SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers did their best to downplay the significance of facing the San Diego Padres for the first time since last fall’s epic National League Division Series. But the tequila might have tasted a little sweeter Wednesday afternoon.
The Dodgers have a tradition – shots of tequila as a team every time they win a series. Teoscar Hernandez had the biggest shot, breaking out of a month-long slump and breaking a tie with a three-run home run in the sixth inning that lifted the Dodgers to a 5-2 victory over their NL West rivals.
“I think that first game was important, honestly. I really do. Just getting the first one and then trying to find a way to split the next two,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But it’s fun playing these guys. They know they’re talented. We know we’re talented. It’s a fun series. It’s a big series.
“It’s not the end-all, be-all in June. But it was fun.”
There will be more fun in Los Angeles on Monday night when the Padres come to Dodger Stadium to begin a four-game series.
For now, the Dodgers re-affirmed their status atop the NL West by taking two out of three from the Padres. They left Petco Park having pushed the Padres two games back in the NL West. The new second-place team, the San Francisco Giants, comes to Dodger Stadium this weekend.
“It feels good, especially because they’re really close in position in the standings. Every win against any team is important,” Hernandez said, staying true to the company line after the game.
Since coming back from a groin muscle injury that sidelined him for two weeks in mid-May, Hernandez had not been himself. The most reliable RBI man in their lineup through the first six weeks of the season, Hernandez hit .171 with a sub-.500 OPS in 20 games after returning.
“I’ve been working really hard, every at-bat, trying to get good pitches to hit, not do too much … trying to do the best that I can now, trying to get back the feeling that I had before I got injured,” Hernandez said.
“It’s hard to think that the timing and the pitch selection and trying to do things in between, in the middle of the game, in big at-bats, especially when I have three guys in front that get on base a lot.”
Whether he had come back from the injury too soon or was just having a difficult time rediscovering his swing, the slump prompted Roberts to drop Hernandez to fifth in the batting order Wednesday.
The game found him, nonetheless.
With the score tied in the sixth, Freddie Freeman beat out an infield single on a ground ball that caromed off Padres reliever Adrian Morejon. Jeremiah Estrada came in and walked Will Smith, bringing up Hernandez with two on and one out.
“He was struggling finding the strike zone,” Hernandez said of Estrada. “He threw what I think was seven balls in a row, and I was just trying to focus, get a good pitch middle-middle and not do too much.”
Hernandez stepped in 1 for 9 during the series in San Diego with strikeouts in his previous four at-bats (two on Wednesday and two on Tuesday). But he got a 2-and-1 fastball belt high over the inner half and drove it 420 feet to straightaway center field for his first home run since May 21 and only his second since April 28 – before he strained the adductor muscle in his left leg during the Dodgers’ early-May series in Miami.
“It was a big hit,” Roberts said. “The last few weeks he’s really been scuffling and felt like he hasn’t contributed. He has a knack for getting big hits and that’s as big as they get so far at this point in the season.”
That hit settled a game that featured Ben Casparius’ debut as an interim replacement in the Dodgers’ injury-plagued starting rotation. They will gladly take a version of what he gave them Wednesday every fifth or sixth day. And Casparius will gladly take the opportunity to go back to his preferred assignment.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said when asked his preference. “And obviously, I’ve been doing it for the majority of my professional career, so it’s something I’m comfortable with routine-wise. I’m just looking forward to what’s going on and what’s coming up next.”
He went four innings one out short of his MLB high and allowed just three hits and walked two.
All of those baserunners came in the second inning. The Padres’ Gavin Sheets, Xander Bogaerts and Jake Cronenworth had three consecutive singles with one out, but Sheets was thrown out at the plate by center fielder Andy Pages who handled Cronenworth’s single and came up firing. His throw was measured at 99 mph by Statcast.
“Andy is playing some all-around good baseball,” Roberts said. “Whether I have him in center, in right, in left. Preventing runs. The defense. The jumps. Getting to balls. The hits with runners in scoring position. Just all of it. It was really a heckuva play and changed the momentum.”
That saved Casparius a run but he walked the next two batters with two outs to force one in anyway.
Michael Conforto matched that run with a solo home run in the fifth then Hernandez gave the Dodgers’ bullpen a lead to protect.
The Padres chipped into it with a single run in the sixth and were poised to do more in the seventh. Making his second appearance since a rehab assignment filled with control issues (he walked the first five batters he faced), Michael Kopech retired one batter but then walked three to load the bases.
Anthony Banda came in and cleaned up his mess, getting Luis Arraez to pop out and Manny Machado to ground out on a 3-and-0 pitch.
“Banda coming in and doing what he did in that spot was a game-changer right there,” Roberts said.
The play by Mookie Betts on Machado’s grounder, chopped toward the hole, was also a change.
“He doesn’t make that play last year,” Roberts said. “He’s playing a very good shortstop right now. And he might think differently, but I don’t think he makes that play last year.
“Securing it, being able to throw from different arm angles – that’s something he just didn’t do well last year given the lack of reps. But that’s a play that, in a big spot, time of game, the stakes right there, to make that play was huge.”
The Dodgers added an insurance run in the ninth after Shohei Ohtani tripled. Smith drove him in with a two-out single.
“The atmosphere was great. It’s one of the more loud parks that you go to around the league,” Conforto said. “But it definitely felt different in this series.”