First, the Dodgers made history. Then, they had to make sure it didn’t go to waste.
Despite consecutive home runs from Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman to lead off Saturday night — the first time in Dodgers’ history the team went deep in their first three at-bats of a game — the Dodgers had to grind out an 8-6 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field, taking the first two games of this weekend’s pivotal divisional series to go six games up in National League West.
“Tonight, man, a lot going on, a lot to unpack,” manager Dave Roberts said on a night he had only three available relievers and used all four position players on his bench. “Lot of grit, fight, from both teams. Those guys gave us all we could handle.”
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The Dodgers, however, absorbed every counter-punch, surviving a game in which they had only three available relievers and blew leads on three occasions to take their largest lead in the division in more than a month.
“Winning games like this down the stretch, it’s just like a preparation for what we’re going to be facing in the playoffs,” shortstop Miguel Rojas said. “Hopefully we run away with the division in September. But at the same time, I want this team to kind of face these games. This way, we’ll know how to win these one-run games, tight games … This is really important for us to have.”
Saturday was not a masterpiece performance by any stretch.
The night started with a high, as the Dodgers’ Big 3 hitters one-upped each other in a feat never before completed in the club’s 141-year history.
Ohtani hit his 44th of the season to straightaway center field, continuing his pursuit of the first 50 homer-50 steal season in MLB history.
Betts followed two pitches later with a blast to left, his 14th of the year and fourth since returning from a broken hand earlier this month.
Freeman completed the historic trifecta with a line drive to right.
“You’re on a high,” Roberts said of the sequence. “You feel good.”
But then, the stresses that have come to define this year’s unexpectedly tight NL West battle immediately returned.
The Diamondbacks scored four times in the bottom of the first, benefiting from poor Dodgers defense on Corbin Carroll’s inside-the-park home run (Kevin Kiermaier misjudged a leaping attempt at the center-field wall, and had no one backing him up when the ball ricocheted back toward the infield) and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s two-run double (which snuck past Teoscar Hernández in left).
The Dodgers (82-54) responded with two runs in the second, only to watch the Diamondbacks (76-60) tie the score on a Gurriel Jr. homer in the third.
Another one-run Dodgers’ lead in the fifth, courtesy of Max Muncy’s RBI single, was erased by some Arizona small-ball in the seventh.
“It’s just the fight of the guys,” Roberts said, “to give up the lead and not quit and keep fighting.”
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The Dodgers finally went in front for good in the ninth. After singles from Will Smith and Gavin Lux, and a sacrifice bunt from Kiké Hernández, key trade deadline acquisition Tommy Edman feathered a single into right to drive in two go-ahead runs.
“It was amazing,” said Edman, who entered the game as a pinch-hitter for Kiermaier in the sixth. “First kind of big hit I’ve had with this team.”
Up to that point, the Dodgers had been teetering on the brink of collapse.
A night after Clayton Kershaw’s toe injury forced an already overworked bullpen to throw eight innings in a dramatic 10-9 win, the Dodgers had just three relief arms available: Evan Phillips, the lone reliever not used Friday, and Ben Casparius and Brent Honeywell Jr., minor-league call-ups who arrived Saturday to give the bullpen some warm bodies to turn to.
The Dodgers were hoping to get length out of rookie starter Gavin Stone. But after five stressful innings and 84 pitches, Roberts deemed “he was tapped out” at the start of the sixth.
Any hopes of the offense pulling away were dashed by squandered scoring opportunities in the seventh (when the Dodgers left the bases loaded) and the eighth (when Edman got tagged out on an over-aggressive play on the bases).
Nonetheless, Honeywell gave up only one run in two innings. Casparius, the club’s fifth-round pick from 2021, pitched a scoreless eighth, ultimately earning the victory in his MLB debut.
That set the stage for Phillips to take the mound in the ninth, where he continued his recent return to form by retiring the side in order — knowing full well there were no other relievers Roberts was willing to use behind him.
“The challenge in that is trying not to get too amped up or too overemotional about it,” said Phillips, who bounced back from a poor July by giving up just one earned run in 14 outings in August. “I think I was really proud of how I handled those emotions tonight.”
In the wake of the victory, Phillips reflected on the Dodgers’ current situation in the standings — where their once nine-game lead was whittled to as little as two games a couple weeks ago.
“You could say the past couple years where we’ve had these bigger leads in the division and celebrating early and things like that, it didn’t do us any favors in the postseason,” he said. “So fighting this kind of adversity throughout many points throughout the year I think has been good for our guys.”
Roberts echoed that same message, adamant that even though the Dodgers have regained some breathing room at the top of the division — the San Diego Padres, who are tied for Arizona in second place, also lost Saturday — they need the intensity they’ve tapped into the past two nights to remain for the rest of the season.
“It’s bringing out the best in us,” Roberts said. “I think there’s certainly things on the micro that we got to clean up. Some defense. There was a baserunning play in there. But overall, the way we’re competing and we’re winning pitches — the compete, that’s fun to watch.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
