For most of Friday night at Dodger Stadium, a crowd of 49,399 booed loudly for Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, cheered wildly every time the Lakers’ score was flashed on the screens, but sat quietly for most of the action in between.
For the first home game of the season against the rival San Diego Padres, the scene at Chavez Ravine was somewhat subdued.
At least it was until Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman came to the plate in the seventh inning.
Moments after the Padres had tied the score with a two-out rally in the top of the inning, the Dodgers’ two biggest stars electrified the night, jolting the building to life with back-to-back home runs that sent the Dodgers to an eventual 4-2 victory.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
“Mookie hitting a home run kind of just reenergizes everything,” Freeman said. “And I was able to get a pitch and put a good swing on it too.”
After slow opening months — by their former most-valuable-player award standards, at least — Betts and Freeman have seemingly hit their stride during the Dodgers’ recent 11-2 streak.
Betts has hit five of his eight home runs this season in the last 13 games. On Friday, he capitalized on a questionable pitching decision from the Padres — who summoned left-handed reliever Tim Hill for the seventh, despite two right-handed hitters being due up for the Dodgers — for a solo drive that broke a 2-2 tie.
Freeman doubled the Dodgers’ lead two pitches later, following up his two-run double that opened the scoring in the third inning with a moonshot that just cleared the wall in right.
“A couple of days ago, I finally felt something in my swing,” said Freeman, who straightened out some over-rotation in his hips Wednesday while facing tough Milwaukee Brewers left-hander Wade Miley.
“Having Wade Miley throwing cutters and sliders, it helped me stay through the baseball a little bit more with my hips,” added Freeman, who previously had just an .822 on-base-plus-slugging percentage to start the season. “So I thought about it all day and a half. I didn’t want to lose that train of thought. So I was thinking about it all day yesterday, and I was able to take it in today.”
The Dodgers (24-15) seemed unlikely to need the extra offense early Friday night, as starter Dustin May rolled through six scoreless innings on just 66 pitches.
The right-hander didn’t give up his first hit until the fourth and went screaming off the mound after stranding a leadoff double in the fifth.
Though he had only three strikeouts and failed to generate many swings-and-misses, he excelled nonetheless by inducing a string of weak ground balls and harmless soft contact.
Dodgers starting pitcher Dustin May gave up two runs in 6 2/3 innings.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
“He pitched great and got deep in the game,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “That’s kind of what we expect now.”
With two outs in the seventh, however, May finally ran out of gas. Xander Bogaerts stung a double to center. Matt Carpenter extended the inning with a walk. Then Ha-Seong Kim tied the score for the Padres (19-20) with a two-run double down the left-field line.
For a brief moment, the little energy that was building in the stadium fizzled.
But then Betts and Freeman produced their seventh-inning frenzy, sparking a rivalry-game celebration that — with the help of a scoreless relief appearance from Caleb Ferguson and a five-out save from Evan Phillips — managed to last the rest of the night.
“For us to be able to come back in that half inning and score two runs,” Freeman said, “I think that’s just showing who we are the last couple of weeks.”