PHOENIX — So many wrongs were made right.
The Dodgers scored eight runs in the first three innings but trailed by the sixth inning. Roki Sasaki couldn’t get through five and struck out none of the 20 batters he faced. Anthony Banda gave up another grand slam and Alex Vesia gave up back-to-back home runs. Pitching coach Mark Prior was ejected from the game after a bad call forced in a go-ahead run.
And they won.
The Dodgers scored six times in the ninth inning – the last three on Shohei Ohtani’s 12th home run of the season – to come from behind and reclaim victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, 14-11, in a wild ride at Chase Field on Friday night.
“Really great game,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “It’s not the kind of game we play a lot. But for us to score a lot (early), for them to come back, for us to come back again – it was a game with a lot of passion.”
And it was a game with an almost predictable finish – maybe not the four consecutive hits to start the ninth inning and tie the score but the 113-mph rocket 426 feet into the right field seats by Ohtani who tossed his bat aside and threw his hands in the air with … well, passion.
“Yeah,” Max Muncy said with a pause and a smile when asked if he was already planning a celebration when Ohtani stepped to the plate in the ninth. “I mean, you guys have heard me say it how many times? Sho keeps getting put in these spots that you expect the incredible, and he rarely disappoints. And that is no different there.”
There were plenty of disappointments along the way.
Staked to that early lead, Sasaki couldn’t get through five innings. Advertised as “a work in progress” when he signed as a much-hyped addition this offseason, the Dodgers are still waiting for Sasaki to have a growth spurt on the mound.
He gave up two home runs in the first inning – a solo home run by Ketel Marte and a two-run homer by Eugenio Suarez.
Sasaki handled the second and third innings but gave up a double, hit a batter and walked another as the Diamondbacks scored again in the fourth. He walked the first batter in the fifth – aided by a missed call by home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak – and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had seen enough.
“I just felt tonight he was laboring from the outset,” Roberts said. “You could tell by facing 20 hitters and not one strikeout. Guys were taking really good swings. He didn’t have (anything) tonight to put guys away.
“I just didn’t feel that he was particularly sharp tonight and commanding the fastball, the split, all that stuff.”
The 100-mph fastball that Sasaki flashed during his best days in Japan must have been diminished by tariffs. He averaged just 94.9 mph against the Diamondbacks (down from his season average of 96.1 mph) and got no swings-and-misses with it, striking out no one in the start.
“Just really still in this process of finding out what the root cause (is), working with my coaches, talking to people about this,” Sasaki said through his interpreter when asked about his unimpressive fastball. “I’m not quite exactly sure and can’t really state exactly the single reason.”
Still – thanks to the Dodgers’ early pounding of Diamondbacks starter Eduardo Rodriguez – he left with an 8-4 lead. But Banda gave up a single and a walk to load the bases for Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who launched a 1-and-0 slider 401 feet into the left field seats. It was the second grand slam Banda has given up in his past six appearances and it tied the score.
Left in to try and soak up some more outs for an overworked bullpen, Banda gave up a single and walked two (one intentionally) to load the bases again in the sixth inning. With two outs, Luis Garcia came in and fought Gurriel Jr. for nine pitches. Garcia was headed to the dugout after the ninth pitch, satisfied that his sweeper had caught the top of the strike zone and struck Suarez out. It had. But Rehak called it ball four, forcing in a run and giving the Diamondbacks the lead.
That was the breaking point for Prior, who was ejected between innings by Rehak.
“There was some pitches that swung counts, and certainly that Luis García at-bat to Suárez, … that changed that inning, the scoreboard,” Roberts said. “It gets emotional, always.”
The Dodgers’ eight-run burst in the first three innings featured two doubles by Shohei Ohtani, a home run from Kiké Hernandez and a five-run third inning. But the next five innings featured just two more baserunners. Diamondbacks reliever Cristian Mena followed Rodriguez with 3⅓ innings of hitless relief and five strikeouts.
When Marte and Randall Grichuk hit back-to-back home runs off of Vesia in the eighth inning, it seemed to put the game away for the Diamondbacks. For Marte, it was his second home run of the game and third of the series.
With eight innings in the book, Roberts was not at all happy with what he had seen.
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I just felt that the offense did enough to win the game at that point in time, and to not pitch well – it’s frustrating. … I just feel that we’re better than we’ve pitched, and fortunately, our offense picked us up.”
The Dodgers tied the score with four consecutive hits in the ninth inning off Diamondbacks reliever Kevin Ginkel – a squibbed ground ball by Freeman, a double by Andy Pages that drove him in, a double by Hernandez that scored Pages and a single by Muncy that tied it.
Ginkel struck out James Outman but hit Michael Conforto with a pitch. Diamondbacks manager brought in side-arming right-hander Ryan Thompson to face Ohtani. He crushed a 1-and-2 splitter for his 12th home run of the season and his sixth in the past 10 games.
“It was a tough game,” Muncy said. “That’s something we try to preach in this clubhouse, you can’t ride the emotion too much. You gotta try to find a way to stay steady. I felt like we did a pretty good job of that this game. Got up big, they brought in a guy out of the ’pen who did a really, really good job (Mena). He was throwing really good stuff from what I could see. And then they took the lead unfortunately. But we never gave up and battled back down there at the end.”
All things are possible with Ohtani. He is now 9 for 21 with three home runs in situations labeled “Late and close” (any at-bat in the seventh inning or later where the batter’s team is trailing by three runs or fewer, is tied, or is ahead by no more than one run).
“Between him and Barry Bonds, they’re the two best players I’ve ever seen,” Roberts said. “I played with Barry. But what Shohei does in the clutch – I’ve never seen anything like what he does in the clutch.”