major League leader total to 16. Saturday’s game could have been completely different if Trent Grisham had read the defense correctly. was behind Machado’s sixth single, allowing him to score from the second instead of advancing just one base. The margin of error against the Dodgers is too small to make such mistakes.
“We just understand we have to play great baseball against these guys,” Hosmer said. “We can’t afford to give up mistakes, we can’t afford to give them extra bases. We just have to close ourselves, defensively, to the basics. We have to make sure we’re playing baseball well. That’s what the series definitely proved; I think they showed it in the playoffs too. We know we have to be at the forefront of our game to beat these guys. “
A necessary advantage: The Dodgers spent the offseason motivated by the desire not to stay rancid when they left a championship, a factor driving their surprising effort to sign Bauer. During spring training, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts constantly preached the importance of staying in the moment and maintaining a lead throughout a season that can often feel monotonous, especially for such accomplished teams. The Dodgers, who mark the sport with a spread of more than 38, have had no problem staying focused in the early stages. But the presence of parents can only help them throughout the summer. LA has a pace of 132 wins, and somehow the reality doesn’t feel very far from that.
Roberts dismissed the Padres ’presence as a motivating factor, in keeping with the Dodgers’ clear intention to minimize that rivalry. But he admitted the Fathers are “a hungry group.”
“I think they’ve looked at us and they want to take us to the Western National League, and they’re talented, they can pitch,” Roberts said. “A lot of talent out there.”