Friday’s game lasted five hours, included 12 innings and included 17 pitchers.
Saturday’s game dropped an inch.
That was about the distance between Petco Park’s grass and the baseball that came out of Mookie Betts’ glove, just safe enough to place another exclamation point in an exciting game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres .
It was the bottom of the ninth, there were two outings, the Dodgers led by two, the Padres had two runners in the scoring position and both teams sailed through another game in April with the intensity of the October nail bite. Betts, the injured Cody Bellinger’s playground, broke to the left, sprinted seven steps and launched into Tommy Pham’s sinking line. If it falls, the game is at least equal. Give Pham the speed, maybe his parents win in a house in the park.
Betts secured the glove heel, turning a piece with a 10% chance of capture into the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory. He got up on both knees, tapped his chest three times, and shouted at a crowd that was largely silent. Moments later, in an on-site interview with the Dodgers affiliate, Betts said he “got a little black.”
0:35
Mookie Betts nods to end the game and secure the Dodgers’ victory over the Padres.
It was the kind of series.
“It’s different,” said Yu Darvish, who allowed only the one who crosses seven dominant innings through his interpreter. “I saw her yesterday, too.”
Friday’s madness spilled over into Saturday’s classic ulcer duel between Darvish and Clayton Kershaw, which produced a single race in the first eight innings – on a Kershaw-laden walk, of all – and ended with a brilliant defense, the antithesis sloppiness from 24 hours earlier.
The Dodgers have won eight in a row, continue to lead the majority in winning percentages and have won 13 of the first 15 games for the second time in 100 years.
They stood up to match the intensity of a Padres team, so visibly eager to take off the perch at the top of the Western National League, but they didn’t necessarily force it. They rested their sick players, avoided the excessive use of means of rescue and talked about this series with the gentleness we could expect for baseball at the beginning of the season, even if the games did not feel anything. like.
“It’s April,” said Justin Turner, the third member of the Dodgers. “The thing about this club and our team over the last few years is that we talk a lot about taking a game in a row and worrying today and doing everything we can to win a game today and not worried about what happened yesterday and I’m not looking at what’s next tomorrow. I think a lot of teams talk about it, but this team is one of the best groups I’ve ever known to do that and not let the moment get too big. “
Kershaw has regularly played catches with Darvish in the last three months of the 2017 season, but never faced him – you know, as a hitter – until Saturday. He was withdrawn on four pitches on his first appearance on the set, then went 2-2 in the second. It was the fifth inning, the bases were loaded with two exits, Darvish was eliminated by three players from a perfectly developing game – and so began one of the biggest sequences in Kershaw’s offensive career, a collection of four pitches that embodied the intensity, unpredictability and pure randomness of this emerging rivalry.
Slide out over the plate, upside down.
Cutter very low and far, with the wrong tip.
Cutter up and away, taken for a ball.
Cutter slightly removed, taken for a ball.
Kershaw took a walk – on a perfectly seated cutter, which came out only from the edges of the attacking zone – to run, only for the second time in a 14-year career in the major leagues. Until Turner unleashed a solo homer on top of the ninth, it was the only round of the game. In the end, it was the difference.
“Just trying to be annoying, really,” Kershaw said of his approach. “I wasn’t going to hit him, he’s got too good things. He’s just trying to be a nuisance as best he can.”
In the first half, Kershaw yelled at Jurickson Profar – “This is a bull — a swing!” he barked – because he swayed so late that he caught his bat on Austin Barnes’s glove and was given the first base on the interference of the catcher. Kershaw later complained that Profar was swinging “straight back and forth,” adding that “he’s not a big swing in the league.”
Two innings later, Trent Grisham woke up on second base, but didn’t read the defense behind him exactly and broke late on Manny Machado’s sharp ground inside the field, advancing just 90 feet. The next bully, Wil Myers, hit a 106 mph ground that hit the mound and landed in Chris Taylor’s glove for a final double play.
Kershaw, who contributed six shots without a score and did not allow a run in 18 consecutive innings, could not help but smile as he returned to the digout.
Myers looked stunned.