Padres Punch Back, Beat Dodgers, Head Home With NLDS Game 2 Win

A game that figured to be a pitcher’s duel and felt like a 11–10 outburst was neither. Instead, 20 hits, five home runs, and somehow just eight total runs later, it was a classic, tense, tooth-and-nail affair in which neither team enjoyed the comfort of a win probability over 75% until the conclusion of the seventh inning, and even then, it hardly felt that way. At the end, the Padres punched back and evened the score against their big brother/daddy, beating the 111-win Dodgers, 5–3.

After Los Angeles took Game 1 on Tuesday, Clayton Kershaw met Yu Darvish in Game 2 on Wednesday night in a matchup of two of the league’s finest of the moment and the last decade. But both had their hands full with deeply talented lineups. Darvish was missing velocity on most of his arsenal, issued two walks, and surrendered three home runs, but spread the damage out enough to leave with a lead, albeit after just 15 outs. Kershaw kept the Dodgers in the game but also lasted just five innings, though he did manage to pass Justin Verlander and reclaim, for now, the all-time career postseason strikeout record with 213.

The offenses had the upper hand. Manny Machado started the scoring by turning on a 2–1 Kershaw slider that stayed up in the zone for a 381-foot home run — a poor pitch to a player who’s become one of the best slider hitters in the game. Machado finished the regular season with the league’s seventh-most weighted runs against sliders, at 9.8; just three years ago, he was seventh-worst at -9.5.

It may have been some ugly déjà vu for Kershaw, who gave up a homer to Machado to the same part of the park on a slider in Game 2 of the 2020 NLDS, albeit that one below the zone in an eerie, empty game at Globe Life Field in Arlington. When you live a thousand postseason lives, history is bound to repeat itself.

Kershaw took a different approach against Machado with a one-run lead and two runners on in the third, starting him off with three fastballs but falling behind 2–1 (though the second four-seamer might have clipped the top of the zone). Anticipating that the lefty wouldn’t throw a fourth straight fastball in a hitter’s count, Machado waited on a curveball and took it down the line for an RBI double, knotting the game at 2–2 and moving Juan Soto into position as the go-ahead run, which he would score two hitters later.

Scoring early seemed like a good sign for San Diego, which had lost 15 of its 20 meetings with Los Angeles going into Game 2 but had gone 4–2 when it had managed to score four or more runs. But each time the Padres plated another, the Dodgers seemed to find an answer. On a night when the ball was carrying well, they answered with solo shots off Darvish in each of their first three frames. Two of them — off the bats of Freddie Freeman and Trea Turner — came on pitches that caught too much of the plate. A lineup like the Dodgers’ makes you pay for mistakes.

Max Muncy took advantage of another apparent mistake, though this one not Darvish’s. He found himself in an 0–2 hole, a situation in which he had hit .149/.182/.234 with just one home run in 99 plate appearances this season. Darvish’s third pitch was a 69.2-mph curveball that Muncy held off on — and one that home plate umpire Chris Segal let go as a ball.

Four pitches later, Muncy deposited a high 77.2-mph slider into the right field bleachers to give the Dodgers their only lead of the night; it was the first of three hard-hit balls he would connect for off Darvish.

For all those efforts, for an inning or two, Game 2 was about who could execute defensively and, just as much, who couldn’t. In the fifth inning with the score tied at three, Mookie Betts drew a leadoff walk and was then cut down by Austin Nola trying to steal second. The next hitter, Trea Turner, ripped a 102.9-mph grounder with a .510 xBA right at Machado, who fired to first just in time for the out.

The following frame, with a runner on first and one out, Turner booted a potential inning-ending double play ball off the bat of Wil Myers. That was immediately followed by a well-placed ground-ball single from Jurickson Profar — his fifth RBI of the postseason already — to re-establish the Padres’ lead. But a spectacular play at the plate by reliever Brusdar Graterol on a Trent Grisham bunt and a running catch by Cody Bellinger on Nola’s deep fly ball ended what could have been a bigger inning.

For only scoring three runs, the Dodgers’ offense, which San Diego failed to retire in order in even one half-inning, was relentless. In the sixth, they put runners on first and third with no outs, knocking Darvish out of the game. In came 31-year-old rookie Robert Suarez, who a year ago was pitching for the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. He danced through trouble, striking out Justin Turner and getting a double play grounder from Gavin Lux. The very next inning, Suarez created his own jam: runners on second and third with one out and Trea Turner at the plate. He recovered to retire him and, after an intentional walk to Freddie Freeman, Will Smith with the bases loaded. He finished with two improbable goose eggs on the night, and his game-high .418 win probability added was the fifth-highest by a reliever in the last 10 postseasons.

Our run expectancy figures had the Dodgers with 1.80 runs in the sixth and 1.36 in the seventh. Both situations were so promising for the home team that Los Angeles briefly moved back above 50% in win expectancy despite trailing: 60.9% in the sixth, 54.3% in the seventh.

Jake Cronenworth gave the Padres insurance with the fifth solo home run of the night in the eighth off of Blake Treinen, but that lead didn’t feel safe on a night like this. The Dodgers put the tying run on base in the eighth and brought him to the plate again in the ninth. But while Suarez, Nick Martinez, and Josh Hader found themselves in more trouble than their colleagues had in San Diego’s Game 1 loss, they managed to get out of it. The end result: through two games, Padres relievers have thrown 9.1 scoreless innings.

It’s hard to overstate how important this win was for San Diego. Instead of heading into Game 3 down 0–2 in the best-of-five series, they’re headed home with roughly even odds of advancing, per our ZiPS projections. Not bad for a team that entered the postseason with just a 20% chance of making the NLCS and with two 100-plus-win teams standing in the way. A decisive Game 3 awaits on Friday night, with Blake Snell set to face Tony Gonsolin, who has pitched just two innings since returning from a forearm strain in the final week of the season.