Dave Roberts cracked a smile, sighed a deep breath of reduction, then began to chuckle with a disbelieving shake of his head.
“You know what, I don’t know,” the Dodgers supervisor stated of his crew’s recurring potential to stage unlikely late-game comebacks. “It doesn’t help my quality of life, waiting for the seventh inning to come alive with the bats.”
Roberts’ coronary heart is perhaps worse for the wear and tear, however his lineup’s aptitude for the dramatic was as soon as once more for one of the best.
In a 6-5 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday evening, the Dodgers scored twice within the seventh inning, then twice once more within the ninth, rallying for their 18th comeback win and, due to Teoscar Hernández’s game-winning single, third walk-off victory of the season.
“Better late than never,” Roberts added, proudly, in his postgame information convention. “When it matters, they do come alive. They keep fighting … There was fight to the end.”
Really, the Dodgers needed to grind via the whole thing of a series-opening win in opposition to the Diamondbacks in entrance of a sold-out Chavez Ravine crowd.
After main by two runs early, Bobby Miller tip-toed round catastrophe in a two-run fourth inning. After retaking the lead on a monstrous Shohei Ohtani blast within the seventh, the bullpen faltered repeatedly within the closing innings at hand the Diamondbacks a 5-4 edge.
With two out within the ninth, and shutdown Arizona nearer Paul Sewald on the mound — the veteran right-hander had given only one run in 18 prior outings this season — it seemed like that scoreline would stand.
But then, within the sort of sequence the Dodgers have produced repeatedly this season, the crew flipped the script for a last-gasp win.
First, Will Smith lined a double off the wall. Then, even with first base open, the Diamondbacks elected to let Sewald pitch to Freddie Freeman, pushing the Dodgers to their final strike after the primary baseman fell behind 0-and-2 within the rely.
Alas, with chants of “Fredd-ie! Fredd-ie!” raining from the stands, Freeman turned on a 93 mph fastball over the outer fringe of the zone, roping a game-tying double into the right-center discipline hole.
“We’ve done it before,” Freeman stated. “We’ve done it to other teams.”
And as soon as the dam broke, there was no holding the Dodgers again.
Moments later, Hernández ended the sport with a bouncing single via the left facet of the infield, simply scoring Freeman to ship Dodger Stadium into delirium.
It may not have been as unlikely as their seven-run ninth inning in Colorado final month, or as jarring as their seven-run explosion in additional innings in opposition to the San Francisco Giants final week.
But in some methods, after taking place to their final strike, Tuesday felt just like the Dodgers’ most dramatic, heart-stopping, out-of-nowhere victory but.
“I just think all night long, we fought and took good at-bats,” Roberts stated. “Just not relenting. Just [so much] fight from the guys.”
The sport may’ve gotten away from the Dodgers (53-33) a lot earlier within the evening, when Miller’s five-inning, two-run begin almost got here unraveled within the high of the fourth.
After giving up a leadoff single to Joc Pederson, Miller hung a two-strike slider to infamous Dodgers killer Christian Walker, teeing the Arizona slugger up for his fifteenth profession house run at Dodger Stadium.
From there, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno bounced singles via the infield. Eugenio Suárez, who entered the evening batting simply .196, walked on a full-count fastball to load the bases.
With no outs, and the Dodgers’ early 2-0 lead immediately evaporated, Miller was on the verge of spiraling like he did in a five-run inning at Wrigley Field in April, or in two laborious frames in opposition to the Chicago White Sox final week.
“I tended to try and pinpoint a little too much,” stated Miller, whose velocity was barely down in his third begin again from a two-month shoulder damage. “Instead of just letting everything rip, which is how I should normally be.”
On the precipice of catastrophe, although, the 25-year-old flame-thrower authored a unique ending.
In simply 10 pitches, he induced a strikeout, a pop-out and a groundout to retire the facet. As he walked off the mound, he flexed his arms and set free a celebratory scream, having accomplished simply sufficient to maintain the tie rating intact.
“For me, that was all compete,” Roberts stated, calling Miller’s escape a possible inflection level within the pitcher’s season, after he entered the evening with a 6.75 ERA. “It wasn’t about mechanics, it was about trying to keep your team in the ballgame.”
Said Miller: “I knew the game was close, and I knew our offense was going to do the job and get us back in it.”
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About an hour later, that religion got here to fruition.
Ohtani landed the primary blow within the seventh, giving the Dodgers a 4-3 lead by hammering his NL-leading twenty seventh house of the season midway up the right-field pavilion.
Then, after the Diamondbacks (41-44) tied the rating on a Blake Treinen throwing error within the eighth, and went up 5-4 on Pederson’s solo blast in opposition to Evan Phillips within the ninth, the Dodgers dashed their newest sprinkle of late-game magic.
Fittingly, it was Hernández — the offseason signing who has emerged because the crew’s most constant high-leverage hitter — who walked it off by driving in his 56th run of the season, trailing solely Ohtani for most on the membership.
“We’re never going to be out of it, we’re always going to be fighting until the last out,” Hernández stated. “When you have guys like Ohtani, Freddie, Smith, Mookie when he’s in the lineup; when you’re behind those guys, all the big moments in the game are going to find you.”
And, simply as he and the membership have been doing all yr, Hernández and the Dodgers delivered when it mattered, inflicting their supervisor’s coronary heart to skip a beat as they poured out of the dugout in one other dramatic win.
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This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Times.