For the briefest of moments, Friday was in danger of becoming the ugliest night of the Dodgers’ young season.
Then, Max Muncy produced the campaign’s biggest early highlight.
In an 8-7 win over the Texas Rangers, Muncy hit three home runs for the second time in his MLB career. The first opened the scoring. The second chipped away at a mid-game deficit. And the last one sailed out to right for a walk-off drive in the bottom of the ninth –– saving the day after closer Edwin Díaz blew a three-run lead in the top half of the inning.
Muncy’s walk-off was somewhat unexpected, coming in a 0-2 count in a left-on-left matchup against Rangers reliever Jakob Latz.
The result, however, set off pandemonium all around Dodger Stadium, culminating in a mob at home plate in which the veteran third baseman found himself at the center.
“It’s a special night,” Muncy said. “Coming up with a win’s the most important thing.”
The Dodgers (10-3) should’ve won the game much easier, of course, after erasing an early deficit on the back of Andy Pages’ 3-for-3, four-RBI outburst; continuing his surge as the hottest current hitter in the league.
Down 4-2 in the fifth inning –– after Muncy’s two opening solo blasts were negated by long balls Corey Seager and Wyatt Langford hit off Tyler Glasnow –– Pages drew a leadoff walk and scored on a Hyeseong Kim sacrifice fly, cutting the deficit to one.
Then, he flipped the score in the bottom of the sixth inning, lining a go-ahead two-run, two-out double the other way to give the Dodgers a 5-4 advantage.
Pages wasn’t done there, either. In the eighth, he belted a two-run homer that stretched the lead to three runs ahead of Díaz’s entrance in the ninth.
For the first time this year, however, the $69 million closer imploded, giving up a two-run homer to Evan Carter with no outs in the inning, then a pair of two-out singles to Josh Jung and Ezequiel Duran that leveled the score.
No matter, of course.
Not for these Dodgers, who already have six come-from-behind wins so far this year.
And not on Friday, when Muncy elevated the team’s hot start to an even more euphoric walk-off high.
“I’d say that’s a sign of a good team,” manager Dave Roberts said. “A good trait for our ball club.”
What it means
When the Dodgers finished their opening homestand last week, there were questions about what was then a sluggish lineup.
Now, their offense is firing on (almost) all cylinders.
And it has started, surprisingly, at the bottom of the order.
Entering Friday, the Dodgers were getting ridiculous production from the Nos. 5-9 spots in their lineup, leading the majors in everything from batting average (.315 –– almost 50 points higher than any other club) to OPS (.857 –– some 70 points higher than the next closest offense) to home runs (nine) and runs scored (38).
Those marks will only climb after Friday, in which Muncy went 4-for-5 from the five-hole, Pages went 3-for-3 while batting seventh, and the bottom-half unit as a whole combined for 12 total hits.
Because of that, it hasn’t mattered that Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Tucker, Will Smith and Freddie Freeman are all hitting under .275; nor that Mookie Betts remains sidelined with an oblique strain.
“That,” Roberts said, “is a good thing for us.”
Who’s hot
With all due respect to Muncy, there’s still no one swinging a hotter bat than Pages.
Entering Friday, Pages was coming off his first bad game of an otherwise breakout start to the season, having struck four times in Wednesday’s series finale in Toronto.
His response: Hitting an opposite-field single in the second, drawing a leadoff walk in the fifth to spark a rally, then delivering the two swings that helped flip the game with his double in the sixth and home run in the eighth.
As a result, Pages remains MLB’s batting leader with a .449 average through his first 13 games. He is now also tied for the most RBIs in the majors, joining Braves catcher Drake Baldwin with 16.
“You just can’t say enough about what Andy’s done,” Roberts said. “He’s going to be talked about a lot this year.”
Who’s not
Díaz had been a perfect 4-for-4 on save opportunities and given up only one total run in his first five outings of the season.
But even before Friday, neither his fastball nor slider looked as sharp as usual in his debut Dodgers season.
It finally caught up with him against the Rangers. His typically upper-90s mph heater was barely clocking 95. And, in Roberts’ view, he wasn’t “finishing” with a slider that got only two whiffs on 11 swings.
The inning still could’ve been different. Díaz, for example, had gotten a called third strike against his first batter, Joc Pederson, only for the punchout to be negated by an ABS challenge.
However, the performance was shaky enough for Roberts to be asked if there was any concern level with his new closer.
“No,” he answered declaratively. “I was talking to some of the (pitching) guys and they say that perennially that’s what he does. Starts a little slower and then the velocity starts to creep up. So not too much of a concern.”
Up next
The Dodgers and Rangers resume their series Saturday, when Emmet Sheehan will look to bounce back from two opening starts this season in which he has posted an 8.00 ERA and battled decreased fastball velocity. Jack Leiter will go for Texas, having struck out 17 batters with a 2.45 ERA in his first two starts.
