Jurickson Profar sets tone for Padres in NLDS Game 2 win over Dodgers
The home run music started blaring through the Dodger Stadium speakers. Mookie Betts began rounding the bases and pointing toward the bullpen.
Just like the previous night, it appeared the Dodgers had erased an early deficit on the back of one of their superstar players.
Only then, however, did the 54,119 people at Chavez Ravine realize that Jurickson Profar had made a spectacular play instead.
If Shohei Ohtani’s score-tying homer in Game 1 of the National League Division Series last Saturday night energized the Dodgers in a comeback victory, then Profar’s first-inning robbery of Betts in Game 2 did the exact opposite — frustrating the Dodgers, and what later became an unruly crowd, in an eventual 10-2, series-evening San Diego Padres win.
Dodgers fans should be embarrassed by what they saw from a few bad actors at Dodger Stadium during the team’s NLDS Game 2 loss to the San Diego Padres.
Games 3 and 4 will be on Tuesday and Wednesday night in San Diego this week. And now, facing what has become a best-of-three showdown, the Dodgers will have to do something they only accomplished once in the regular season: Win at Petco Park, or watch another division-winning season flame out in the playoffs.
Profar’s home-run robbery might not have won the game for the Padres. But it set an early tone in what became a heated Game 2 bout.
Looking for his first postseason hit since Game 3 of the 2022 NLDS — a stretch of 19 hitless at-bats entering Sunday — Betts thought he had it on a fly ball deep down the left-field line, one that initially appeared to answer Fernando Tatis Jr.’s solo blast in the top of the first inning.
Profar, the San Diego left fielder, ran to the warning track and leaned into the crowd, fighting for the ball amid a sea of opposing fans and outstretched arms. At first, it didn’t seem like he came up with it, bunny hopping away from the wall as Betts began his home run trot.
Turned out, Profar was just taunting the Dodger fans he’d snatched the ball away from. After a few seconds, he turned back toward the field, showed the ball to the umpire and celebrated as Betts craned his neck and returned to the dugout.
Instead of a tied score, the Padres remained ahead 1-0. The lead would grow in the next half-inning, when ex-Dodger David Peralta hammered the game’s second home run off Jack Flaherty to center for a two-run shot.
There was little scoring from there, but plenty of emotion.
For the Dodgers, it was mainly frustration with the game — in which they wasted several scoring chances (including just one run from a bases-loaded, no-out opportunity in the second), and lost Freddie Freeman at the start of sixth inning, exiting with what the team said was “discomfort” in his sprained right ankle.
For the Padres, it was impassioned ire at the crowd — as on-field showmanship from Profar and Tatis, who responded to fourth-inning boos from the right field bleachers with a smile and a dance, transformed in the seventh inning into something else.
As the Padres took the field after the seventh-inning stretch, Profar appeared to point out one fan down the left field line to an umpire and stadium security official. When Profar started to wave goodbye to the spectator, hundreds of other Dodger fans in the area turned hostile.
Shohei Ohtani’s ability to go from seemingly carefree to laser-focused baffles his teammates, but it has helped carry the Dodgers all season.
At one point, a ball was launched from the left field pavilion in Profar’s direction. Then, more debris was showered near the right-field line, causing a nearly 10-minute delay as more security officials encircled the diamond.
There were other emotional exchanges between Dodgers and Padres players before that.
Profar jawed with Will Smith at home plate in the top of the sixth, after Tatis was hit by a pitch from Flaherty in the previous at-bat. Moments later, Flaherty concluded his 5 ⅓ inning, four-run start by striking out Machado and shouting expletives in his direction, a back and forth that continued the next half-inning with Machado at third base and Flaherty in the dugout.
All of it, however, did little to change the outcome.
The Padres put the game away with a flurry of home runs (they hit six total in the game) in the eighth and ninth innings — all of them following a team huddle organized by Machado in the San Diego dugout.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, never got anything going against Padres starter Yu Darvish, who gave up only three hits and two walks in a seven-inning, one-run gem.
This best-of-five series is tied at one game apiece. And as it shifts to San Diego, it’s been embroiled in an extra dose of postseason intensity as well.
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