The Los Angeles Dodgers are back in first place, and all it took was their bullpen avoiding yet another collapse.
The Dodgers defeated the San Diego Padres 3-2 in their series opener on Friday to tie their opponent atop the NL West. The win broke a four-game losing streak for Los Angeles, with three of those losses featuring leads blown in the eighth or ninth inning.
The Dodgers appeared in danger of that again in this game. They entered the late innings with a 3-1 lead thanks to a strong start from Clayton Kershaw (six innings, two hits, one run, three strikeouts), but got into trouble again when reliever Alex Vesia hit two batters and walked another to load the bases with one out.
The Padres cut the deficit to one run on a Luis Arraez sacrifice fly, at which point Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Vesia for Blake Treinen, who got Manny Machado out on a pop fly with his first pitch.
The Dodgers have been scraping the bottom of the bullpen for weeks and that took the form of former Cincinnati Reds closer Alexis Diaz taking over in the ninth. He entered the game with a 7.71 ERA this season, but looked surprisingly good with two strikeouts while working around a single from Jackson Merrill, who had a great at-bat.
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Roberts once again pulled his reliever to get the final out of the inning, summoning Jack Dreyer to finish the game on a fly ball from Ryan O’Hearn.
That’s what it takes for the Dodgers to win close games these days: an all-hands-on-deck approach in the middle of August, because of their plethora of top relievers on the injured list. On another team, Vesia might have received a lower-pressure assignment after allowing runs in three straight appearances, but Roberts brought him right back into a key spot.
The Dodgers got their runs on a third-inning rally and a seventh-inning homer from the struggling Teoscar Hernández.
With the division once again tied, the Dodgers will send out former Padre Blake Snell against Dylan Cease on Saturday, then Tyler Glasnow against former Dodger Yu Darvish on Sunday. Notably, they can secure the tiebreaker against the Padres with just one more win thanks to their 5-2 record against the team this season.
