If the intent of the Dodgers fans who threw two baseballs at San Diego Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar and a water bottle, beer can and other debris at right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. during a lengthy seventh-inning delay was to intimidate the visiting team on Sunday night, it backfired spectacularly.
“I mean, we scored, what, six runs after that? Five? Four? I don’t know,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said with a grin. “It was six? Yeah, maybe it fired us up.”
The Padres held a three-run lead in Game 2 of the National League Division Series when play was halted and umpires worked with stadium security officials to lower the temperature among several unruly fans in the left-field and right-field corners.
When play finally resumed, San Diego right-hander Yu Darvish, who spent much of the delay crouched behind the Dodger Stadium mound, retired three straight batters after issuing a leadoff walk in the bottom of the seventh to close a seven-inning, three-hit gem in which he held red-hot Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani hitless in three at-bats.
The Padres then pounded four of the six home runs they hit Sunday night in the final two innings, Jackson Merrill and Xander Bogaerts hitting back-to-back shots in a three-run eighth and Kyle Higashioka and Fernando Tatis Jr. clearing the fence during a three-run ninth, as the Padres pulled away for a 10-2 victory.
Not only did the blowout win even the best-of-five series at one game apiece, it swung momentum significantly toward the Padres, who return to Petco Park for Games 3 and 4 and will have a decided pitching advantage in Game 3, when their ace, right-hander Michael King, opposes diminished Dodgers right-hander Walker Buehler.
“What I got out of this,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said, “is we have a bunch of dudes who showed up in front of a big, hostile crowd with stuff being thrown at them and said, ‘We’re going to talk with our play; we’re not going to back down; we’re going to elevate our game; we’re going to be together, and we’re gonna take care of business.”
To be fair, the Padres did as much talking with their mouths as they did with their bats. Machado and Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty jawed at each other several times, Flaherty first hurling an expletive toward the Padres star after he struck out Machado with two on in the top of the sixth.
The two then barked at each other in the bottom of the sixth after Flaherty accused Machado of throwing a ball into the Dodgers dugout between innings. Machado was also mad at Flaherty for hitting Tatis with a 92-mph sinker to start the sixth.
Tatis, who has a .625 regular-season average (five for eight) off Flaherty with one homer and three doubles, hit a solo homer to left field off Flaherty in the first inning Sunday night and a 111.7-mph double to left in the third.
“I was fired up after getting Manny out — it’s a big spot in the playoffs, that’s what happens, oh well,” Flaherty said, adding about the ball getting thrown in the Dodgers dugout: “Everybody catches the tail end of me and him going at it, but I was sitting there for my team. I wasn’t going to go at him.”
Machado claimed he wasn’t trying to taunt the Dodgers.
“I throw balls in both dugouts all the time — they have foul balls, you throw the ball back in there,” Machado said. “But when you try to hit our best hitter … you can’t get him out, don’t hit him, right? They have the best player in the game in Ohtani. We don’t try to hit Ohtani. We try to get him out. Don’t go out there and try to hit my guy.”
Flaherty said the pitch that hit Tatis in the left thigh was not intentional.
“Look, I missed in the first inning and threw the ball over the middle — I wasn’t going to miss over the plate again,” Flaherty said. “I have no reason to hit a guy there to start off the sixth. As good as he’s been, we were down in the game, I’m going in for effect, he didn’t get out of the way, and it hit him.
“I wasn’t trying to lead off the inning by hitting him. That doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t go up near his head. I was just trying to push a guy off the plate, and he didn’t get out of the way. Sometimes that happens, and they were upset about it.”
Machado wasn’t buying Flaherty’s explanation.
“You hit Tatis with a sinker after he’s two for two with a bomb and a double off of him?” Machado said. “I mean, I’ll let you guys decide that.”
Tatis, who celebrated his ninth-inning homer with an epic bat flip, a long stare into his dugout and a deliberate trot around the bases, took a more diplomatic approach than Machado when asked about the pitch that hit him.
“I know my boys have my back the entire time, and everybody saw it tonight,” he said. “But we’re playing baseball. It’s too early in the game to be doing stuff like that. It’s too important of a series to be throwing at guys. That’s what my baseball IQ is telling me.
“When he hit me, he just gave me more energy. My boys gave me more energy. And I know from there, we were just going to embrace that moment and take that energy and use it to play baseball the way we did tonight.”
