LOS ANGELES — It was a night for restitution at Dodger Stadium, a chance to make up for past sins.
Max Muncy hit two home runs – including one in the ninth inning to tie the score – to make up for his ninth error of the season (tied for the second-most in the majors among all positions) that undermined Clayton Kershaw and helped the New York Mets erase the Dodgers’ early lead.
And Tanner Scott pitched the 10th inning for the second night in a row. He took the loss on Monday night but retired the side in order this time. That allowed the Dodgers to score the game-winning run on Freddie Freeman’s RBI double in the bottom of the 10th and walk off with a 6-5 victory over the New York Mets on Tuesday night.
“That’s part of being on a team. We just try to pick each other up,” Kershaw said after the win.
Over the years, Kershaw has done plenty of that lifting. These days, though, things are not coming easily for him. He had to labor for each of the 14 outs he recorded.
For most of his career, hitters were eager to swing early against Kershaw for fear of the wipe-out stuff they would have to deal with if he got two strikes on them.
Things no longer come as easily for Kershaw. He got two strikes on eight of the first 12 batters he faced but struck out just one. Instead, he gave up costly hits on two-strike pitches and had to throw 58 pitches in the first three innings.
With one out in the first inning, he had Starling Marte down 0-and-2. Marte singled.
After a wild pitch moved Marte into scoring position with two outs, Pete Alonso drove him in with an RBI single on a 1-and-2 slider from Kershaw.
Two innings later, Kershaw threw his fastest pitch of the season so far – a 91.2 mph fastball – on a full count to Juan Soto. Soto crushed it, launching it into the right field seats for a two-run home run.
“Just didn’t make enough good pitches,” Kershaw said. “I got ahead of some guys, gave up two-strike hits, walked guys, gave up some hard-hit balls. Overall, not a great day.
“It’s kind of in and out for me. I think I’ll go on a stretch of making, like, 10 or 11 good pitches in a row and then just make enough bad ones to get some damage done against me. I just need to put it together for a whole game, figure out how to do that, which I think I can do and will do. Just better be soon.”
That all but washed away the 4-1 lead the Dodgers had given Kershaw after the first inning.
Back in the lineup for the first time since last Wednesday, Mookie Betts singled with one out and scored from first base when Freeman doubled into the right-field corner – showing no ill effects from the fractured toe that had sidelined Betts for four games.
Freeman went to third when Mets second baseman Jeff McNeil mishandled the relay throw and then scored on a ground out. Muncy capped the four-run first inning with a two-run home run, his fourth homer in the past four games.
“I kind of felt close for a long time,” said Muncy, who went 105 plate appearances into the season without a home run. “I told you guys – I was hitting the ball hard, I just wasn’t getting good results out of it. It’s one of those things where if I wasn’t hitting the ball hard that’d be a red flag. Just had a little bit of bad luck early. Now I’m getting things to go the right way which is nice. I’m just trying to keep the mechanics the same, keep building on it moving forward.”
While Muncy’s bat has come to life over the past month, his glove still remains a problem.
With one out in the fifth inning, Kershaw walked Francisco Lindor on four pitches. He got Marte to hit a ground ball right at Muncy but the ball went right through the third baseman and into left field. Kershaw got Soto to pop out for the second out of the inning, but Alonso lined a slider to the wall in left-center for a game-tying double.
“Making mistakes really sucks. But when you do it with a guy like Kershaw on the mound, it cuts deep a little bit more,” Muncy said.
The go-ahead run was a time-release headache for Kershaw. Nimmo bounced a ground ball to Freeman and Kershaw raced Nimmo to first base, grabbing the feed from Freeman on the way. First-base umpire Jansen Visconti called Nimmo out, ending the inning. But the Mets challenged the call and replay review showed Nimmo reaching the bag just before Kershaw. The call was overturned, giving Nimmo a go-ahead RBI infield single and ending Kershaw’s night after 4⅔ innings.
“You just don’t see the misses with the curveball like you saw tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think there was one good one to a left-handed hitter in the middle of a count. But outside of that there’s a lot of non-competitive curveballs, which is very uncharacteristic of Clayton. … The teethiness of the slider, just isn’t there right now. It’s still been three-plus starts. So to get the feel of it, it’s gonna come.
“I know he’s frustrated because he’s getting count leverage with guys and can’t put them away by way of strikeout. He’s competing his tail off, but it just hasn’t been as easy as it has been for him prior to this little stretch. He’s going to keep working and keep competing and we’re obviously going to keep running him out there.”
Mets starter Tylor Megill retired 16 of 17 Dodgers batters following Muncy’s home run in the first inning. A two-out double by Andy Pages in the fourth was their only hit until the eighth inning, when Betts followed a walk of Shohei Ohtani with his second single of the night.
Thanks to the work of the bullpen, it stayed a one-run game into the ninth when Muncy led off with his second home run of the night, tying the score.
Scott came on for the 10th inning – again. He retired the side in order, striking out two.
“Me, (assistant pitching coach) Connor (McGuinness), Bardo (Josh Bard, bullpen coach) and (pitching coach) Mark (Prior) did a deep dive. And I definitely had to clean some things up,” Scott said.
“I was flying open, lower half leading to upper half. Everything was popping out a little early, and not staying through a pitch. It was leading to locations being terrible.”
Shohei Ohtani led off the 10th and the Mets opted to intentionally walk him. Betts flew out but Freeman drove a ball to the warning track in left field. Nimmo got turned around and the ball fell in for the decisive double.
“I was just trying to get something up, and hopefully hit a ball in the air,” Freeman said. “The main thing was just not to ground into a double play, just so we can get Teo a chance if I flew out or something like that.”