Dodgers 11, Padres 8: Petco Park as Coors Field, complete with injury

Petco Park, a noted home run haven, made baseball into a football game through the first inning and a half, with four homers being slugged and the game standing at 6-3. Luckily, that scoreline was in favor of the Dodgers thanks to a two-run shot from Andre Ethier, a three-run shot from Adrian Gonzalez, and an RBI double from Carl Crawford that could’ve been a two-RBI double except for Yasmani Grandal getting thrown out at an extremely close play at the plate.

I thought he was safe even after replay, but upon using zoom, I can’t complain about the call.

Not that it would matter anyway, as the offensive fireworks continued courtesy of two-run homers from Howie Kendrick and Juan Uribe.

To get an idea of how well the ball was traveling, look at Kendrick’s homer.

Inside-out swing on an inside fastball down 2-2 over the center field wall at Petco from HOWIE? Sure, why not?

Then on the Uribe poke over the wall, we finally got the Hyun Jin Ryu and Uribe interaction since he finally did something.

So that gave the Dodgers a comfortable seven-run lead, and the game was over.

Welll … except that Brandon McCarthy continued his gopher ball allowing ways. He allowed a homer to Wil Myers to lead-off the game before surrendering a two-run shot to Justin Upton in the same frame. McCarthy then retired 12 in a row before giving up a three-run bomb to Upton again, after which he was seen calling out the trainers with an apparent elbow problem, which was later described as “right elbow tightness”. If it’s serious — and his velocity was down to 90-91 mph in the inning — then we’re looking at seriously testing the Dodgers rotation depth sooner than ideal.

In relief of McCarthy was Sergio Santos, who didn’t look so hot. He allowed a triple that just missed being a spectacular play by Joc Pederson, before giving up a double and then escaping the inning on a stung one-hopper to Kendrick. Luckily, Juan Nicasio shut the door a bit for two innings and bought the Dodgers pen some rest. Is he great? No, but if he’s usually going to be the last guy out of the pen, the Dodgers are in much better shape than last year.

The Dodgers added an insurance run in the eighth inning to put them up 11-7, which allowed them to avoid using Yimi Garcia again. Instead, Chris Hatcher entered and shut the door … sort of. He allowed a run after walking a guy, but primarily because Grandal had difficulty blocking balls. Still, I guess he did finally get his unfortunate ERA below 10 after those early disasters.

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-I’ll say this: I’ve never seen so many people complain about a three-run victory and an 11-6 team. At least before we would be complaining about being a .500 team in May or something.

-Pederson finished with a single and two walks, bumping his team-leading OBP up to .462 … even though A-Gon is batting .403.

-Grandal finished 2-for-4 with a double and a walk, getting his OPS over .700, so at least he’s starting to hit. I hope.