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PHOENIX — One pitch. One swing. One pure, unmistakable sound.
On a night the roof was open, the air was hot and the Dodgers were engaged in a Chase Field classic against the Arizona Diamondbacks, that’s what the craziest game of their season came down to.
The crack of Shohei Ohtani’s bat — punctuating a riveting contest in early May with another indelible moment of on-demand magic.
“You guys have heard me say how many times?” teammate Max Muncy marveled. “Sho keeps getting put in these spots that you expect the incredible — and he rarely disappoints.”
Indeed, with two on and one out and the score tied in the ninth, Ohtani completed a wild six-run rally with a go-ahead three-run home run deep to right field.
It lifted the Dodgers to a 14-11 win, one that felt impossible after they squandered a five-run lead earlier in the game. It left Ohtani seemingly trying to lift off himself, stretching his arms and flapping his hands after chucking his bat and gliding up the first-base line.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits a three-run home run in the ninth inning against the Diamondbacks on Friday.
Up to that point, Friday’s intradivision shootout already featured everything else.
Wild lead changes and sudden momentum shifts. Line-drive rockets and towering home runs. Even the ejection of Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, when a bad ball-strike call contributed to his team’s mid-game collapse.
Most of all, however, there was Ohtani — meeting yet another moment, rising once again to the occasion.
“For us to score a lot, for them to come back, for us to come back again,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton, “it was a game with a lot of passion.”
Added manager Dave Roberts: “He sees his teammates fighting and guys trying to keep us in the ballgame, so that was kind of the climax of that moment. It’s good to see him show emotion like that. It was great.”
Ohtani was having a big night before the ninth, doubling twice during an early offensive onslaught that gave the Dodgers (26-13) an 8-3 lead.
The Diamondbacks (20-19) responded, scoring eight unanswered runs over the next five innings to flip the score in their favor, 11-8.
Four batters into the ninth, however, the Dodgers had tilted the seesaw again.
A leadoff infield single from Freddie Freeman was followed by consecutive run-scoring doubles from Andy Pages and Kiké Hernández, trimming what was an 11-8 deficit to 11-10. Muncy knotted the score by knocking a single to right. Then, when Michael Conforto was hit with a pitch with one out, the Diamondbacks faced a decision.
Arizona could have pitched to Ohtani carefully, and risked a walk that would have loaded the bases but also set up a force out at every bag. Instead, they replaced closer Kevin Ginkel with sidearm right-hander Ryan Thompson, letting him attack the reigning National League MVP in hopes his funky delivery could keep Ohtani off balance.
He couldn’t. In a 1-and-2 count, Thompson threw a splitter that stayed up over the middle. Ohtani clobbered it 426 feet to the right-field bleachers. The sound off the bat alone left little doubt about where it would land.
“Between him and Barry Bonds, they’re the two best players I’ve ever seen,” Roberts said, when asked if Ohtani’s heroics ever cease to amaze. “I played with Barry. But what Shohei does in the clutch — I’ve never seen anything like what he does in the clutch.”
Shouting across the room in the Dodgers’ postgame clubhouse, backup catcher Austin Barnes summed it up even more succinctly.
“The monster,” he yelled, “comes through again!”
After starting his season with a six-game hitting streak, and batting .308 with six extra-base knocks over his first eight games, Michael Conforto has been in a prolonged slump.
Even before first pitch, Friday had the makings of a high-scoring affair.
Eduardo Rodríguez, the veteran left-hander who two seasons ago blocked an agreed-upon deadline day trade from Detroit to the Dodgers, entered the night with a 5.92 ERA and was facing a right-handed-heavy Dodgers lineup, with slumping lefty sluggers Muncy and Conforto dropped to the bench.
Roki Sasaki, meanwhile, was pitching on five days of rest (as opposed to six) for the first time in his career. He was throwing in a dry Arizona climate that can often influence the execution of breaking pitches. And, as a result, there was added importance on a fastball that has disappointed so far this season, averaging well below the triple-digit readings he was hoping to rediscover.
Right from the jump, the Diamondbacks took advantage.
While Rodríguez gave up one run in the first inning after a leadoff double from Ohtani, Sasaki was ambushed for three. Ketel Marte hit a solo home run around the right-field foul pole. Eugenio Suárez belted a two-run blast.
The homers were the fifth and sixth that Sasaki has given up in his last five outings. And all of them have come against his fastball, a pitch that has yielded a lot of hard contact while getting very little swing-and-miss — including no whiffs Friday.
“Just really still in this process of finding out what the root cause [is],” said the 23-year-old right-hander, who finished giving up five runs in four-plus innings to raise his ERA to 4.72.
The Dodgers had an answer of their own in the second, tying the game on Hernández’s sixth home run of the season and Ohtani’s second double in as many innings.
Then, in the third, the Dodgers seemingly took control of the game, exploding for five runs on four hits and three walks while sending 11 batters to the plate — in an inning where the three outs were recorded by Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman no less.
In his first at-bat of the inning, Freeman roped a double down the line to put two runners in scoring position. Pages followed with a two-run single to left. Hernández and Miguel Rojas loaded the bases with a single and a walk. Still with no one out, James Outman hit the ground ball Arizona was looking for, but an errant throw to the plate allowed two more runs to score. Betts later tacked on a sacrifice fly.
That should’ve been enough for the Dodgers, carrying the ensuing 8-3 lead into the fourth.
But on this night, no lead was ever safe.
Sasaki was pulled after issuing a leadoff walk in the fifth, the lead having been trimmed to 8-4 by that point. His replacement, Anthony Banda, failed to stem a turning tide.
Within three batters, the Diamondbacks had the bases loaded. With two outs, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. swung big at a down-and-in sinker. Banda turned to watch it fly for a tying grand slam, evening the score at 8-8.
“I just felt that the offense did enough to win the game at that point in time, and to not pitch well, it’s frustrating,” Roberts said. “I just feel that we’re better than we’ve pitched.”
The Diamondbacks’ go-ahead run scored amid more contentious circumstances, as right-hander Luis García tried to escape another bases-loaded, two-out jam he inherited from Banda in the sixth.
In a full count with Suarez, he threw a high sweeper that appeared to catch the top of the strike zone. Home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak, however, ruled it a ball that walked in a run.
After the inning, Prior barked at Rehak from the dugout, triggering his ejection. Roberts then ran toward Rehak for an animated talk.
“There were some pitches that swung counts, and certainly that Luis García at-bat to Suárez, that changed that inning, the scoreboard,” Roberts said. “It gets emotional, always. And so obviously, it’s nothing personal. You can’t argue balls and strikes.”
In the eighth, it was the Diamondbacks’ turn to seemingly put the game out of reach, hitting back-to-back home runs off Alex Vesia for an 11-8 lead.
But, once again, no lead on this night ever proved to be secure.
Especially not once the Dodgers got Ohtani back up to the plate.
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