Steve Webb
SAN DIEGO, CA — Never count this team out. There are other first place teams who go down 5-0 early and pretty much phone in the rest of the game. Not the 2023 Dodgers. Faced with just that scenario, the Dodgers came up with their biggest inning of the year, scoring eight runs in a glorious fourth inning explosion, capped off by a Mookie Betts grand slam. After that, there was no stopping the hit parade as the Dodgers went on to stomp the Friars 13-7 to take three out of four in this wraparound series.
Though the Betts salami was the big blast of the day, almost every Dodger got a hit except the bat boy. Led by James Outman‘s 4-for-4 day, the Dodgers also got two-hit games from Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and Miguel Rojas.
The fourth inning was so awesome, it deserves a little attention on its own. Freddie Freeman, as he often does, started things off with a single. Then, after a Will Smith lineout and a Max Muncy walk, David Peralta doubled to drive in the Dodgers’ first run. Jason Heyward smoked a double into the corner to score two more. Then, after a Kiké Hernandez walk and a James Outman single loaded up the bases, Miguel Rojas sent the runners station to station when he floated a single into centerfield.
With the bags still juiced, Mookie Betts stepped to the plate, having already struck out twice in the game. This time, though, he got ahead of Padres starter Seth Lugo 3-0. And you’re damn right he had the green light. Mookie absolutely unloaded on a center-cut fastball and deposited it among the paying customers in the left centerfield stand some 396 feet away. It was a beautiful swing and a beautiful way to crush the Padres’ hopes for the day like a paper soda cup underneath the bleachers.
Tony Gonsolin got the start in this one, and he wasn’t that great, getting roughed up in a five-run third. However, he did settle in after that and ended up going a full six innings on just 84 pitches. Joe Kelly struck out the side in the seventh, and then Brian (not Daniel) Hudson finished things up for the visitors.
After the big eight-run explosion, more runs were hardly necessary, but they came just the same. Kiké went yard, Will Smith drove in a run. Max Muncy doubled home two more, and finally David Peralta hit a sacrifice fly to score the Dodgers’ 13th run of the afternoon. So, yeah, it was a good day at the ballpark.
“Other teams could’ve just conceded and split the series,” manager Dave Roberts said, after his club took three of four games at Petco Park to move 11 games clear of the fourth-place Padres. “But to our credit we kept scratching, clawing, putting together good at-bats … We fought back.”
“We just don’t give up,” said Betts, who collected his 31st home run and the Dodgers’ 11th grand slam of the season, tying a single-season franchise record. “Anything can happen at any given time and we all know that. We’ve been around for a while. And the young guys are kind of taking to it.”
Let’s hope the good times continue in the desert, when the Dodgers and the D-backs hook up for a quick two-game set in Phoenix. It will Julio Urias and then Bobby Miller getting the starts to finish out the road trip, and then, perhaps, maybe, the return of Clayton Kershaw when the Dodgers return to town for the Rockies.
Now, we just have to hope the other wild card teams can get their acts together and knock San Diego out of this thing once and for all.
