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.
With the win, the Dodgers took two out of three from the Padres and 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.
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. Whether he had come back from the injury too soon or was just having a difficult time rediscovering his swing, the slump prompted Dodgers manager Dave 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.
Hernandez stepped up 1 for 9 during the series in San Diego with strikeouts in his previous four at-bats (two Wednesday and two 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.
That 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.
Casparius 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.
That should have saved Casparius a run but he walked the next two batters with two outs to force in a run.
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.
The Dodgers added an insurance run in the ninth after Shohei Ohtani tripled. Smith drove him in with a two-out single.
More to come on this story.
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