Dodgers Pitching Staff Gets No Credit From Padres For Dominating Final Two Games of NLDS

Maren Angus-Coombs | Oct 13, 2024

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

San Diego had all the roster to make a deep run in the postseason but the Padres ran into the Los Angeles Dodgers and ran their mouths one too many times.

Even after they were eliminated, the Padres couldn't help themselves. Especially, Jurickson Profar.

The Dodgers pitching staff held the Padres scoreless for the last 24 innings of the series and Profar refused to give the pitchers any credit.

“We did a lot of unusual things,” Jurickson Profar said. “We don’t want to give credit either, you know, to their pitching. We just didn’t come through.

“Just sad for this team. We had everything to go all the way. But, you know, it’s baseball. Baseball. They played better than us the last two games. And we’re going home.”

Profar is right about the latter. The Dodgers did play better and they did it almost without the most-feared hitter in the lineup. Shohei Ohtani finished the series 4-for-20 with 10 strikeouts and was hitless on Friday with three strikeouts.

While Profar didn't want to give the Dodgers their flowers. His teammates did.

“Man, they were executing,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Their pitchers did the job. Obviously, we put tough at-bats out there, but at the end of the day, stuff didn’t go our way.”

Manny Machado flew out twice to the warning track and in the third inning, Kyle Higashioka and Luis Arraez managed back-to-back singles against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a starting pitcher the Padres had dominated during the regular season. Then there was Tatis, who had just been the hottest hitter around, but he hit into a double play shortly after.

“That was definitely a good opportunity,” Higashioka said. “But, I mean, Yamamoto’s a good pitcher. We’ve gotten to him in the past, and we were very confident against him, but he came out with his ‘A’ game today and shut us down. We couldn’t get that killer blow.”

At the end of the night, the Padres didn't have the timely hitting they were used to having all season.

“(President of baseball operations) A.J. (Preller) and his guys, they put us in an extremely excellent position,” Xander Bogaerts said. “What more could we have asked for, to be honest with you? We had the best bullpen and the best batting average in the game. And the bullpen kind of showed up this series, but the hitting maybe wasn’t the way we know it to be."

“Playoff baseball is a little different, too. But yeah, that was the only part that didn’t show up consistently.”