by Cary Osborne
Sunday was tense — and the rest of the National League Division Series will likely follow suit as the series switches to San Diego for Game 3 on Tuesday.
A hit by pitch to Fernando Tatis Jr. in the sixth inning and a Manny Machado strikeout two batters later — both off pitches from Dodger starting pitcher Jack Flaherty — raised the emotions on Sunday.
But the tension has increased for the Dodgers in that this series is now tied 1–1.
After a gritty comeback victory in Game 1, the Dodgers suffered a painful setback — a 10–2 defeat.
As much as the Dodgers want to distance themselves from history, they haven’t.
The Dodgers head to San Diego in the same position they were in in 2022 when they split the first two games at Dodger Stadium in the NLDS. The Padres won both games and that series at Petco Park, where it was non-stop noise.
“I say it all time — we’re not playing the opponent, we’re not playing the stadium, we’re not playing anyone else other than ourselves,” said Dodger infielder Max Muncy. “And if we go out there and we do what we need to do, I feel confident in us.”
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Muncy, who hit a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, started the game at third base and moved across the infield to first base in the sixth inning after Freeman exited.
The pain in Freeman’s right ankle sprain proved too great.
“It’s not ideal,” said manager Dave Roberts. “But I think this is what we’ll have to be dealing with for the duration.”
But it was an agonizing night for the Dodgers in general.
The Padres partied along the railing of their dugout after each hit — 13 of them, and each homer — there were six of them. The six homers are the most the Dodgers have ever given up in a postseason game.
Flaherty gave up the first and second — a solo homer by Fernando Tatis Jr. in the first inning and a two-run homer by former Dodger David Peralta in the second inning.
He settled in and retired nine of 10 batters before hitting Tatis. Some Padre players responded with anger.
“They didn’t like the pitch to Tatis. I missed in the first inning, and I threw the ball over the middle. I wasn’t going to miss over the plate again,” Flaherty said. “But again, no reason to hit a guy there to start off the sixth as good as he’s been swinging the bat. But we’re down in the game, I’m trying to go in for effect. And he didn’t get out of the way. It hit him. I didn’t try to go and hit him to lead off an inning or anything like that. That doesn’t really make sense.”
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The Dodgers never got their footing after falling behind. It was the second time in as many games that the Dodgers trailed 3–0 early. They had an answer on Saturday. They didn’t on Sunday.
Yu Darvish limited them to one run over seven innings on a Gavin Lux sacrifice fly in the second inning.
Darvish switched up delivery times. He kept the Dodgers guessing with seven different pitches. And he beat Dodger hitters often with the breaking stuff. The Dodgers were 1-for-13 against Darvish’s breaking balls. They weren’t much better against the rest, going 2-for-9 against his other pitches.
The Dodgers didn’t have an extra-base hit against him. And when it seemed like they did, it was stolen from them.
Mookie Betts was robbed of a home run in left field by Jurickson Profar in the bottom of the first inning.
Freeman had a potential extra-base hit taken from him by Fernando Tatis Jr. in the fourth inning.
The trio of Shohei Ohtani, Betts and Freeman went a combined 0-for-10.
Betts is still searching for his first hit in the series.
“Really frustrating,” Betts said. “But just got to keep going and hopefully it turns.”
And hope that the series turns back in favor of the Dodgers.
“The last couple of years haven’t ended how we wanted, so we use it for motivation,” Lux said. “We hear what people say and we want to change that narrative. The edge has come up from that. We want to prove people wrong. We got a really good group here, so it’s just about playing our brand of baseball. I think the edge is good.”
NLDS: A painful night for the Dodgers means they head to San Diego with a split in the series was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.