SAN DIEGO – The three MVPs have been there in the Dodgers’ lineup pretty much all season. But they haven’t often played like it at the same time.
Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts drove in all of their runs as the Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres 4-2 Sunday afternoon to take two of three in the weekend series at Petco Park.
“It does (seem like awhile),” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of having all three former MVPs producing at a high level. “I think the last six weeks Shohei’s been out of this world, I think Freddie’s been very consistent all year, and then now we got Mookie this last week on track. So it has been the better part of the season that we haven’t had all three of those guys.
“You can see it — when those three guys are threats, it just kind of takes a lot of pressure off everybody else.”
Padres starter Michael King gave up a run in the third inning on Ohtani’s RBI single, then made his own trouble in the fifth, walking two and hitting Andy Pages with a pitch (for the second time in the game) to load the bases with one out.
King got ahead of Freeman quickly, 0-and-2. But Freeman worked the count full, fouled off three pitches and took the ninth pitch of the encounter, a changeup low and inside. The pitch was called ball four, sending Freeman to first base and forcing in the go-ahead run.
“In that situation I’m just trying to hit a fly ball, just trying to hit a sac fly. Don’t want ground into a double play. Don’t want to lose momentum,” Freeman said. “So just kind of battling. He went with a lot of changeups, front-door sinkers, so I’m just trying to battle. Finally, I was able to lay off a changeup down below the zone.”
It was close enough to challenge, but the Padres did not.
“The Freddie at-bat was the at-bat of the game,” Roberts said. “It was like the (Kyle) Tucker at-bat the other night (another nine pitches that ended in a home run). Just a will to fight, to win pitches. He earned a walk right there, walked in a run, then Mookie came in with the big hit to drive in a couple more, but that kind of desire, that compete, was big.
“Michael King’s obviously given us fits, really good pitcher, but the way Freddie competed right there flipped the game and changed the momentum.”
Betts got ahead 2-and-1 then got a sinker from King that caught too much of the plate and Betts lined it into left-center field for a two-run single.
Ohtani and Freeman overcame their own rough patches some time ago. Betts had not – until recently.
Reluctant though Betts has been to proclaim his season righted, the numbers do it for him. Batting under .200 through June 13, Betts is 18 for 52 (.346) since then with three doubles, five home runs and 10 RBIs in 13 games since. Sunday was his third multi-hit game in the past five, during which he is 9 for 22.
“No, it ain’t time yet. We’ll see,” Betts said when asked if now was the time to declare his season turned around.
“Things feel normal. It feels normal. Like I can go be a ballplayer again, let my abilities show. I can change my approach during at-bats. I’m not so upset about outs because I feel like I’m going about it the right way. So, again, I just feel like all the experience I have, knowledge I have, I can finally use because I’m equipped.”
Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan made it through five innings with just one mistake – a 2-and-1 slider that Manny Machado ripped at 106.9 mph off the bat for a solo home run in the fourth inning.
“Execution was a lot better today, so that always helps. That was the main focus coming into today,” said Sheehan who had a 6.58 ERA over his previous six starts and failed to get past the fourth inning in two of the previous three.
“Maybe (it was) just being a little more comfortable in my mechanics. But also just … the focus in between starts of maybe trying to get a little more execution instead of delivery thoughts. I had seven days (between starts), so I got to throw two bullpens this week, which is nice.”
But the Padres hit four balls with exit velocities of 100 mph or higher in that fourth inning and Sheehan had to work around a walk and a hit batter in the fifth, prompting Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to give him an early hook.
Alex Vesia took the first shift out of the bullpen and was slow to cover first base when Freeman made a sprawling stop on Jackson Merrill’s ground ball to his right. Merrill beat it out for an infield single, stole second base on a pickoff attempt and scored on Xander Bogaerts’ single off Vesia’s replacement, Will Klein.
Klein stranded the tying runs on base when he struck out Sung-Mun Song to end the sixth. The two-run lead went from Klein to Tanner Scott, who put it in peril in the eighth inning when he gave up a leadoff double to Machado and hit Ty France with a pitch. Scott stranded them both when he struck out Bogaerts and got Miguel Andujar to bounce into a double play.
Edgardo Henriquez closed it out in the ninth, becoming the seventh Dodgers pitcher to record a save this season.
The two rivals will meet again next weekend in a four-game series at Dodger Stadium. The edge has been taken off the rivalry, though, as the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West swelled to 10 games with the series win in San Diego.
“It says a lot about what we’ve done,” Roberts said. “I don’t remember the last time we played them here (it was mid-May) but I think we had a 1 ½ game lead and now it’s 10.
“I think it’s a sign that we’ve kind of stayed the course, doing a lot of things well, but we’ve got a hungry A’s team coming and we gotta play well, and then we’ll get these guys at our place next weekend.”