Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers got out in front early today thanks to a barrage of homers and held onto the lead as the Padres tried to fight back for a 7-2 victory to make it four straight wins for the Dodgers and 14 wins against the Padres in their last 15 games.
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Yu Darvish has generally done well against the Dodgers in his career, but the Dodgers jumped all over him early and often this afternoon. The fireworks started in the 1st with homers from Freddie Freeman (10), Will Smith (13), and Justin Turner (7) to make it 3-0 early.
In the 2nd, the Dodgers rallied with two outs behind a Gavin Lux “double” thanks to a Jose Azocar misplay in right, and then a Trea Turner single to plate Lux and extend the lead.
The lineup then made it three innings of scoring to start things in the 3rd behind a JT single advancing on a wild pitch, and then scoring on a Jake Lamb double in front of Jurickson Profar.
Darvish, as one would expect he would, did settle in after that, retiring 10 of 11 after that to get through the 6th, with a Azocar error being the only batter who reached.
On the other side was Tyler Anderson, who quite frankly hadn’t looked good at all since his no-hitter attempt. However, he bounced back today and looked more like he has the rest of 2022.
Granted, he only had a single clean inning today (in the 1st), but Anderson didn’t face a whole lot of trouble in his first six shutout frames, only having to really work out of trouble in the 2nd when he was hit for a double and a single.
He actually pitched into the 7th and that’s where he ran into his biggest jam of the day, surrendering back-to-back singles to start the inning and ended up with runners on the corners. In his last batter he got a sacrifice fly to cut the lead to 5-1: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 6 K, 97 Pitches.
That brought in Brusdar Graterol, who was greeted with a single to make it potentially troublesome with the top of the order coming up, but he rebounded with a groundout and then a dramatic strikeout of Manny Machado.
The Dodgers got that back and more in the 7th as the Padres pen entered. Things started with back-to-back-to-back walks being issued to Trea, Freddie, and Will to load the bases, then Max Muncy drilled a ball to right but it was caught at the track for a sacrifice fly and JT followed up with a sacrifice fly of his own to make it a 7-1 lead.
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For the Dodgers, the 8th was given to Reyes Moronta, who gave up a homer for the second straight outing, this time to Luke Voit to cut the lead to 7-2. He also got into a bit more trouble with a single and wild pitch, but worked his way out of it.
To close things out was Alex Vesia in the 9th, who got the first two outs but then gave up a walk and a single to extend things before notching a strikeout to close things out.
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The Dodgers improve to 49-28 on the year, and are now 4.5 games up on the Padres.
They will go for the sweep in an early game tomorrow at 10:10 AM HT/1:10 PM PT/4:10 PM ET with Clayton Kershaw facing off against MacKenzie Gore.
