Padres vs Dodgers: LA wins 7-0, and what San Diego needs to clinch a wild card this week
The Dodgers blanked the Padres with eight pitchers on Tuesday. San Diego still leads Arizona by four games with five to play and can clinch as soon as Wednesday night.
The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres 7-0 on Tuesday night in the opener of a three-game series at Dodger Stadium. Tommy Edman and Will Smith homered, the Dodgers scored six of their runs with two outs, and eight pitchers combined on the shutout, according to the AP recap on ESPN. The two teams meet again tonight at 10:10 PM ET.
How Tuesday went
Michael King lasted four innings, allowing five runs on six hits. The damage came in the second: King got two quick outs, then the next six Dodgers reached, including a hit batter and two bases-loaded walks, and Freddie Freeman's two-run single made it 4-0. King told MLB.com he lost command of his offspeed pitches. He had allowed five runs in total across his previous five starts.
San Diego's stars did little. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado went a combined 1 for 7 with five strikeouts. On the Dodgers side, Roki Sasaki came off the injured list and touched 100 mph in one inning of relief.
The standings after one game
| Team | Record | Games left | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 97-60 | 5 | NL West champions, 1 game behind Milwaukee for MLB's best record |
| Padres | 87-70 | 5 | Tied for the three wild cards, currently the No. 6 seed |
| Cubs | 87-70 | 5 | Tied for the wild cards |
| Phillies | 87-70 | 5 | Tied for the wild cards |
| Diamondbacks | 83-74 | 5 | 4 games behind the wild-card group |
Records from ESPN's standings.
What San Diego actually needs
The loss matters less than it looks. The Padres' magic number over Arizona is two: any combination of two Padres wins and Diamondbacks losses puts San Diego in the postseason. MLB.com reports the Padres can clinch as soon as tonight with a win and an Arizona loss. Arizona plays at Colorado at 8:40 PM ET, so that result should be in before the late innings at Dodger Stadium.
The squeeze point is the weekend. Arizona finishes with three games at Petco Park from Friday to Sunday, and if it comes to that, San Diego only needs one win in that series. The catch, as MLB.com notes, is that one more Padres loss this week would hand Arizona control of its own path again, though it would still have to sweep in San Diego.
Seeding is the other fight. The Padres lost the tiebreakers to both the Cubs and the Phillies, which is why they sit sixth in a three-way tie and project to open on the road, likely in Atlanta.
For the Dodgers, the prize is a first-round bye. The AP reports Los Angeles clinches it with one more win or one more Atlanta loss. Atlanta is 92-65, five games back of LA with five to play.
Tonight: Ray vs. Yamamoto
Robbie Ray (13-8, 3.60 ERA) starts for San Diego against Yoshinobu Yamamoto (14-8, 2.51 ERA). The gap is sharper than the ERAs suggest. Yamamoto carries a 0.87 WHIP with 178 strikeouts and 41 walks in 179 innings. Ray has a 1.33 WHIP and 83 walks in 162 1/3 innings, and walks were exactly how the Dodgers broke King open on Tuesday.
ESPN Fantasy reports the Dodgers expect Shohei Ohtani to return as designated hitter tonight, pending an exam, after an injured-list stint for knee and biceps issues.
The market agrees with the pitching matchup. DraftKings, as carried by ESPN, has the Dodgers at -224 and the Padres at +183, with a total of 8 runs. Strip out the bookmaker's margin and those prices imply about a 66% chance of a Dodgers win and 34% for San Diego. The Dodgers lead the season series 8-3.
Live scores, lines and win probabilities for every game are on our MLB scores board, and the rest of the week is on the MLB schedule.
Sources: ESPN game data and the AP recap carried by ESPN, MLB.com, ESPN Fantasy, ESPN standings, DraftKings odds via ESPN. Betting lines are shown for information only and are not a recommendation.
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