There are walk-off wins. And then there are walk-off sighs of relief.
On Monday night, in a game they led by five runs through five innings, the Dodgers experienced the latter, needing Tommy Edman’s two-run single in the bottom of the 10th to save the day in a 7-6 victory over the Miami Marlins.
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“I was telling the coaches earlier tonight, it just seems like we’re a .500 team given what’s going on,” manager Dave Roberts said, with his club sitting at 19-10 entering Tuesday, having gone 11-10 since its 8-0 start but still only one game behind the New York Mets for the best record in the majors.
“The month of April has been up and down for us,” infielder Miguel Rojas added. “Even though our record is good, we feel like we haven’t really hit the gear that this team can hit.”
On Monday, at least, they avoided a stark shift into reverse.
Coming off a needed series win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, and opening their first of two series against the rebuilding Marlins, the Dodgers knew this was a soft spot on the schedule. A chance to rebuild momentum after their up-and-down play.
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“This is a stretch where if we play good baseball … we can win a lot of games and put ourselves in a good position for down the road,” Rojas said.
Good baseball and winning baseball, however, aren’t always the same.
And on Monday, the Dodgers played a little of both, roaring out to a 5-0 lead before rallying late for their third straight win.
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“That’s a good thing as far as there’s no complacency with our ballclub,” Roberts said. “All the stuff that we’ve gone through with having the inconsistencies with the offense, some hiccups sometimes with the defense, with the injuries, and still to be where we’re at — I think that that’s a bad sign for the rest of the league.”
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Monday should have been a much more straightforward win for the Dodgers.
Shohei Ohtani scored in the first inning after a leadoff single, a steal of second base and an RBI single from Freddie Freeman. Mookie Betts doubled the lead in the third with a bases-loaded hit. Rojas, a former Marlins shortstop, tacked on again in the fourth, roping a double down the left field line for the loudest of his three hits.
That set the stage for what felt like a game-sealing sequence in the fifth, when Teoscar Hernández followed Freeman’s leadoff walk with a sky-high, two-run blast to…