Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
Three of the best handful of hitters on the planet were on the same field at Yankee Stadium yesterday, and the Phillies/Mets rivalry is as venomous as any in baseball, but take a straw poll of the real sickos and they’ll tell you the marquee Division Series tilt is the one between the Dodgers and Padres. It’s not only a bitter intradivisional matchup, it marks the MLB playoff debut of the Face of Baseball and features so many of the game’s stars that this paragraph would need to cup its hands together to carry all of their names. Game 1 absolutely delivered on the hype, as the teams traded haymakers every other inning for the first half of an incredibly tense contest before the Dodgers’ relievers snuffed out whatever embers of a rally the Padres could muster from the fifth inning on. Los Angeles won 7-5 to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series.
With the sun sinking low in a hazy, purple Angelino sky, the Padres drew blood in the top of the first. Yoshinobu Yamamoto began the game by surrendering a leadoff single to Luis Arraez before two wild pitches/passed balls shuttled him to third. Then Fernando Tatis Jr. walked, and Yamamoto officially had a no-out mess on his hands. That would soon be cleaned up in San Diego’s favor by a Manny Machado two-run homer, which came on a two-strike splitter that had so little dive to it that broadcaster Joe Davis misidentified the pitch. The Padres plated three in the first and muffled the home crowd:
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Temporarily, anyway. The Dodgers didn’t respond with actual runs right away, but from the very beginning, they put pressure on Dylan Cease, who walked batters and allowed multiple baserunners in three of the innings he began. Cease wiggled out of trouble in the first but not the second, as a leadoff walk to catcher Will Smith and subsequent single by second baseman Gavin Lux (why throw Lux anything but fastballs there?) ensured Shohei Ohtani would come to the plate with runners on base as the lineup turned over. This is what followed:
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The sound of the ball off Ohtani’s bat as he compressed Cease’s heater was heard by the astronauts stuck on the International Space Station, an equalizing, three-run jaw-dropper that left the bat at just shy of 112 mph. The seesaw tipped back in the other direction in the top of the third inning. A Jackson Merrill walk was sandwiched between doubles by Tatis and Xander Bogaerts, the latter of whom hooked a hanging Yamamoto curveball into the left field corner to plate two runs; San Diego had a 5-3 lead heading into the bottom of the third. While Dave Roberts allowed Yamamoto to finish that inning, he would start to string relievers together beginning in the fourth. And it was the fourth that would become the most dramatic and consequential inning of the game.
Padres manager Mike Shildt was also rather proactive in removing Cease, who once again allowed the bottom of Los Angeles’ lineup to reach base ahead of Ohtani. Shildt didn’t let Cease face Ohtani for a third time and yanked him in favor of lefty Adrian Morejon, who entered with Tommy Edman and Miguel Rojas on base. At times, it looked like Morejon might be throwing gasoline on the fire. After nearly hitting Ohtani (and then breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge a Dodger Stadium crowd that began booing him), Morejon beat Shohei with a fastball and broke his bat to force a weak pop up, but the ball found daylight in shallow center field, fell in for a single, and loaded the bases. A wild pitch allowed a run to score and left a base open for Mookie Betts, who was then intentionally walked with a 2-2 count. Freddie Freeman followed with a grounder hit to Padres first baseman Donovan Solano, who made an awesome play to cut the runner down at the plate:
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Especially given that Freeman is returning from an ankle injury, it’s possible that Solano had the time to instead throw to second base and start an inning-ending double play. That would have been much easier to execute for a left-handed first baseman than a righty like Solano, who would have needed to flip his hips around before feeding the shortstop. Only with the benefit of hindsight does it feel imperative for Solano to have tried to turn two there. That’s because, after Jeremiah Estrada relieved Morejon, Teoscar Hernández immediately singled in two runs (great job by Tatis backing up Merrill on this play, or it would have been worse) and gave the Dodgers a lead that they would not relinquish. The Dodgers added a run in the fifth (thanks mostly to a Machado error) and maintained their two-run lead for the rest of the game:
Ohtani, Freeman, Lux and Edman each had two hits for the Dodgers, but Los Angeles’ bullpen was really the key to their Game 1 victory. Tasked with working most of the game after Yamamoto’s short and rocky start, a combination of Ryan Brasier, Alex Vesia, Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech (who looked shaky himself), and Blake Treinen (whose peak slider looks like it’s back) allowed just two hits across six total shutout innings. The Padres did threaten at the very end of the game, but Treinen’s stuff was simply too much for anyone to get a key hit, and the game ended with Machado offering at a slider that started on the edge of the plate and finished in Huntington Park. The Padres bullpen also pitched well, particularly Jason Adam, who only needed 19 pitches to get four outs, including Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman. Only Treinen, who threw 39 pitches en route to a five-out save, was used to the point where he’ll likely be shelved for Sunday night’s Game 2, with Yu Darvish and Jack Flaherty set to the take the mound.
