walk-off home run

Sunday was gut-check time for the Dodgers.

A day where, as a clearly frustrated Dave Roberts put it before the game, the team needed to “not get embarrassed” in the face of a potential three-game sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks, and play with a level of “pride” that had been missing the previous two nights.

“Whatever it is, we’ve got to do it right now,” the manager said. “We’ve got to win today. We’ve got to play better baseball. … There’s more in there. There just is.”

Whatever Roberts was looking for, the Dodgers provided just enough Sunday.

Despite blowing a three-run lead that tied the game going into the ninth, the Dodgers prevailed on Will Smith’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run, beating the Diamondbacks 5-4 to move two games up in the National League West standings after the San Diego Padres’ rubber-match loss to the Minnesota Twins earlier in the day.

The win should have been simpler.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivered a seven-inning, one-run gem, tying his career-high with 10 strikeouts while also not allowing a walk. The Dodgers lineup, meanwhile, wore down Arizona starter Brandon Pfaadt, scoring twice in the first and again in the fourth and fifth to chase him from the game early.

Tanner Scott almost wasted those efforts. In the eighth, he gave up a pair of two-out singles before Corbin Carroll took him deep for a tying three-run blast. Scott was booed off the mound, his earned-run average rising to 4.44 in a disastrous debut season in Los Angeles.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers during the fourth inning Sunday against the Diamondbacks.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Smith, however, saved the day, coming off the bench and hitting the second pitch he saw into the left-field pavilion to ensure the Dodgers didn’t come out of this weekend empty-handed.

Of course, any feeling of progress from the Dodgers will remain tempered for now.

Friday and Saturday, after all, produced the kind of maddening performances from the club that have dogged them throughout the second half of the season.

The team looked lifeless at the plate both nights, scoring one run off Arizona’s beleaguered pitching staff in 18 total innings. They committed fundamental miscues on the bases and on defense, lapses Roberts boiled down to a simple lack of focus. And, as has become a recurring theme during their 22-27 rut since the Fourth of July, they once again played down to a level their $400-million roster simply shouldn’t.

“There has to be a point where that has to be sharpened,” Roberts said. “And that’s where, I feel, the time is now.”

Given the roller-coaster nature of the season, it’s impossible to know if — and when — the next drop is coming.

The Dodgers (78-59) have shown flashes of improvement at times in the last two months — like when they swept the Reds to start this homestand, or swept the Padres at the end of the previous one — only to quickly revert to a lesser version of themselves again.

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1. Dodgers catcher Will Smith celebrates after hitting a walk-off home run in the ninth inning Sunday. 2. Freddie Freeman, left, and Alex Call, center, and other Dodgers players celebrate with Will Smith, right, as he crosses home plate. 3. Will Smith, left, celebrates with Alex Call, right, and his Dodgers teammates. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Asked why that has been the case pregame, Roberts struggled to find an answer.

He alluded to a potential World Series hangover, noting that “when you’re playing a long season, you’re defending champions, people are coming after you — which we know and understand — it’s just hard to keep that dialed-in focus every single night. That’s just reality.”

He highlighted the lack of consistent production from veteran players — coinciding with his decision Sunday to leave Teoscar Hernández on the bench, in favor of Alex Call in right field, amid a recent three-for-27 slump that has been compounded by persistently shaky defense.

“He’s an everyday guy,” Roberts said of Hernández, whom the team hopes will benefit from a “two-day reset” between Sunday’s day off and Monday’s travel day. “But I do think that where we’re at, you’ve got to perform too, to warrant being out there every single day.”

Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott pitches in the eighth inning Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Roberts said that mindset applies to the rest of the roster as a whole, from left field (where Michael Conforto has been better of late, but is still batting under .200) to other superstars at the top of the lineup.

“No one is going to be exempt,” Roberts said. “We’ve got to ramp it up and we’ve got to be better. If some other guys deserve more opportunities, then they’re going to get them. That’s just the way it should be.”

It all reflected what Roberts hopes will be a switch-flipping moment from his club; that disaster-averting wins like Sunday outnumber the kind of clunkers they had on Friday and Saturday.

“I do think that a flip can be switched,” Roberts said. “Each day should be equally important. Every little play, pitch, should be equally important. ‘How you do anything is how you do everything,’ that kind of adage, I believe in that. When you’re playing a long season, it’s hard to be that locked in every single pitch. But I’m not going to not try to ask our guys to do that, though.”

Taylor Ward hit a game-ending three-run homer in the ninth inning, Zach Neto had a home run and three RBIs and the Angels beat the Chicago White Sox 8-5 on Sunday to avoid a three-game sweep.

In a tie game, Nolan Schanuel doubled with one out in the ninth before Mike Trout was walked intentionally. Ward went deep against left-hander Tyler Alexander (4-10) to set a career high with 26 home runs.

Right-hander Kenley Jansen (4-2) pitched a scoreless ninth for the Angels (54-58).

Colson Montgomery hit a three-run home run and drove in four runs for the White Sox. They lost for just the third time in their last 12 road games.

The White Sox (42-70) took a 4-0 lead in the first inning when Robert had an RBI single and Montgomery followed with a three-run home run against Jack Kochanowicz.

Chicago made it 5-0 in the third on Montgomery’s RBI single.

The Angels started their rally in the sixth with a leadoff home from Neto. Ward had an RBI single, and Trout scored on a wild pitch. The Angels tied it in the seventh on a two-run double from Neto.

Key moment: The White Sox brought in the lefty Alexander to face left-handed hitting Schanuel in the ninth and his second hit of the game was a double to right to start the decisive rally.

Key stat: Montgomery played in his 24th career game since his debut July 4, with all seven of his home runs coming over his past 10 games.

Up next: Angels LHP Yusei Kikuchi (4-7, 3.30) is scheduled to start at home against Tampa Bay on Monday.

Twenty-nine hours before his official return to the Dodger Stadium mound, Emmet Sheehan took a moment to get himself reacquainted with his home ballpark.

In an empty Dodger Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, Sheehan walked onto the field at Chavez Ravine, climbed up a slope he hadn’t toed since the 2023 season, and practiced his pitching motion a few times before returning to the clubhouse.

For Sheehan, such dry tosses are part of his normal pre-start routine. In any ballpark where he pitches, he likes to get a feel for the mound and its surroundings before the game.

The only difference this time: how long it had been since he’d taken the bump in a big-league stadium.

After an auspicious rookie season in 2023, in which his 4.92 earned-run average belied the potential he flashed with his low-arm-slot, high-velocity delivery, Sheehan missed all of last season and the first three months of this campaign after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

A former sixth-round draft pick who blossomed into one of the organization’s top pitching prospects during an impressive minor-league career, Sheehan became one of the many homegrown Dodgers pitchers to endure a major surgery after injuring his elbow in spring training last year.

In recent months, however, his relatively seamless recovery process had fueled excitement throughout the organization leading up to his return on Wednesday.

And over four sharp innings in the Dodgers’ 4-3 win against the San Diego Padres — one that ended on a walk-off home run by Will Smith in the ninth — the 25-year-old right-hander showed exactly why.

With his fastball sitting around 95 mph, and a tantalizing combination of sliders and changeups keeping Padres hitters off balance, Sheehan gave up just one run while striking out six batters in his big-league return.

He threw 65 pitches, 43 for strikes. He didn’t issue a walk, while yielding only three hits. And the lone score against him came when second baseman Tommy Edman failed to corral a hard-hit one-hopper with two outs in the top of the second.

Other than that, he posted nothing but zeroes.

Sheehan wasn’t the winning pitcher. That honor went to another former prospect, left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who followed Sheehan with five stellar innings of long relief, flashing his own promising signs (including a fastball that touched 99 mph at one point) after an up-and-down start to his big-league career.

For most of his outing, Wrobleski was protecting a 3-1 lead the Dodgers took in the bottom of the fifth, when Max Muncy hit a leadoff triple, Hyeseong Kim followed an Andy Pages sacrifice fly with a double, and slumping rookie catcher Dalton Rushing plated the game’s go-ahead runs on a two-run single.

But with the Dodgers’ bullpen worn thin from back-to-back bullpen games the previous two nights, Wrobleski went back to the mound in the ninth to try to finish things off. He couldn’t, giving up two runs after a Max Muncy throwing error put him in a jam.

However, Smith made sure it didn’t matter, coming off the bench in the bottom of the ninth to whack a walk-off home run just over the right-field wall.

Will Smith runs to first after hitting a walk-off home run in the ninth inning for the Dodgers against the Padres on Wednesday night.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Despite the late dramatics, it was Sheehan’s return that had the biggest future implications on the Dodgers’ season, giving their shorthanded rotation a badly needed, and highly intriguing, new option for the second half of the season.

While discussing Sheehan before the game, manager Dave Roberts said the Dodgers always “liked his makeup, his toughness, his ability to repeat his delivery, the swing-and-miss stuff, the preparation.”

But the way he navigated his Tommy John recovery — returning to action 13 months after undergoing the procedure last May — had added another element of optimism among team officials.

Roberts noted how Sheehan had seemingly increased his physical strength during his rehab, with the once lanky 6-foot-5 pitcher now possessing noticeably more mass. He also explained how Sheehan has “had a chance to watch a lot of baseball, learn and then now apply it.”

“I think that’s going to make him a better major league pitcher,” Roberts said.

One start back, signs of such growth were already becoming clear.