LOS ANGELES — All you needed to know about how enormously important Game 2 of this National League division series was for San Diego, how big of a must-win this 5-3 decision over Los Angeles was, came with two outs and one on in the bottom of the eighth inning. That’s when Padres Manager Bob Melvin decisively walked to the mound and waved for his closer, Josh Hader.
Melvin was asking Hader to obtain four outs to preserve the lead, the game and, most probably, the Padres’ season. This much had not been asked of Hader in more than a year. The last time he worked more than one inning for a save came on Oct. 1, 2020.
And all you needed to know about how off-the-rails this evening nearly went came when you watched Hader’s trot in from the right field bullpen in Dodger Stadium. His path took him right past a goose that had landed in shallow right field a batter or two earlier and decided to stick around.
The tension made for a terrific playoff atmosphere. After the Padres managed to hang on, what a series this could become.
“Probably as back and forth a game as you are going to see,” Melvin said. “A lot of drama to it. Fun win.”
The Padres and the Dodgers traded haymakers early. Manny Machado, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy and Trea Turner all homered before the end of the third inning.
The teams then exchanged slick defensive plays mid-game. Mookie Betts coaxed a leadoff walk from Yu Darvish to start the fifth with the score tied at 3-3 then set sail for second base. The Dodgers’ stolen base success rate for the season at that point was 85 percent. Darvish isn’t known for being quick to the plate, yet he sped things up, catcher Austin Nola fired a strike to second baseman Jake Cronenworth and the Padres extinguished Betts on the steal attempt.
“There are so many things that have to go right on a play like that,” Nola said. “You have to get a good pitch. The pitcher has to be quick to the plate. You have to get a good tag. Hopefully Mookie doesn’t get a good jump.
“It was a beautiful baseball play all around.”
Melvin called it Nola’s “best throw of the year.” And it came at the perfect time.
Though Turner muffed a ground ball in the top of the sixth, the Padres, leading by 4-3, lost a chance to break the game open when the Dodgers reliever Brusdar Graterol pounced on a would-be safety squeeze bunt and threw home to nail Cronenworth. Then Cody Bellinger made a dazzling catch in deep center field to end the inning and strand two Padres baserunners.
The Dodgers put two on with none out in the bottom of the inning. But Robert Suarez emerged from the Padres bullpen and struck out Justin Turner on a 101-mile-per-hour fastball. Cronenworth and shortstop Ha-Seong Kim then turned a nifty double play on Gavin Lux’s bouncer to end the threat.
“The play of the game,” Melvin said.
Poetic, too, in that it was Lux who had snared Wil Myers’s hard bouncer the night before — also in the sixth inning — to start the double play that Dodgers’ Manager Dave Roberts termed the most important play of Game 1.
As Machado, who had a homer, double and two R.B.I., put it, “Quickest to 27 outs and try to get as many runs across the board that we can to help our team win and get to our bullpen quick as we can.”
Enter Hader.
He struggled initially after the Padres acquired him from Milwaukee at the Aug. 2 trading deadline. Things got so bad that Melvin removed him from the closer’s role to give him time to regroup and work with the team’s pitching coach, Ruben Niebla, on some fixes. The past few weeks, he has more often than not looked like the four-time All-Star he is.
“We kept his workload at a minimum” during the regular season, Melvin said of Hader’s early entrance. “He saved those type of things for the postseason. He was all for it. He knew that any runner on and two out he was going to be coming in for four outs, and he did what we expected him to do.”
Truth be told, even though the Dodgers had won 15 of their past 20 against the Padres and 24 of 29 dating to the end of August 2021, the Padres didn’t panic after losing Game 1. Instead, the Padres said they believed that once they got past that game, the pitching matchups would favor them for the rest of the series.
Roberts late Wednesday named the right-hander Tony Gonsolin to start Game 3 Friday in San Diego. Gonsolin has pitched only two innings since Aug. 23 while recovering from a right forearm strain. The Padres will counter with the lefty Blake Snell, who, until his Game 2 start in the wild-card series against the Mets, had been on a roll.
The question now becomes, has the road in front of the 111-win Dodgers become a bit more uphill heading to San Diego? The Padres are playing well, their bullpen has been outstanding (so far the Dodgers are 4 for 32 against six San Diego relievers) and they were fifth in the majors this year with an average attendance of 36,931.
They have not hosted a postseason game at home in Petco Park since 2006 and the atmosphere on Friday night for Game 3 is expected to be electric.
“They’ve been waiting for this for awhile, and they’ve supported us all year,” Melvin said. “It seems like every game we get between 35,000 and 40,000 people there. The drama that took place during the season, I think we had 10, 12 walkoffs, or something like that, and they were a big part of it.”
As for the goose, it remained in shallow right field for a batter with the Padres reliever Nick Martinez on the mound before the grounds crew made its move to capture the bird during the pitching change as Hader warmed. The first attempt failed when the goose took flight toward the Dodgers dugout. It veered left, causing Bellinger, in the on-deck circle, to duck. Finally, the goose was captured and removed from the field for its safety.
“That was pretty gnarly out there, huh?” Machado said. “He didn’t want to go anywhere. I think he was hurt when he landed, so I kind of didn’t like seeing that. I guess it was good luck for us.”
