SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers entered the late innings Monday in an unenviable position: trailing the Padres, whose biggest strength is their bullpen.
“When they have a lead they don’t relinquish it too often,” manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers’ 1-0 loss Monday. “You know the numbers — when they’re ahead in the seventh inning they don’t lose. You do have to be a little more aggressive and capitalize when you do get those chances.”
Including Monday, the Padres are 20-2 when leading after six innings, 21-1 when leading after seven, and they have a perfect 22-0 record when leading after eight.
Even when Padres closer Mason Miller got off to an uncharacteristically wild start in the ninth inning Monday, the Dodgers failed to capitalize.
He walked Freddie Freeman and Kyle Tucker on nine pitches. And the next three batters — Will Smith, Max Muncy and Andy Pages — all have proven their ability to do damage in clutch moments.
But it was Miller on the mound, a rare reliever who could actually challenge for the Cy Young Award.
“In this kind of series, you know you’re going to have close games,” Freeman said after the game. “And we just couldn’t get it done.”
Miller got out of the jam with a fly out, strikeout and ground ball, and notched his league-leading 15th save.
Shohei Ohtani dives back to first base in the fourth inning.
(Tony Ding / Ap Photo/tony Ding)
“We still had really good at-bats,” Freeman said. “There’s a silver lining to it. Scoring off Mason is going to be really hard to do. It’s going to take one of those kinds of innings where you can maybe walk a couple of guys and get a bloop. Not much squaring up going on against him.
“But we had an opportunity, maybe with him throwing a lot of pitches might make him be down next game. You just try to have little wins.”
The Dodgers could also avoid him by claiming a lead. On Monday, Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto held the Padres to three hits and one run — Miguel Andujar’s first-inning homer.
But the Dodgers’ offense, which scored 31 runs in a three-game series against the Angels, only managed four hits off Padres starting pitcher Michael King, and only one in the first five innings.
“You’re trying to cover realistically 30 inches,” Freeman said. “Because you have ball-to-strike pitches — you’ve got backdoor sliders that are starting as balls coming back, you’ve got front-door sinkers for lefties. So it’s not just the whole plate you’re worried about; you’re going to worry about a whole lot of different things. … He had all of it working tonight.”
The Dodgers finally strung some hits together in the sixth. With two outs and Hyeseong Kim on first, Shohei Ohtani beat out a swinging bunt, and the throw from Padres catcher Rodolfo Duran zipped past first base.
Kim, who took off from first on contact, rounded third hard but slammed on the brakes when third base coach Dino Ebel held up the stop sign.
“It’s kind of the timing of it, where [Fernando] Tatis [Jr.] came up with the ball, and Dino’s got to make the decision,” Roberts said. “You don’t know that he’s not going to come up with it clean. At that point in time, to be quite honest, Dino had the best view of the runner coming in, Kim, and where they were at on the field. So it’s one of those things, I’m definitely not going to second guess it.”
Kim was stranded there.
Then in the eighth, he again made it to third on a single from Ohtani with two outs. And again, he got stuck 90 feet away from tying the score.