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Everyone thought it was gone. Jurickson Profar hopped around, ostensibly upset that Mookie Betts’ fly ball had dropped into the left field seats. The camera panned to Betts triumphantly rounding the bases. The scorebug flipped from zero to one under the Dodgers logo. And then, a few seconds later, all was clear: Profar had pulled a Julio Rodríguez, fooling everyone into thinking it was a homer before whipping the ball back into the infield. He wasn’t hopping out of frustration, it turned out; on second look, he was engaging in some well-earned taunting, goading the assembled Dodgers fans after his excellent defensive play.
JURICKSON PROFAR ROBS MOOKIE!!! #NLDS pic.twitter.com/bvByqwsAKB
Profar’s first-inning home run robbery and subsequent gloating was a sign of things to come. In a tense clash between these two Southern California rivals, the Padres came out on top, 10-2, to level the NLDS at a game apiece, battling their opponents both on and off the field throughout the course of this bizarre evening.
The weirdness peaked in the seventh inning, when the game was delayed for over 10 minutes while fans threw things onto the field, pausing the action. While security guards attempted to get the crowd under control, Padres manager Mike Shildt gathered his fielders, issuing a fiery impromptu pep talk as the team huddled around their appointed leader. After the inning, an even larger group meeting was held in the Padres dugout, this time led by the on-the-field leader, Manny Machado, who issued marching orders to the rest of the San Diego roster.
Cause and effect is a tricky thing to parse, but the motivational words appeared to do their job. The Padres crushed four home runs in the final two innings, turning what was a relatively close affair into a laugher. The pep talks and subsequent beatdown were the culmination of a series of heated engagements between the Padres and what felt at times like the entire city of Los Angeles.
Darvish, when he’s on, is such a graceful pitcher. He rests so comfortably on his back foot, keeping his balance as he moves through each phase of his delivery. On Sunday, he was in control of both his body and the Dodgers lineup, leveraging one of the widest arsenals in baseball to great effect.
Of his 82 pitches, 17 were sweepers; at 21% usage, that was his most frequently thrown pitch. In his highly anticipated showdowns against Ohtani, he showed the phenom six pitches. Ohtani struck out the first time and tapped two harmless groundballs in his second and third try. The defense backed Darvish up beautifully.
Profar, of course, brought back the homer in the first. Tatis snagged a hard-hit line drive off the bat of Freddie Freeman to rob the slugger of a double. Jackson Merrill corralled a hard-hit Enrique Hernández line drive against the wall. And unlikely defensive hero Luis Arraez made multiple excellent plays in big spots, killing two rallies by catching a hard line drive and picking a tough groundball.
Meanwhile, Flaherty was never particularly sharp, even as he ultimately settled into the game. He stuck around for 5.1 innings, giving up four runs and striking out two. But after three poor innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 1, the Dodgers were in need of some length from their starter.
Early on, Darvish wasn’t particularly sharp either, prompting Joe Davis to remark that “it feels like we’re watching last night’s game on repeat.” Darvish did log two strikeouts in the first, including one of Ohtani that featured five different pitches — cutter, slow curve, sweeper, four-seam fastball, gyro slider. But he nearly gave up that home run to Betts, saved only by the excellent defense (and trolling) of Profar. And he immediately ran into trouble in the second, allowing two hits and a walk to give the Dodgers a bases loaded, no outs opportunity.
Both starters settled in during the middle innings. In Ohtani v. Darvish round 2, Darvish switched up his tactics, throwing a sweeper and three splitters, taking advantage of Ohtani’s aggressiveness. On the third one, Ohtani let his front hip leak open and subsequently rolled over to first base. To finish it off, he punched out Betts on an extremely rare four-seamer.
As the sixth inning began, strategic questions came to the fore. Would the Dodgers try to squeeze another inning of Flaherty, daring him to navigate this dangerous stretch of the Padres order? Would the Padres, with their murderer’s row of relievers, permit Darvish to face Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman for a third time? In short order, none of these questions mattered. Upon return from commercial break, Joe Davis informed the audience that Freeman had been removed from the game due to ankle discomfort. (After…
