Diamondbacks

For both the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, the assignment over the next few weeks figured to be simple:

Take care of business and beat the teams you’re supposed to.

After all, the Dodgers are beginning a stretch of 15 straight games against clubs below .500. The Padres, meanwhile, will play 13 of their next 16 games against opponents with losing records, the lone exception being the 68-67 Cincinnati Reds.

It appeared to be an opportunity for each contender to stack up wins, build late-season momentum and try to wrest away control of a division race that the Dodgers currently lead by two games.

The only problem: They both flunked their first test on Friday.

Beating the bad teams, it turns out, isn’t always as easy as it seems.

In Los Angeles, the Dodgers suffered a lackluster 3-0 loss to the underperforming Arizona Diamondbacks, managing just three hits and getting only one runner in scoring position en route to suffering their seventh shutout this season. The Padres, meanwhile, were knocked around by the tanking Minnesota Twins in a 7-4 defeat earlier in the evening.

It meant, for one night, the standings remained static.

Instead of catapulting themselves into exceedingly soft portions of their schedules, both teams stumbled to equally disappointing results.

At Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers’ loss snapped their four-game winning streak — halting their recent upswing both on the mound and at the plate.

Starting pitcher Blake Snell gave up three runs in 5⅓ innings and battled through a stark drop in fastball velocity. After entering the night averaging 95.4 mph with his heater, Snell was stuck closer to 93 mph in his first start since the birth of his second child last weekend.

“I had a busy week, man. A lot going on,” Snell said of his velocity drop. “I’m not worried about [it]. I know what’s going on. So it’ll come back. I’m zero worried about it. I mean, I was aware of it. But I’m not gonna push it. It is what it is. It’s what I had today. Just gotta be better.”

Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers in the first inning Friday against the Diamondbacks.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Though he struck out eight batters and allowed only four hits, one of them was costly: a two-run home run by Blaze Alexander in the fourth, on a fastball over the plate that clocked in at only 93.4 mph. Snell’s night ended after two more knocks brought in a third run in the sixth, with Corbin Carroll hitting a leadoff double and scoring on Gabriel Moreno’s RBI single.

The bigger problem for the Dodgers (77-58), however, was their offense.

Arizona starter Zac Gallen entered the night in the midst of a dismal contract season, beginning play with a 5.13 earned-run average despite improved form in August. Against the Dodgers, though, he was lights out, yielding only two hits in six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts and three walks.

“We just obviously couldn’t figure anything out,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We just really couldn’t put anything together all night long.”

Indeed, even more troublesome was the Dodgers’ inability to generate much against the Diamondbacks’ bullpen — a woebegone unit that has spoiled Arizona’s playoff aspirations by ranking 26th in the majors with a 4.73 ERA.

Andy Pages managed a two-out single in the seventh but was left stranded. After that, the Dodgers’ only other baserunner came on a walk from Teoscar Hernández in the game’s penultimate at-bat.

“This was the first one in a while … that we’ve seen sort of a lackluster performance,” Roberts said, his club unable to extend its momentum after a sweep of the Reds. “Obviously you’ve got to give credit to Gallen, too. But it was one of those nights that I just didn’t see the at-bats that we’ve been seeing the last week.”

Of course, things didn’t go much better for the Padres (75-60) on Friday, either.

Before their game in Minnesota, the team announced that shortstop Xander Bogaerts was going on the injured list with a foot fracture, which could keep him out for the rest of the regular season. Then, Nestor Cortes followed up his six shutout innings against the Dodgers last week with a three-inning, three-run clunker that was punctuated with an ejection.

The night served as a missed opportunity for both NL West pace-setters; the Padres squandering a chance to cut the Dodgers’ two-game lead in half, only for the Dodgers to whiff on an opening to grow their lead at the top of the standings.

And in the coming days and weeks, both clubs will have to try to take care of business better. Because with no head-to-head matchups left between the Dodgers and Padres in the regular season, beating bad teams — and avoiding ugly losses like Friday’s — could dictate who ultimately wins the division.

“We’ve got to play well,” Roberts said. “Whether it’s the schedule or a tougher opponent, I don’t really think it matters. We got to go out and play good baseball and take good at-bats and just stack wins.”

Freeman, Call back in action

Despite the loss, the Dodgers did get good news on the injury front Friday, with both first baseman Freddie Freeman and outfielder Alex Call back in action after missing Wednesday’s game.

Freeman had been battling a neck stinger, but returned to the starting lineup and drew a walk in an otherwise 0-for-3 performance. Call avoided an IL stint after having a flare-up in his back on Tuesday, and came off the bench as a pinch-hitter for a groundout in the seventh.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. took his time.

The Arizona Diamondbacks designated hitter didn’t swing at the first two pitches he saw from San Diego Padres reliever Mason Miller — a fastball that registered at 102 miles per hour for a ball and an 89-mph slider — with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning Tuesday night in Phoenix.

The Cuban-American batter then fouled off the next four pitches, three of which were fastballs thrown between 101 and 104 mph. Miller’s seventh pitch of the at-bat was another scorcher, but Gurriel made contact and this time kept the ball in fair territory.

It traveled 439 feet and landed in the left-field stands for a two-run home run. Miller’s pitch was clocked at 103.9 mph, making it the fastest pitch to be hit for a home run since MLB started pitch tracking in 2008.

“It’s something that just happened,” Gurriel said after the game through an interpreter.

Miller said of the pitch: “Location could have been better, for sure. Ultimately, the result is what it is. I’m not going to sit here and regret what pitch I threw. Just got it out over the plate, a little bit high.”

Gurriel’s blast, which left the park at 107.1 mph, tied the game at 5-5. Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, they couldn’t keep up the momentum against their National League West rivals and eventually lost 10-5 in 11 innings.

“The real meaning was in the time of the game and what it meant to the team to tie the ballgame. That was the most important thing,” Gurriel said of his historic homer. “I mean, unfortunately, it didn’t turn into a win, but that was the most exciting thing.”

It was Gurriel’s second home run of the game — he also hit a two-run homer off Padres starter Yu Darvish in the first inning — and his 14th of the season. Before Tuesday, Gurriel had not hit a home run since July 1.

Gurriel is the ninth player known to hit a home run off a ball thrown at 102 mph or faster and only the second player to do so off a pitch thrown faster than 103 mph. In September, Ian Happ of the Chicago Cubs went yard off a 103.2-mph pitch.

That pitch also happened to be thrown by Miller, who was with the Athletics at the time before being acquired by the Padres at the trade deadline last week. In his second appearance for San Diego, Miller pitched one inning, giving up one hit and a walk with two strikeouts. One of his pitches was clocked at 104.2 mph, the fastest ever tracked for a Padres pitcher.

“It’s a weapon,” Miller said of his fastball after Tuesday’s game. “But you still need to put together an at-bat for the guy, and work with him, as far as his swings and his approach in there.”

Jose Herrera hit a two-run double in a four-run fourth inning and the Arizona Diamondbacks avoided a three-game sweep with a 5-1 victory over the Angels on Sunday.

Blaze Alexander had two hits as the bottom of the Diamondbacks’ order was productive in a positive result just before the All-Star break. Alexander was batting eighth and Herrera ninth for Arizona, which won for just the fourth time in its past 12 games.

Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly (8-5) overcame early control trouble to give up one run and one hit over five innings. He had six strikeouts, with two of his four walks to the first three Angels batters of the game.

Mike Trout drove in a run for the Angels, who fell short in their bid to earn a third home series sweep since the start of June.

Angels right-hander José Soriano (6-7) gave up five runs, but just one was earned over five innings, with three walks.

The Angels led 1-0 after Trout’s RBI single in the third inning.

The Diamondbacks moved in front 4-1 in the fourth inning on a game-tying grounder from Eugenio Suarez, an RBI double from Alexander and Herrera’s two-run double. Suarez added an RBI double in the fifth.

Key moment: With runners at first and second and nobody out for the Diamondbacks in the fourth, Angels third baseman Yoan Moncada misplayed Suarez’s grounder to his left, opening the door for the four-run inning. Moncada, who has been bothered with knee soreness, was replaced on defense in the sixth inning by Kevin Newman.

Key stat: Kelly is 5-1 with a 2.67 ERA in his 11 starts that have come immediately after an Arizona loss, with opponents batting under .200 in those games.

Up next: Both teams return to action Friday after the All-Star break: Arizona is home to the St, Louis Cardinals; The Angels are at Philadelphia.

Mike Trout homered and had a two-run single to close in on two milestones and Yusei Kikuchi overcame Eugenio Suárez‘s two home runs as the Angels beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 10-5 on Saturday night.

After the Angels took a 4-2 lead in the fourth, Trout followed Nolan Schanuel‘s leadoff single in the fifth against Zac Gallen (7-10) with his 17th homer. Trout capped a four-run eighth with the two-run single. He has 395 career homers and 994 RBIs.

Suárez hit his 30th and 31st homers, the first a 434-footer in the second into the rocks in center and the second to right center in the fourth to top his total from last season. He reached 30 homers for the sixth time.

Kikuchi (4-6) gave up three runs on six hits in 5 2/3 innings. He took a blow to his pitching shoulder in the sixth on Josh Naylor’s liner. The Japanese left-hander stayed in, but was done two pitches later when Randal Grichuk singled to make it 6-3.

Arizona scored twice in the eighth after loading the bases with one out against José Fermin. Zach Neto and Schanuel had RBI singles in the bottom of the inning against Juan Morillo before Trout’s single.

After Suárez’s homer in fourth, the Angels rallied with three runs in the bottom of the inning to take a 4-2 lead. Taylor Ward, Jo Adell and Travis d’Arnaud doubled in the inning.

Gallen gave up eight hits and six runs in five innings.

Arizona’s Andrew Saalfrank pitched two scoreless innings in his return from a one-year suspension for betting on MLB games. He was reinstated June 5 and was called up from triple-A Reno on Wednesday.

The Angels moved within a game of .500 at 47-48. The Angels beat the Diamondbacks 6-5 on Friday night.

Key moment: After Arizona pulled within a run in the eighth, Neto, Schanuel and Trout had their consecutive run-scoring singles to break it open in the bottom of the inning.

Key stat: Arizona has lost three straight and 12 of 17 to fall to 46-50.

Up next: Diamondbacks RHP Merrill Kelly (7-5, 3.41) was set to start Sunday opposite RHP José Soriano (6-6, 4.00).

Travis d’Arnaud hit a pinch-hit RBI single down the left-field line in the ninth inning to give the Angels a 6-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night.

Logan O’Hoppe was hit by a pitch with one out against left-hander Kyle Backhus (0-1) before Luis Rengifo singled and d’Arnaud delivered in place of Gustavo Campero.

Zach Neto and Yoan Moncada each hit home runs in the first inning for the Angels, while Nolan Schanuel and Rengifo each had three hits as the Angels improved to 7-3 against National League West teams.

Randal Grichuk hit a pair of home runs and drove in three runs as the Diamondbacks dropped to 3-7 since July 2.

Arizona right-hander Ryne Nelson gave up four runs on seven hits with four walks over four innings, while Angels left-hander Tyler Anderson gave up four runs on eight hits with two walks over five innings.

Neto and Moncada powered a four-run first inning for the Angels, while the Diamondbacks followed with a four-run second that included Grichuk’s home run and a two-run double from Alek Thomas.

After Rengifo gave the Angels a 5-4 lead with a double in the fifth inning, Grichuk tied it with another home run in the eighth.

Kenley Jansen (3-2) pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the Angels.

Neto has seven leadoff home runs, all this season, and tied the franchise record previously held by Brian Downing (1987).

Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte was in tears after a heckler made comments about his late mother during the Diamondbacks’ game against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night at Rate Field.

That fan has been banned indefinitely from all MLB parks, The Times learned Wednesday morning.

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo put his arm around Marte during a pitching change in the bottom of the seventh inning in an effort to comfort the two-time All Star. According to the Diamondbacks broadcast, Marte had also been crying while kneeling behind second base.

Lovullo later said on the Diamondbacks broadcast that he told Marte in that moment: “I love you and I’m with you, and we’re all together, and you’re not alone. And no matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy’s an idiot and shouldn’t have an impact on you.”

According to the Arizona Republic, Lovullo said he heard the comments made toward Marte during the player’s at-bat during the top of the seventh inning and that he and bench coach Jeff Banister asked for the responsible fan to be removed.

MLB confirmed that the heckler had been ejected from the stadium.

“We commend the White Sox for taking immediate action in removing the fan,” the league said in a statement emailed to The Times.

The Diamondbacks and White Sox did not immediately respond to requests for comments from The Times.

Marte is in his 11th MLB season. He played the first two years with the Seattle Mariners and has been with the Diamondbacks since 2017. His mother, Elpidia Valdez, died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic the same year.

Marte did not speak to reporters after the Diamondbacks’ 4-1 win, during which he went two for four with a solo home run in the first inning.

“I’ve known Ketel for nine years, and he’s had some unbelievable, unbelievably great moments, and some hardships as well, and some really, really tough moments in his life, and I know those,” said Lovullo, who has been the Diamondbacks manager since 2017. “And the end of the day, we’re human beings, and we have emotions, and I saw him hurting, and I wanted to protect him.”

CINCINNATI — All-Star right-hander Corbin Burnes of the Arizona Diamondbacks is set to undergo Tommy John elbow surgery, ending his season early in the first year of a $210 million, six-year contract.

Manager Torey Lovullo said Friday the decision was made with “a lot of people weighing in.” Lovullo said the surgery probably would be scheduled for next week.

The announcement came three days after the Diamondbacks put Burnes on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation.

The 30-year-old left his most recent start with Arizona leading 3-0 in the top of the fifth inning Sunday. After Burnes allowed a single by CJ Abrams with two outs, he gestured toward the dugout with his glove and yelled in frustration.

Burnes allowed a run and four hits in 4 2/3 innings. He is 3-2 with a 2.66 ERA in 11 starts this season.

Burnes signed with the Diamondbacks after earning his fourth consecutive All-Star nod in his only season with Baltimore last year. He spent his first six years with Milwaukee before an offseason trade to the Orioles in early 2024.

“This is a tough day to get this news,” Lovullo said. “But we’ll find a way to rally around him, play hard for him all year long.”

Tuesday didn’t start as a game the Dodgers necessarily had to win.

But, by the time extra innings arrived on a nervy night at Dodger Stadium, the team was in a situation where they simply couldn’t afford to lose.

Not after entering the day with four consecutive losses, a season-long skid caused primarily by a banged-up pitching staff. Not after Yoshinobu Yamamoto looked like an ace, a stopper and a Cy Young candidate all wrapped in one, spinning seven scoreless innings in a nine-strikeout gem. And certainly not with his brilliance in danger of being wasted after closer Tanner Scott blew a one-run lead in the top of the ninth inning before yielding a two-run blast in the top of the 10th.

“I don’t know if it was a must-win,” manager Dave Roberts said, sidestepping such superlatives with the season still only two months old. “But certainly given Yoshi’s outing, you don’t wanna waste that … You just can’t lose on nights that Yamamoto throws [that well].”

Somehow, in a 4-3 walk-off victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers didn’t; flipping the script, changing the narrative and snapping their losing streak with the most dramatic of endings.

Down by two runs entering the bottom of the 10th, the Dodgers immediately cut the deficit in half with a leadoff RBI double from Tommy Edman. Shohei Ohtani was intentionally walked, Mookie Betts advanced Edman with a fly ball, Ohtani stole second, and Freddie Freeman was intentionally walked with first base open. With the bases loaded, Will Smith got plunked by former Dodgers reliever Shelby Miller to force home the tying score. And then, finally, Max Muncy walked it off with a sacrifice fly to deep center, easily scoring Ohtani from third for a victory that felt both hard-earned and hardly deserved.

“I think it showed a lot out of us,” Muncy said afterward, standing in a celebratory clubhouse after what could prove to be a pivotal point in the season.

“We got punched in the mouth, and for us to punch right back, I think that was really big out of the group, out of the guys,” Muncy added. “Everyone not giving up, not hanging their head — we still had a chance to win the game. And guys went out there and did it.”

Yoshinobu Yamamoto reacts after striking out Arizona’s Pavin Smith to retire end the seventh inning.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Winning, of course, should have been a much simpler task for the Dodgers (30-19) on Tuesday night.

Yamamoto was spectacular, giving up no hits through his first six innings, stranding runners on the corners to complete his night in the seventh, and providing the Dodgers with the kind of outing that has been missing from their rotation amid a wave of crippling injuries over the last several weeks.

“Yoshi was fantastic,” Roberts said. “We needed every bit of it.”

An equally banged-up bullpen avoided disaster in the eighth, when Alex Vesia and Ben Casparius combined to work through a bases-loaded jam that preserved a narrow 1-0 lead.

“We just kept fighting,” Smith said. “That [was a] big shutdown inning.”

But all along, the Dodgers failed to open any cushion to fall back on late. Their only early scoring was courtesy of back-to-back two-out doubles from Freeman and Smith in the bottom of the fourth. In the seventh and eighth, they squandered opportunities for insurance, stranding a leadoff single from Muncy and a one-out double from Ohtani.

That meant, when Scott caught too much plate with an up-and-in fastball to Gabriel Moreno in the ninth, all it took was one swing to change the game, Moreno skying a solo blast that carried just far enough down the left field line.

“Just left it too much on the plate,” said Scott, who blew his third save in 12 opportunities.

Freddie Freeman scores on a double by Will Smith in the fourth inning.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

After the Dodgers came up empty again in the ninth — Kiké Hernández struck out in what started as a 3-and-0 count with two runners aboard — Scott made the same mistake to Corbin Carroll in the 10th, serving up a belt-high fastball the undersized slugger whacked the other way for a two-run blast.

“You sit there in the [10th] inning, you’re down two runs, and your bullpen is completely taxed,” Roberts said, “those [kind of losses] really sting.”

Instead, the Dodgers rallied, with Anthony Banda limiting any further damage in the top of the 10th before the lineup rallied in the bottom half.

“It’s a big swing,” Roberts said. “To get a win tonight, I’m gonna sleep a lot better.”

Without Yamamoto, none of it would have been possible.

After giving up eight runs over 11 combined innings in his previous two starts, every part of the 26-year-old right-hander’s stuff played up on Tuesday night. His fastball averaged 96 mph. His curveball induced one helpless swing from the Diamondbacks (26-23) after another. And until Ketel Marte singled on a line drive off the wall to lead off the seventh, it was starting to seem like an elevated pitch count (Yamamoto began that inning with 90 pitches, and finished his outing with an MLB career high of 110) might be the only thing standing between him and a pursuit of a nine-inning no-no.

“I thought he was going to go the distance tonight,” Muncy said of Yamamoto, who dropped his ERA to 1.86 with his third career MLB start of seven scoreless frames. “I thought he had the stuff to get the no-hitter.”

That’s why, when the game started to spiral out of control later, and their losing streak seemed primed to continue in the most painful way possible, the Dodgers entered the 10th inning knowing they needed to respond, and wary of the repercussions that would have accompanied such a crushing, wasteful loss.

“They [tied it] and then flipped the game, but we came back,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter afterward, his no-decision not feeling so bad after what transpired in the bottom of the 10th.

“A win like this is great,” he added.

Echoed Roberts: “We just put some at-bats together, man. And it was much needed.”