Tempers Flare in Southern California as the Padres Level the NLDS with Game 2 Win

Everyone thought it was gone. Jurickson Profar hopped around, ostensibly upset that Mookie Betts’ fly ball had dropped into the left field seats. The camera panned to Betts triumphantly rounding the bases. The scorebug flipped from zero to one under the Dodgers logo. And then, a few seconds later, all was clear: Profar had pulled a Julio Rodríguez, fooling everyone into thinking it was a homer before whipping the ball back into the infield. He wasn’t hopping out of frustration, it turned out; on second look, he was engaging in some well-earned taunting, goading the assembled Dodgers fans after his excellent defensive play.

Profar’s first-inning home run robbery and subsequent gloating was a sign of things to come. In a tense clash between these two Southern California rivals, the Padres came out on top, 10-2, to level the NLDS at a game apiece, battling their opponents both on and off the field throughout the course of this bizarre evening.

The weirdness peaked in the seventh inning, when the game was delayed for over 10 minutes while fans threw things — including baseballs and beer cans — onto the field, pausing the action. While security guards attempted to get the crowd under control, Padres manager Mike Shildt gathered his fielders, issuing a fiery impromptu pep talk as the team huddled around their appointed leader. After the inning, an even larger group meeting was held in the Padres dugout, this time led by the on-the-field leader, Manny Machado, who issued marching orders to the rest of the San Diego roster.

Cause and effect is a tricky thing to parse, but the motivational words appeared to do their job. The Padres crushed four home runs in the final two innings, turning what was a relatively close affair into a laugher.

The pep talks and subsequent beatdown were the culmination of a series of heated engagements between the Padres and what felt at times like the entire city of Los Angeles. Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty did some swears at Manny Machado. Fernando Tatis Jr. trolled fans in the right field bleachers. Joe Davis called the crowd “bloodthirsty.” And the Padres themselves were clearly fired up in a way that they might not have been if they were playing, say, the Reds.

Before the game got out of hand (in multiple ways) in the late innings, it was starter Yu Darvish who defined the action. Darvish was his typical late-career self, mixing and matching seven pitches to keep the Dodgers — and most importantly Betts and Shohei Ohtani — off-balance all night. His FIP wasn’t great — he struck out just three hitters and walked two over his seven innings — but he reliably generated soft contact, staying off barrels by keeping hitters in a constant state of confusion.

Darvish, when he’s on, is such a graceful pitcher. He rests so comfortably on his back foot, keeping his balance as he moves through each phase of his delivery. On Sunday, he was in control of both his body and the Dodgers lineup, leveraging one of the widest arsenals in baseball to great effect. Of his 82 pitches, 17 were sweepers; at 21% usage, that was his most frequently thrown pitch. In his highly anticipated showdowns against Ohtani, he showed the phenom six pitches. Ohtani struck out the first time and tapped two harmless groundballs in his second and third try.

The defense backed Darvish up beautifully. Profar, of course, brought back the homer in the first. Tatis snagged a hard-hit line drive off the bat of Freddie Freeman to rob the slugger of a double. Jackson Merrill corralled a hard-hit Enrique Hernández line drive against the wall. And unlikely defensive hero Luis Arraez made multiple excellent plays in big spots, killing two rallies by catching a hard line drive and picking a tough groundball.

Meanwhile, Flaherty was never particularly sharp, even as he ultimately settled into the game. He stuck around for 5.1 innings, giving up four runs and striking out two. But after three poor innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 1, the Dodgers were in need of some length from their starter.

In the first inning, Flaherty averaged 93.9 mph on his fastball, allaying some of the concerns about a September velocity swoon. But the command was not there. He missed his spot on a fastball to Tatis, who calmly deposited it into the Padres’ bullpen. After a walk to Profar, he hung a slider to Machado, who hit a line drive 111.3 mph — but right at Max Muncy, who flipped it around the horn to turn two.

The second inning was also unkind to Flaherty. Merrill reached on a nice piece of hitting, taking a fastball up out of the zone and pushing it through the hole in the infield. Two batters later, David Peralta launched a slider into straightaway center field. The location wasn’t poor, but it was in an identical spot to a slider that Flaherty had thrown two pitches prior. After missing arm side with a fastball, Peralta was likely keyed in on the pitch, and Flaherty threw it exactly where Peralta had already seen it. Just as they were in Game 1 of the series, the Dodgers were in an early 3-0 hole.

Early on, Darvish wasn’t particularly sharp either, prompting Joe Davis to remark that “it feels like we’re watching last night’s game on repeat.” Darvish did log two strikeouts in the first, including one of Ohtani that featurued five different pitches — cutter, slow curve, sweeper, four-seam fastball, gyro slider. But he nearly gave up that home run to Betts, saved only by the excellent defense (and trolling) of Profar. And he immediately ran into trouble in the second, allowing two hits and a walk to give the Dodgers a bases loaded, no outs opportunity. But he escaped any major trouble — after Gavin Lux lofted a fly ball to left field to get Teoscar Hernández home from third, Tommy Edman tomahawked a liner at a dangerous launch angle, but the ball found Arraez at first base, who walked over to the bag to secure the double play.

Both starters settled in during the middle innings. In Ohtani v. Darvish round 2, Darvish switched up his tactics, throwing a sweeper and three splitters, taking advantage of Ohtani’s aggressiveness. On the third one, Ohtani let his front hip leak open and subsequently rolled over to first base. To finish it off, he punched out Betts on an extremely rare four-seamer. In the fourth, Darvish got some help from his defense. Tatis, on the run, snatched a 111.4 mph Freeman liner out of midair to save a surefire double; Arraez picked a sharply hit Muncy liner and beat him to the bag on the sprint.

Meanwhile, Flaherty started to find his fastball, and used his slider to retire the first two hitters of the fourth, getting soft contact from both Merrill and Xander Bogaerts. In the fifth, Flaherty threw lots of knuckle-curves to left-handed hitters, a tweak he’s made since moving to LA in August. He used the pitch to induce weak contact from both Peralta and Arraez.

After a raucous start, the game had lulled itself into a sense of complacency. After a Tatis double in the third, 15 consecutive hitters were retired by both pitchers before Lux dumped a curveball into center with one out in the fifth. Facing the bottom of the lineup, Darvishhad no trouble, jamming Edman with a cutter and getting Miguel Rojas to pop out to right field to finish his second trip through the Dodgers order.

As the sixth inning began, strategic questions came to the fore. Would the Dodgers try to squeeze another inning of Flaherty, daring him to navigate this dangerous stretch of the Padres order? Would the Padres, with their murderer’s row of relievers, permit Darvish to face Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman for a third time?

In short order, none of these questions mattered. Upon return from commercial break, Joe Davis informed the audience that Freeman had been removed from the game due to ankle discomfort. (After the game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts couldn’t say whether Freeman would play Game 3.) On the next pitch, Flaherty plunked Tatis with a sinker that ran too much arm side. Then Profar successfully dragged a bunt down the third base line. It felt like the game could slip away from the Dodgers, right here.

Momentarily, it stayed in touching distance. Flaherty offered the prospect of hope, striking out Machado on a full count and barking some unkind words at the third baseman as he walked off the mound for the night. (Flaherty and Machado kept yelling at each other even after the former had been pulled for a reliever.) Roberts brought in Anthony Banda to clean up his mess; Banda, unfortunately, needed to deal with Merrill, who laced a single to bring in Tatis from second base. But Banda took care of the next two hitters, and the game remained within reach, with San Diego up 4-1.

After the Padres went down in the top of the seventh, the weirdest moment of the game arrived. For over 10 minutes, the game was delayed as Dodgers fans threw things from the bleachers, forcing security to flood the field to prevent any more tomfoolery. The long delay appeared to rattle Darvish a bit; sharp all game, he walked Teoscar Hernández to lead off the inning. But as he’d done all game, he induced weak contact, retiring the next three hitters with ease.

The dinger parade commenced in the eighth inning. First, after a Machado walk, Merrill put the game out of reach, blasting an outer-half Ryan Brasier fastball into the opposite-field seats to make it 6-1. Bogaerts followed it up two batters later with a solo dinger of his own. (He was seen grimacing as he rounded the bases and was soon after pulled from the game due to hamstring cramping, though he said he believes he will be fine.) In the ninth, Kyle Higashioka and Tatis joined the party with long balls of their own.

Heading into this game, there was no question that this was one of the more passionate rivalries in the sport. The two clubs have long-tenured stars and well-established reputations; they play in the same division; their stadiums are just a short drive apart. But after the Flaherty-Machado back-and-forth, the Tatis trolling, and Profar’s puckish performance, it feels like the dynamic is shifting, the mutual animosity growing, the intensity escalating. And this series is just getting started.