Dylan Cease strikes out Max Muncy to leave runners on the corners
⚾ Padres 3, Dodgers 0 — End of the first inning
Bottom of the first: Shohei Ohtani flied out to left field before Padres starting pitcher Dylan Cease walked Mookie Betts. Freddie Freeman, receiving a warm welcome from the Dodger faithful as he stepped up to the plate, hit a grounder into right, moving Betts to second.
Teoscar Hernández grounded to short, which forced Freeman out at second and put runners on the corners. Cease struck out Max Muncy to end the inning.
Manny Machado’s home run helps power Padres to 3-0 lead
⚾ Padres 3, Dodgers 0 — First inning
Top of the first inning: San Diego’s Luis Arraez hit a lead-off single to left field off Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Arraez then swiped second base on a passed ball and took third on a wild pitch before Yamamoto walked Fernando Tatis Jr.
Jurickson Profar Jr. drove in Arraez on ground out to second base. Manny Machado followed with a two-run home run to left-center field to give the Padres a three-run lead.
Jackson Merrill flied out to left for the second out before Xander Bogaerts singled to shallow right. Jake Cronenworth grounded out to second to cap the frame.
Yes, Manny Machado is still getting booed at Dodger Stadium
Game 1 of the National League Division Series is about to start, and it appears Dodgers fans still haven’t gotten over Manny Machado leaving town for San Diego more than five years ago:
The boos didn’t last long thanks to the fireworks and F-22 flyover minutes later.
Mookie Betts got ‘lost in the process’ this year. Can it lead to better playoff success?
Twice last month, teams intentionally walked Shohei Ohtani to face Mookie Betts instead. Both times, the eight-time All-Star and former MVP emphatically reacted after making them pay.
There was an extra-inning home run on Sept. 3 against the Angels, a game-sealing, three-run blast in which Betts pointed at the sky, emotionally high-fived his teammates and gestured with his hands all the way back to the dugout — seemingly saying, that’s why you don’t pitch to me.
Then, there was a ninth-inning single on Sept. 15 in Atlanta, another game-sealing knock in which Betts gave an exaggerated clap, then pointed to his dugout — as if to say, here we go again.
Eight concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Padres in the NLDS
The Dodgers and San Diego Padres went down to the wire in the National League West race. Now they’ll square off in the best-of-five NL Division Series, with the fourth-seeded Padres advancing through the wild-card round with a two-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves.
The Padres will be familiar postseason foes. The Dodgers swept San Diego in the 2020 NLDS en route to a World Series win, then were upset in four games in the 2022 NLDS despite finishing 22 games ahead of them that season.
This season the Padres halted a decade and a half of futility against the Dodgers, posting a winning record in the rivalry (8-5) for the first time since 2010. However, the Dodgers prevailed when it mattered most, clinching the division by taking two of three games at Chavez Ravine in late September.
Reasons for confidence and concern for Dodgers in playoffs, from Shohei Ohtani to pitching
In what is one of the more wide-open playoffs in recent Major League Baseball history, the Dodgers epitomize the relative state of parity.
If all the pieces fall in place, and they couple a star-studded offense with the right combination of pitching, the team could make a run at its second World Series title in the last five seasons.
If their patchwork rotation falters, or their best players again go missing, they could just as easily suffer an early elimination as they did the past two postseasons.
The Dodgers are entering October riding high, holding the top overall playoff seed and the second-best record in the majors since the All-Star break. But their path to a championship is also littered with obstacles, many created by their own roster deficiencies.
What are the Dodgers’ chances of winning the World Series? Way less than you might think
Remember when National League pitchers batted and Clayton Kershaw seemed like an automatic out?
Your memory serves correctly: The Dodgers star left-hander batted an anemic .162 over 847 plate appearances during 13 seasons before MLB mercifully took the bat out of his — and all other pitchers — hands after the 2021 season.
Well, experts considered most adept at running the numbers calculate the likelihood of the Dodgers winning the World Series this October roughly equal to that of Kershaw getting a hit when he used to bat.
Freddie Freeman will start for Dodgers in Game 1 vs. Padres
It came down to the last minute, but first baseman Freddie Freeman was in the Dodgers’ starting lineup at first base for the team’s NLDS opener against the San Diego Padres.
Uncertain to play in Game 1 all week, after suffering a sprained ankle on Sept. 26 and missing the final three games of the regular season, Freeman got the green light to start after completing his typical routine of pregame drills a few hours before first pitch.
Freeman did on-field stretches, his daily picking drill and took grounders at first.
After that, he returned to the clubhouse to take “live” swings in the cage, telling reporters as he walked by, “I wish I had an answer” on if he was playing.
When the lineup was posted some 30 minutes later, Freeman’s name was listed, playing first base and batting in the three-hole.
Earlier in the day, the chances of Freeman starting seemed slim.
After completing a full on-field workout Friday, Freeman still reported “some soreness” in his ankle, according to manager Dave Roberts. And while Roberts said in his pregame news conference that the club was in “wait-and-see mode” as Freeman got more treatment, he did acknowledge that he was “not as hopeful” about Freeman’s status as he had been earlier in the week.
Freeman will likely still be limited in Saturday’s game.
It’s doubtful he will be full-speed on the bases, and Roberts noted the team might do “a little bit of hedging” with its defensive position to ensure Freeman isn’t required to cover too much ground.
Still, for an injury Freeman said on Friday likely would have required a four-to-six-week absence in the regular season, the fact he was in the lineup just nine days after twisting his ankle came as a pleasant pregame surprise for an already shorthanded Dodgers team.
“Obviously he’s determined and wants to exhaust every potential possibility for him to play,” Roberts said.
He evidently checked enough boxes to do so, just in time.
Padres coy about how they plan to stop Shohei Ohtani: ‘I’m not telling you’
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani talks about playing in the MLB postseason for the first time. (Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
The first laugh line of this National League Division Series came on Friday afternoon, when San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt was asked how his club planned to attack Shohei Ohtani.
“I’m not telling you,” Shildt responded with a chuckle, one reciprocated by the mass of media members before him at his pre-NLDS news conference.
“He’s a great player, he’s having an historic year,” Shildt added. “But we feel good about our plan.”
The second moment of levity, on the eve of the Dodgers-Padres best-of-five series, came a few hours later. And this time, it was prompted by Ohtani himself.
‘One of the boys’: Shohei Ohtani impresses Dodgers teammates with his personality, too
The question was simple.
The responses were strikingly alike.
How well have the Dodgers gotten to know Shohei Ohtani this year?
Well enough for several of his new teammates to draw a similar conclusion about the superstar’s personality, noticing an unexpected dichotomy at the heart of the 30-year-old’s success.
“[He can] be goofy and playful and look like he’s really having fun playing the game,” said veteran utilityman Chris Taylor. “But then also at the same time be super focused and locked in.”
Tyler Glasnow confident elbow injury won’t require surgery
Tyler Glasnow, who sustained a season-ending elbow strain in mid-August, remains confident that his injury will not require surgery.
“I’m hoping it can scar over and feel good, and it’s not like a big thing,” Glasnow said during Friday’s workout day. “I think I’ll know more when I start throwing again … but I feel good right now, and I’m confident [I won’t need surgery].”
Glasnow, who went 9-6 with a 3.49 ERA in 22 starts and reached career highs in innings pitched (134) and strikeouts (169) this season, pitched through discomfort for most of three seasons (2019-2021) with Tampa Bay before the elbow finally gave out in 2021.
The 6-foot-8, 225-pound right-hander underwent Tommy John surgery that August in which Dr. Keith Meister, a Texas-based orthopedic surgeon, reinforced the replacement ligament with a synthetic collagen band, known as an internal brace.
Glasnow was acquired and signed to a five-year, $136.5-million deal in December to be the team’s ace and front a playoff rotation, but he has had to spend the past six weeks coming to grips with the fact that he has been reduced to an October spectator.
“It hit me hard the second [the injury] happened, and it was hard not playing for the rest of the regular season,” Glasnow said. “It sucks to not be playing. All I can do is sit here and support the guys.”
The new marquee battle in the NL West: Andrew Friedman vs. Buster Posey
And now for something completely different in the venerable history of a storied rivalry: Andrew Friedman matching wits against Buster Posey.
Six years ago, with great fanfare, the San Francisco Giants recruited Friedman’s Dodgers lieutenant, Farhan Zaidi, to return the Giants to glory. After one season with a winning record and no postseason series victories, the Giants on Monday fired Zaidi as their president of baseball operations.
His replacement: Posey, the franchise icon, the only Giant to win a most valuable player award in the last 20 years, the catcher when the Giants won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
These 10 ex-Dodgers are in the postseason. Who has the best shot at winning the World Series?
Trea Turner was a Dodgers star for a year and a half. Trey Sweeney was a Dodgers farmhand for a little more than an eyeblink.
Both shortstops are key cogs on teams eyeing a World Series title and perhaps spoiling the Dodgers’ dreams along the way.
Last season, J.D. Martinez and David Peralta were veteran bats and clubhouse leaders in Los Angeles. Now wearing other uniforms, they hope to advance deep into the postseason, something they were unable to do with the Dodgers.
Dodgers fans treat Manny Machado like a long lost villain, showering him with boos every time he returns to Chavez Ravine. Alex Verdugo was popular in L.A. and his trade netted the Dodgers Mookie Betts. Yet both present roadblocks in the Dodgers’ quest to win their first full-season championship since 1988. The Dodgers won the World Series in 2020 during the COVID-shortened season.
How Tommy Edman became the Dodgers’ ideal Swiss Army Knife
If Andrew Friedman donned a white coat and protective goggles and went into a lab to create the perfect position-playing depth piece for the Dodgers, he would walk out with Tommy Edman.
The team’s president of baseball operations has long placed a premium on versatility, and Edman is a Swiss Army Knife of a utility man, one who can play three outfield and three infield positions and excels at the all-important up-the-middle spots — shortstop, second base and center field.
In addition to his defensive dexterity, Edman, 29, is a switch-hitter who has historically been equally productive from both sides of the plate, giving manager Dave Roberts maximum flexibility for daily lineup decisions and in-game moves.
Dodgers ‘closing the door’ on Clayton Kershaw returning in playoffs
After missing the last month of the regular season with a toe injury, Clayton Kershaw has been officially ruled out from returning to the team in the postseason, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts announced Saturday.
“We’re closing the door,” Roberts said. “Clayton has done everything he can to keep this thing moving forward and giving himself a chance to participate in the postseason. But where he’s at right now, physically, the foot, the toe just is not cooperating. It’s actually getting worse.”
Kershaw said there is a possibility that he may need surgery on the toe during the offseason.
“It was getting pretty mentally exhausting to continue to try to pitch — it kept hurting,” Kershaw said before Saturday’s game. “I got another MRI. I made it worse. So there’s no point to keep going. It’s unfortunate. It’s super frustrating, but that’s really it. It’s not getting better, so I can’t pitch.”
Dodgers not sure if Freddie Freeman will start in Game 1
A little more than four hours before first pitch, the Dodgers had yet to make decision about whether or not Freddie Freeman would be in the starting lineup for Game 1 of the NLDS.
However, manager Dave Roberts conceded he was “maybe not as hopeful” about Freeman’s status as he’d been earlier this week.
“I talked to him this morning. There was still some soreness,” Roberts said. “So we’re trying to weigh [him] being in there versus how effective he can be.”
If Freeman can’t start, Max Muncy would play first base and Kiké Hernández would be at third.
Before committing to that, though, Roberts said the club wanted to see how Freeman felt after getting some pregame treatment.
“That’s why I’m trying to wait as long as I can,” Roberts said. “To see [him] go through his pre-workout and prep, pregame stuff.”
In yet another Dodgers-Padres NLDS matchup, Steve Garvey can’t lose
You can buy an autographed baseball in a million places, but you can buy a $75 autographed baseball from a U.S. Senate candidate in one place.
The candidate, of course, is Steve Garvey, who is a household name in California not because of a life spent in politics, but because of a distinguished career for the Dodgers and San Diego Padres.
In his race against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), Garvey is a decided underdog. No Republican has won a California Senate seat since 1988.
On Saturday — one month before Election Day — the two teams that Garvey played for open their National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium. That made Friday a good day to check in with Garvey.
Dodgers hope ‘different level of intensity’ fixes bye-week woes entering playoffs
Facing a third straight postseason that will begin with a five-day bye week — and still reeling from the early eliminations that followed the first two the last couple of years — the Dodgers changed up some things ahead of their Saturday opener in the best-of-five National League Division Series.
As opposed to the last two years, when they played full scrimmages on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday ahead of the NLDS — having gotten a bye through MLB’s wild-card round as a top-two seed in the NL bracket — the Dodgers opted for a more “gradual build-up,” according to general manager Brandon Gomes, waiting to ramp up to game action until closer to Game 1 at Dodger Stadium.
The team also is incorporating “different technologies,” Gomes said (like a Trajekt Arc pitching simulator that was installed at Dodger Stadium this year), as well as more batting practice sessions off high-velocity machines to prepare for the kind of pitching they expect to face.
After ‘long funk’ and struggles with fastballs, has Will Smith rediscovered his swing?
Will Smith has hardly been a bad hitter for the Dodgers during the past two seasons.
But as his offensive production has declined at the plate, with the sixth-year catcher setting career lows for OPS in back-to-back campaigns, there’s been one common denominator to what he’s been missing.
From 2020 to 2022, Smith did much of his damage against four-seam fastballs, batting .292 against the pitch with a .588 slugging percentage, 21 home runs and only an 18.6% whiff rate.
In 2023 and 2024, however, those numbers have dipped across the board: Smith has only hit four-seamers at a .214 clip. He has slugged just .383 against them. And as pitchers have started throwing him more heaters, his whiff rate has climbed to 23.9%.
Dodgers are going to lean heavily on their bullpen in the playoffs. Who do they trust?
Only four teams leaned more on their bullpen this season than the Dodgers, whose relievers combined for 648 innings — an average of four innings a game — and might have to carry a heavier workload if the team is to make a deep October run.
For all the firepower of a lineup led by Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers enter the postseason with one of the least imposing rotations of their 12-year playoff run, their staff ravaged by injuries to ace Tyler Glasnow, breakout rookie Gavin Stone and three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw.
Of the four starters lined up for the best-of-five National League Division Series, only Jack Flaherty seems capable of going six innings, and that’s no sure thing — the right-hander went six innings in only one of his last three starts, in which he gave up 10 earned runs and 14 hits, including three homers, and walked nine in 14 innings.
Freddie Freeman says his ankle sprain is worst injury he’s ever tried to play through
Freddie Freeman prides himself on his durability, the Dodgers first baseman having played all 162 games twice and 157 games or more six other times, a resolve that has required him to play through numerous injuries throughout his 15-year career, including a broken right-middle finger in August.
But Freeman has never fought through an injury as serious as the right-ankle sprain he will attempt to play with when the Dodgers open the National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres in Chavez Ravine on Saturday night.
“They told me this is a four- to six-week [injured list] stint, and I’m going to try to do this in a week and play,” said Freeman, who suffered the injury while trying to avoid a tag while running out a grounder in the Sept. 26 division-clinching win over the Padres. “I’m not going to be hindering, I don’t think.
“There are certain plays, like slowing down and stuff … I can’t thank [physical therapist] Bernard Li [enough], our whole training staff, for getting me to be able to do this. I’ve never sprained an ankle, and they say your first ankle sprain is the worst.”
‘Get them back.’ Dodgers look for redemption in NLDS rematch with Padres
The quote was so apt, Major League Baseball used it on social media to promote the Southern California showdown in this year’s National League Division Series.
“This,” San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado said, “is what everyone wanted to see.”
The Dodgers, it turns out, included.
“Me, I wanted San Diego,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said. “Just because of the adrenaline and the intensity, just the history of these two teams. I think this is the best scenario for us. And not only us, but the whole baseball world.”
“It’s felt like it’s been on a collision course for that,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman added. “It’ll be really good baseball.”
Dodgers have the same problem that derailed their last two playoff appearances
This time, they aren’t overthinking. This time, they don’t have a choice.
The Dodgers will start Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the opening game of their National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres on Saturday but not necessarily because they trust him more than Jack Flaherty.
In the regular season, Yamamoto never once pitched a traditional five-day cycle. Flaherty did.
If the Dodgers stuck to their original plan of starting Flaherty in Game 1 and Yamamoto in Game 2, only Flaherty would be available to return for a potential Game 5. By trading their places in their rotation, both would be available, with one starting and the other pitching in relief.
Dodgers vs. Padres: How to watch and betting odds for Game 1
The Dodgers are back in the playoffs. But for how long is the big question.
The Dodgers open the postseason Saturday when they face the San Diego Padres in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium. The game is scheduled to start at 5:38 p.m. PDT and will air on FS1. It will air on 570 AM and 1020 AM (Español) in the Los Angeles area.
Here are the betting odds for Game 1:
Here’s the TV schedule for the rest of best-of-five series (all times Pacific):
Sunday: Game 2 — San Diego at Dodgers, 5:03 p.m. | FS1
Tuesday: Game 3 — Dodgers at San Diego, 6:08 p.m. | FS1
*Wednesday: Game 4 — Dodgers at San Diego, 6:08 p.m. | FS1
*Friday: Game 5 — San Diego at Dodgers | 5:08 p.m. | Fox
*—if necessary
Dodgers release their 26-man roster for the NLDS
The Dodgers went with 13 pitchers and 13 position players for their National League Division Series roster, which the team announced Saturday morning.
And of that 26-man group, there were a few surprises.
Rookie reliever Edgardo Henriquez made the team, despite having appeared in only three career MLB games after debuting Sept. 24. Fellow right-handed reliever Michael Grove also made the roster, with veteran righty Joe Kelly being left off.
On the offensive side, rookie outfielder Andy Pages and veteran utilityman Chris Taylor made the club, while trade deadline acquisition Kevin Kiermaier was left off the roster.
As expected, first baseman Freddie Freeman was on the roster, despite battling a sprained ankle. Freeman told reporters Friday he is hopeful of being in the starting lineup for Game 1 on Saturday night. Even if he isn’t, manager Dave Roberts said Freeman could be available off the bench.
Here is the Dodgers’ full team for the best-of-five NLDS against the San Diego Padres: