Dodgers 5, Padres 1: Nick Vincent, Dodgers Offense

The Dodgers prevailed over the Padres this afternoon, 5-1, taking three of four in the series. Since losing five straight games against the Athletics and Astros, the Dodgers have gone 11-2 and are now back up to a 93-win pace.

—–

The Dodgers offense struck first in the first behind Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez walks, a Justin Turner hit by pitch, and an Andre Ethier sacrifice fly to left field for a 1-0 lead. After the Padres tied the game with a solo shot in the third, the Dodgers came back in the sixth, taking a 2-1 lead on an A.J. Ellis RBI single.

The Dodgers really took over the game in the seventh through no doing of their own, as Andre Ethier grounded back to Nick Vincent with the bases loaded, and Vincent couldn’t complete a throw of about 40 feet, resulting in all three runs scoring, Ethier at third, and a 5-1 lead. That was easily enough to keep the Dodgers ahead for good.

Brett Anderson started the game off surprisingly shaky, as he struggled to find command of his pitches and left a lot of fastballs up in the zone. That resulted in some walks and a lot of hard-hit balls.

Through the first two innings, every batted ball allowed by Brett Anderson has had an exit velocity of 90 MPH or higher. #Dodgers

— Positive Residual (@presidual) September 6, 2015

Fortunately, he managed to not get burned before he settled down, and he limited the Padres to a single run in his 5.2 innings of work. Anderson struck out four, but also gave up four walks and four hits, and was generally luckier than good today. Anderson also left the game with injury after 95 pitches, giving a nice solid scare to us all, but fortunately it was just a calf cramp.

Oh yeah, Turner chipped in just a tad on defense as well.

https://twitter.com/MLB/status/640655615342342145

The bullpen turned another solid outing in, getting the final 3.1 innings and keeping the Padres off the board. J.P. Howell helped Anderson wiggle out of jam to end the sixth, and Luis Avilan and Yimi Garcia worked around a hit each to turn in scoreless frames of their own. Pedro Baez then entered in the ninth to record a 1-2-3 inning and secured the win.

This is nice.

—–

In other news around the pennant race, the Giants beat the Rockies in Colorado, meaning the divisional lead remains at 7.5 games. The Mets did lose to the Marlins, however, which means the Dodgers are now 3 games up on them in the hypothetical race for home-field advantage in the NLDS.