Sunday was gut-check time for the Dodgers.
Even before they blew a late-game, three-run lead.
As a clearly frustrated Dave Roberts put it ahead of first pitch, the team needed to “not get embarrassed” in the face of a potential three-game sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks, and play with a level of “pride” that had been missing the previous two nights in this unexpectedly challenging weekend series.
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“Whatever it is, we’ve got to do it right now,” the manager said. “We’ve got to win today. We’ve got to play better baseball. … There’s more in there. There just is.”
In the 5-4, walk-off win over the Diamondbacks that followed, his team finally delivered despite self-inflicted adversity.
After letting the Diamondbacks (68-70) get back into the game, and nearly squandering Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s seven-inning gem, the Dodgers prevailed on Will Smith’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, moving two games up in the National League West standings after the San Diego Padres’ rubber-match loss to the Minnesota Twins earlier in the day.
The win should have been simpler.
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Yamamoto gave up just one run and tied his career-high with 10 strikeouts without conceding a single walk. The Dodgers’ lineup, meanwhile, wore down Arizona starter Brandon Pfaadt with competitive early at-bats. They scored twice in the first after leadoff hits from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, plus an RBI double from Freddie Freeman, and again in the fourth and fifth when Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages each delivered full-count singles to score a run.
“I thought today there was a lot of fight,” Roberts said. “Today was a good sign. I was pleased with today.”
Tanner Scott, however, almost wasted the good vibes.
In the eighth, he gave up a pair of two-out singles before Corbin Carroll took him deep for a tying three-run blast. The long ball was the ninth Scott has surrendered this year, compared to the 11 total he had yielded over the past three seasons. It came on the kind of misplaced, center-cut fastball that has plagued him repeatedly, leaving the $72-million offseason acquisition to be booed on his way off the mound as his ERA rose to 4.44.
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“You never want to see the ball leave the park, especially in that situation,” Scott said. “It’s super frustrating.”
Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott pitches in the eighth inning Sunday. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Yet, at what felt like another inflection point in the…