Invincibility factor for Dodgers not registering a blip with Padres
San Diego blanks L.A. and takes a series for second time this season
SAN DIEGO — For most of this season, the Dodgers have looked close to invincible.
In eight meetings with the San Diego Padres, however, they have appeared anything but.
For the second time already this season, the Dodgers dropped a series to their intradivision rivals, falling to the Padres 4-0 in a Sunday rubber match at a sold-out Petco Park.
The reasons for this defeat weren’t difficult to diagnose. Shohei Ohtani sat out because of a tight back. Padres starter Yu Darvish cruised through seven scoreless innings. And, most of all, Walker Buehler struggled in his second start back from Tommy John surgery, giving up three runs in just 3 1⁄3 innings.
In the big picture, this weekend’s setback should just be a temporary blip.
Ohtani is expected back in the lineup Monday, needing just a oneday break after his back tightened up on him Saturday night. The Dodgers’ lineup seems bound to heat up again, especially if Mookie Betts can end a recent two-week slump. Buehler’s lumps have been no surprise, either, not with the 29-yearold returning from a second surgery that required nearly two years of rehabilitation.
Still, for a team that had played almost flawless baseball the last few weeks, arriving in San Diego as winners in 14 of their previous 16 games, the Dodgers’ continued struggles against the Padres — who have won five out of eight meetings between the teams this season — remain stark.
Though the Padres (22-21) rank just 17th in MLB in team ERA, they have held the Dodgers to a .208 batting average this season. In the teams’ two domestic matchups this year — after splitting a pair of season-opening games in South Korea in March — the Dodgers’ powerhouse offense has averaged just 3.5 runs.
It was a reminder that, for one weekend at least, the Dodgers (2715) can still be beaten by teams they should be better than. That, for a franchise fixated on October success, they can still be susceptible to crafty, competent opposing game plans.
That was the story Friday, when right-hander Michael King was so impressive in seven scoreless innings that manager Dave Roberts
joked that “he would have had his way with the 1927 Yankees.”
The script, however, then repeated itself Sunday, when Darvish opened the game with 14 consecutive outs en route to a suffocating, seven-strikeout start.
Any hope of Buehler matching his pitching counterpart evaporated early. He gave up back-toback home runs to Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake Cronenworth in the first inning. Then, a series of pitchconsuming jams forced him from the game with one out in the fourth.
The bullpen limited the damage from there, extending a franchiserecord streak of 19 games giving up four runs or fewer. But with the Dodgers managing only four hits in their second shutout of the season, the relief production for was naught.
It all served as a reminder of the ever-tenuous state of even the star Dodgers roster; how a few missing pieces, or underwhelming performances, can quickly erode even their star-studded intimidation factor.
In addition to Ohtani’s absence, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith each went hitless in four at-bats. Betts ended his recent slump with two hits, including a double that represented his first extra-base knock in 12 games, but has still seen his batting average fall almost 40 points in that stretch.
Coupled with an ineffective outing from Buehler — who remains an X-factor in the Dodgers’ longterm rotation plans — it made for the kind of performance all too reminiscent of the Dodgers’ recent postseason struggles.
The team, of course, is still protecting a 5 1⁄2-game division lead. They are still on pace for 104 wins.
But, after consecutive series losses to the second-place Padres, they have found at least one troublesome foe early in the season, one that has highlighted the same recurring problems that have doomed the Dodgers in Octobers past.