Friday night should not have required late dramatics for the Dodgers.
But boy, what a stunning finish it created.
After leading by three runs early, then falling behind by two runs entering the ninth, the Dodgers rallied for a wild 6-5 walk-off win over the Baltimore Orioles –– one that finished, fittingly, with a game-winning hit from the Dodgers’ most frustrated player.
Before he came to the plate with the game on the line, catcher Dalton Rushing had endured eight innings of anguish. He was 0-for-4 on the night with three strikeouts. He had fanned twice on low sliders, including one in a wasted bases-loaded opportunity in the bottom of the third.
After two pitches against Orioles closer Ryan Helsey, he was back in a two-strike hole again, having chased yet another slider in the dirt that sent him stepping out of the box in another moment of rage.
But then, the left-handed hitter looked up and caught a glimpse of the Dodgers’ dugout.
Mookie Betts was cheering him on. The rest of his teammates were pounding the top railing.
“When you’re in that moment right there, nothing that’s happened the first four at-bats … matters,” he said afterward. “I look in the dugout and all those guys care about is that next pitch, and the next pitch after that.”
Thus, Rushing took a deep breath, then took the next pitch –– another slider –– high for a ball that kept the at-bat alive.
The next pitch after that: A fastball on the inner half that had Rushing jammed, but that he still got enough of to send a single into right field.
“Honestly, I just wanted to spoil any pitch besides a slider, especially after chasing one in the dirt,” Rushing quipped. “I had a feeling that they were gonna throw another one. And the whole mindset was, foul off a fastball and just try to move the slider forward through the middle of the field. And luckily, pulled a heater inside, caught it in the loop, and Dodgers win.”
Indeed, what happened next was the most pandemonious moment of the Dodgers’ season to date.
Pinch-runner Alex Call came racing home from the second. Then, outfielder Tyler O’Neill’s throw from right got past catcher Samuel Basallo, who gave a seemingly weak effort to corral a high, awkward hop.
The ball ricocheted off Basallo’s glove, trickled into the dugout, and allowed the winning run in a suddenly delirious Chavez Ravine.
“Great way to end the night, especially after the frustration early,” Rushing said, wearing a wild smile and cooler-soaked jersey as he addressed reporters from his locker postgame.
“It’s a great feeling. I think it honestly just feels great that we won that baseball game.”
What it means
Rushing was not the only one frustrated early, after the Dodgers had let a 3-0 lead in the second inning turn into a 5-3 deficit by the seventh.
Along the way, there was the wasted bases-loaded, no-out opportunity in the third, the low point of a night the Dodgers left 12 men on base and went 3-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
There were back-to-back home runs off Roki Sasaki in the sixth, turning what had been a gem of an outing up to that point (he had retired 16 of his first 19 batters with six strikeouts) into a disappointing 5 ⅔-inning, three-run dud.
Then, there was a go-ahead two-run single from Orioles No. 9 hitter Jeremiah Jackson in the seventh off reliever Will Klein, giving Baltimore a two-run lead it would carry into the ninth.
But, with the Dodgers on the verge of one of their most disappointing defeats of the year, Mookie Betts hit a home run (his third hit of the game) to cut the deficit to one. After that, Max Muncy and Ryan Ward both drew walks to set up Rushing’s heroics with two outs in the inning, lifting the Dodgers (49-27) to their fourth-consecutive one-run win.
“Tonight shouldn’t have been a game, in my opinion,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We kept them around. We’ve let a lot of teams hang around … But at the end of the day, we are winning baseball games. So that’s a good sign.”
Who’s hot
Even before Friday, Rushing had not been hot for the better part of two months, following up his blistering start to the season (.385 average, seven home runs, 16 RBIs in his first 12 games) with a prolonged slump ever since (.209 average, one home run, five RBIs in 30 games since April 27).
Against that backdrop, he repeatedly berated himself in the dugout following his poor swing decisions earlier in the contest. At one point, he tried to snap a bat over his knee.
“Still working on that,” Rushing deadpanned when asked how he is learning to better control his animated emotions.
“It’s just part of the process,” Roberts added. “The learning process, the experience part.”
Another meltdown might have happened in the ninth, if not for the glimpse Rushing caught of the bench in the face of the game’s last strike.
The faith he felt from Betts, he noted, was particularly helpful as he tried to reset.
“I see Mookie, [and he had] just all the confidence in the world in me,” Rushing said. “For a guy like that, a guy that’s lived in that moment, he’s succeeded in that moment, he’s failed in that moment, he knows what it feels like, it’s pretty special.”
Betts was in the middle of the mob that formed around Rushing at the game’s raucous conclusion, as the team walloped the second-year catcher in one of the season’s most joyous scenes.
“For him to flush it all and to flip his entire game and help us win a ballgame was huge,” Roberts said. “After he, you know, vents, he does a good job of collecting himself to get back into the next play.”
Who’s not
The Dodgers, of course, didn’t want to need a three-run ninth-inning rally given the way the game had started.
But on a night they were without Shohei Ohtani (who was away from the team for the birth of his second child), Teoscar Hernández (who is set to begin a rehab assignment next week as he nears his return from a hamstring strain) and Will Smith (who had a cortisone injection to address his lingering neck injury), the team’s young replacements missed a chance to pull away.
With the bases loaded and no outs in the third, each of Ward, Rushing and Alex Freeland went down swinging, unable to lay off low sliders from Trey Gibson that cost the Dodgers a golden opportunity to break the game open.
In the end, however, both Ward and (especially) Rushing got their chance for redemption.
“That third inning, very forgettable at-bats,” Roberts said, “To their credit, they made the adjustments later.”
Up next
The Dodgers and Orioles continue this series on Saturday night when Yoshinobu Yamamoto (7-4, 2.52 ERA) returns to the mound following his near no-hitter last week. He will face off against Orioles left-hander Trevor Rogers (3-7, 5.86 ERA).
