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 consisted of 12 innings and consisted of 17 pitchers and four draws. Saturday’s game ended on a sinking catch by Mookie Betts, with a tie in the scoring position. Sunday’s game was not decided until the end of the eighth. The Dodgers won 2 of 3, but the parents took the series finale to prevent their seven-game losing streak against them.
The Dodgers, winners of eight in a row before Sunday, have a record 13-3 best in the major league, with 3½ better games than Padres in the Western National League. But the teams will meet again in four days to start a four-game series at Dodger Stadium.
“It’s a good preview for many others to come – both teams playing with a ton of energy, playing the game the way it should be played,” said Padres manager Jayce Tingler. “There’s a lot of excitement, it’s great to attract the energy of the fans and just the battles back and forth. I know for the guys who play, it’s very easy to get up and start. There’s a ton of adrenaline. In the stadium and you’re almost bound to be closed. “
Below is a look at what we can take from an opening series that somehow overcame the hype that came in.
Close games in abundance: Trevor Bauer slapped his chest and screamed as he returned to the Dodgers’ head at the end of Sunday’s sixth inning. He had just blown a 97 mph fast ball past Fernando Tatis Jr., scoring another stellar exit that lowered his ERA to 2.42 and raised his total number of shots to an NL 36 level. The six pitchers in this series – Bauer, Blake Snell, Clayton Kershaw, Yu Darvish, Walker Buehler and Ryan Weathers – combined for an ERA of 1.60 at the weekend, which is no surprise. These could be the best two starting spins in baseball. This means that we will probably continue to get these close and intense games throughout the year.
If Snell matches Bauer again, he has a request.
“Bauer, he’s going to dig a lot in that mound,” Snell said. “Oh, my God. It looked like something had fallen over the mound. It was just the biggest hole. So, Bauer, we have to work on it. I know it has to catch you on the mound or whatever, but man, my foot is killing me.” “
Machado still owns Bauer: It’s a joke that has come to prominence and is now ridiculous – Bauer can’t get Manny Machado out. Not really. Machado entered the fight .588 / .667 / 1.412 in 21 career appearances against Bauer, then hit two singles against him who traveled at 104 km / h. Bauer had a full number against Machado in the fourth. , then shook it from Will Smith and threw a quick ball that was smoked next to the Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner. Machado has nine hits in 12 bats that ended with a fast Bauer ball, five of them for extra bases. It was a funny weirdness before. Now, in the context of this rivalry, it is a problem.
Bauer’s take away?
“I kept him in the park,” he said, “so I’m going in the right direction.”
Tatis still realizes: The beginning of this series coincided with Tatis’ return from a subluxation of the shoulder. By the end of it, it was clear that Tatis was still wrong. The question is whether these are the usual fights that hit players over a long season and are only magnified at the beginning or whether that gentle left shoulder really affects their production. Tatis hit a 410-foot run to the field immediately on Friday, but otherwise it was 0-for-12 with six hits and a walk. He added two errors on Friday – giving him seven through his first six games – and would have had another Sunday if it hadn’t been for a nice pick by Eric Hosmer at first base.
Tatis also took a walk, hit a hard drive and apparently just entered a potential home run on a ball hanging at the end of the series. Prior to Saturday’s game, Tatis downplayed the severity of the shoulder problem and expressed confidence in his ability to handle it over the next six months.
“This is something I can handle very well,” Tatis said. “I don’t think that’s going to bother me for the rest of the year.”
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Clayton Kershaw thinks that Jurickson Profar is intentionally trying to receive an interception call from the catcher and the two enter a screaming match on the field.
No lost love: You know it’s heated when Kershaw curses. On Saturday, Kershaw made an exception for the way Jurickson Profar swung late with a quick two-shot ball, coming in contact with Austin Barnes’ glove and being placed on first base due to interference from the catcher. “This is a bull — swing!” Kershaw shouted as he and Profar shouted back and forth in the field. One night earlier, Dennis Santana and Jorge Mateo had a 10-inning streak, emptying both benches. Sunday did not offer any additional animosity, but it was ready for fireworks. There will be more of the same this season. It counts on that.
Hosmer comes great: Perhaps Padres’ most encouraging sign last year came in the form of Eric Hosmer, who beat .287 / .333 / .517 and looks a lot more like the first elite base of his day in the Kansas City Royals. The early part of this season shows that these 2020 numbers may not be the result of small sample sizes. Hosmer is wearing a .986 OPS in his first 68 appearances this season On Friday, he hit a single in two games, tied in the ninth. On Sunday, he hit the winning single in the round of 16.
“Hos is, in my opinion, as good as anyone in the game in those moments,” Tingler said, “and I think a big part of him is that he wants those bats, he wants those moments when the game is on the line. and things like that. He’s as good as anyone in the game at delivering them. “
Father must clean it: Padres could have won Friday’s game if it weren’t for three errors, which would have risen to the total number of leaders in the major league at 16. Saturday’s game could have been completely different if Trent Grisham had read the defense correctly. behind him in Machado’s sixth inning, which would have allowed him to score from the second, as opposed to advancing on a single 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,” Hosmer said. “We can’t afford to give up mistakes, we can’t afford to give them extra bases. We just have to block ourselves, defensively, on the road bases. We have to make sure we play good baseball. That’s what this is. “The series has definitely proved its worth. I think they’ve proven that in the playoffs, too.
A necessary advantage: The Dodgers spent the off-season motivated by a desire not to become obsolete after a championship, a leading factor in their surprising effort to score Bauer. In spring training, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts constantly preached the importance of staying in the moment and maintaining an advantage throughout a season that can often feel monotonous, especially for such high-performing teams. The Dodgers, who keep the sport with a plus-38 differential, clearly had no problem staying focused at first. But the presence of parents may only help them throughout the summer. LA is on a pace of 132 victories and somehow the reality does not feel too far from that.
Roberts rejected the presence of the parents as a motivating factor, in line with the Dodgers’ clear intention to minimize this rivalry. But he acknowledged that the parents are “a hungry group.”
“I think they looked at us and they want to take us somehow to the Western National League and they’re talented, they can play,” Roberts said. “A lot of talent there.”