SAN DIEGO — Andy Pages lifted a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning Tuesday night, scoring pinch runner Alex Call and sending the Dodgers past the Padres 5-4 at Petco Park in a game that swung from one hard throw to the next. Mason Miller entered with a 0.82 ERA and a major-league-leading 15 saves, but his pickoff attempt sailed into right field, Call moved to third and Pages finished the job.
The Dodgers’ victory came one night after San Diego won the opener 1-0, tightening a three-game series that opened with Los Angeles holding only a half-game lead in the National League West. This one never settled. Freddie Freeman homered twice for the Dodgers, Manny Machado homered in the first for the Padres, Miguel Andujar answered with a solo shot in the first and a two-run homer in the third, and Shohei Ohtani produced a run-scoring groundout in the fifth before Freeman tied it again with a solo homer in the sixth.
The ninth inning belonged to Pages and Miller, and in a way it belonged to the strike zone, too. Max Muncy drew a walk after a full-count slider was initially called a strike and then overturned, bringing Pages to the plate with one out and pressure building around Miller, who had already recovered from two leadoff walks in Monday’s 1-0 Padres win. Pages stayed on the hard stuff. He said in Spanish that he never thought Miller was going to strike him out or dominate him, and that he was 100% certain he was going to move the ball forward. “To me, he's simply a pitcher who throws hard,” Pages said.
Miller threw fastball after fastball, touching 101 mph and 101.5 mph, and Pages kept fighting off pitch after pitch. Freeman said it was “one of the greatest at-bats I’ve ever seen in person, and I've been playing a long time.” Pages eventually lifted the sacrifice fly that brought home Call and put the Dodgers in front for good. The sequence fit the night: 84 batters, 45 strikeouts, 50 fastballs at 101 mph, 17 fouled off pitches, and one out that mattered more than any of the rest.
Miller, whose run has made him look practically unhittable this season, did not hide from the mistake. He said, “I just let it speed up on me a little bit and yanked it,” and added, “I probably threw it a little harder than I should've, too.” Pages had a simpler read on the matchup before the pitch that decided it. He said Miller is just a pitcher who throws hard, and the Dodgers played it that way until the ball left the bat.
The split leaves the series up for grabs after two games and leaves the division race just as tight as it was when the night started. The Padres have gotten limited production from Machado, Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr., who remains homerless, and that lack of steady offense keeps forcing their late-inning arms into high-wire situations. For the Dodgers, Tuesday was a reminder that a lineup can survive a night of missed chances if it keeps forcing one more pitch, and one more mistake, from the other side.
