Shohei Ohtani leads Dodgers to close win over Padres, division lead back to 3

Down to the Wire managed to allocate Ohtani and the company provided just enough offense to set up the win over San Diego. LA’s magic number is 2.

Although pushed to the limit by a strong rival, the Dodgers managed to contain their joy and pride within a 4-3 victory over the San Diego Padres, at Dodger Stadium Wednesday night. Now they have quite firmly established a dominance of sorts over the outcome of the NL West.

It is almost routine that the team’s MVP of the most important game of the team’s regular season is always the one to be the center of honor that day. Shohei Ohtani’s 2-RBI effort paved the way for the Dodgers to win. Ohtani first batted in a run against Cease and then after a couple of innings minus Josie Sails, more bronies scored the go-ahead single on Arian Morejon.

Shohei Ohtani leads Dodgers

Ochiana’s second hit was the game-winning hit that gave the DUgers a sixth-inning lead. This rose a wave of pent-up emotion from him towards the dugout whose direction has been directed towards more regular bases for the past week or so owing to the forthcoming playoffs.

When power-hitting teams clash with quality hurlers, invariably the upper hand rests with the pitcher as is the case in most low-scoring All-Star games. On this occasion where both starting pitchers were untidy in a sense, neither side of the attack was capable of making a game-winning critical impact.

It’s cliche now to say that getting some runs in the first inning against aces has to be taken, if possible, but it has turned out to be so because it’s true. Once again, the Dodgers had the chance to make fire out of Dylan Cease’s mistakes in the first inning where he walked his way into trouble but came away with one run. From then onward, the trend would by and large follow the first half of the game, but the scores continued to flow in, the Dodgers would threaten and settle, and the Padres in no time after that, and have their way with Jack Flaherty.

Whatever advantage the Dodgers took was short-lived with San Diego scoring two runs in the second inning. It should also not be lost on anyone that the danger was much bigger and if it were one of the other several Dodger starters, granted it’s Yoshiobu Yamamoto, the situation would be much worse. After the first three reached, San Diego had Flaherty on the ropes with runners at the corners, and no outs and only managed to score once.

Ohtani leads Dodgers to close win over Padres

Both starters worked hard to get through most of the innings until the same scenario played out for the fourth time as the Dodgers took the lead again with a two-out bottom-of-the-order power surge only for Fernando Tatis Jr. to hit a huge home run in the fifth to level the score.

The view of Flaherty as a sympathizer would place it squarely in the category of a reliever who blew battle – he needed 100 pitches to pitch five innings, he allowed three runs and this would never be seen as being an ace. That would end up almost the same lie for Cease who also emerged from his pen to pitch four innings in a game that was tied and David was more accurate than his reliever.

The moment the Padres bullpen came on the field in the game, the Dodgers pen did all it could for the very first act of trouble. To add attention to this issue, Blake Treinen proved that he is capable of most restraint by cutting down the heart of the order in just seven pitches and is available for work again the following day.