Last weekend’s Dodgers-Padres series was one of the most anticipated April series in baseball’s history and it absolutely lived up to the hype.
Between a game lasting nearly five hours, a pitchers’ duel and a three-run eighth inning from the Padres to avoid a sweep, all three games provided drama between what might be the two best teams in the National League, if not all of baseball.
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Perhaps the most exciting part of the series was that just about every star on both teams delivered a big moment or key performance. The highlights began in the fifth inning on Friday, when Fernando Tatis Jr. delivered a go-ahead homer off Walker Buehler in his first game back from the injured list.
You hardly had to be a Padres fan to understand how exciting the moment was when the face of the Padres and one of baseball’s brightest stars delivered a big hit against the defending World Series champions. The attendance of 15,250 for that game roared like it was at full capacity and given who played shortstop for San Diego before Tatis Jr. arrived, it’s easy to understand the joy they felt at that moment.
From 2008 to 2018, shortstop was held down by players like Everth Cabrera, Alexi Amarista and Jason Bartlett. During those ten years before Tatis Jr., Cabrera had a .652 OPS as a Padre, while Amarista had a .602 OPS and Bartlett’s OPS was a similarly poor .591. Just about any franchise would be overjoyed to have Tatis Jr., however, I think the Padres deserve that kind of talent at shortstop more than just about any other franchise. Admittedly, that was the only hit from Tatis Jr. in the series but still, you could do worse than a go-ahead homer in your first game against the Dodgers with fans since 2019.
While San Diego’s shortstop got a big homer in the fifth, the Dodgers’ shortstop was able to put Friday’s game on ice after the runner on second to start extras failed to produce a run in the 10th or 11th inning. Corey Seager, the MVP of the NLCS and World Series, delivered another clutch moment by hitting a two-run shot to right-centerfield that sparked a five-run inning for the Dodgers to give them the win.
Seager vs. Tatis Jr. feels like the best demonstration of something that felt obvious all weekend: the Dodgers have been here before and most of the Padres haven’t. While Eric Hosmer won the 2015 World Series with the Royals and Blake Snell infamously pitched in the World Series last year as a Ray, the Padres roster has been through many fewer high stakes games than the Dodgers roster. Even with missing the 2018 postseason due to injury, Seager has already played 49 postseason games before turning 27. Hosmer, who went to back-to-back World Series with Kansas City and has been in MLB four years longer than Seager, still has fewer postseason games than the LA shortstop.
I don’t think the lack of postseason experience is a negative for the Padres and in fact, the contrast makes the rivalry more interesting. The established power against the up-and-coming hotshot has been a classic type of rivalry across all of sports and Dodgers-Padres provides the latest example of it.
While there were other big moments from stars like a diving catch from Mookie Betts and an excellent performance from Yu Darvish, the Dodgers’ ability to find talent from virtually anywhere stood out to me. During Friday’s game, they got big hits from two players I’m confident that almost no one who wasn’t a Dodgers fan had ever heard of before Friday: Zach McKinstry and Luke Raley.
McKinstry had just seven plate appearances last season and 2021 is Raley’s first year in the majors, so these weren’t players with years of postseason seasoning like Seager or Justin Turner. McKinstry was taken in the 33rd round of the draft from Central Michigan, while Raley was a seventh-round selection from Lake Erie College, so neither of these guys were first-round picks from Vanderbilt or another baseball power. And yet, over the course of 12 at-bats during Friday’s game, they combined for five hits, four RBIs, a double and a homer. Raley provided a game-tying homer in the fifth, while McKinstry delivered an eighth-inning double to extend LA’s lead to 5-3. Over 11 PAs in the series, McKinstry slashed .400/.455/.500 and is currently off to a strong start of .319/.353/.617 after playing in just four MLB games last year.
McKinstry and Raley were just the latest examples of how the Dodgers seem to be able to find talent from anywhere. It’s become a meme that the Mets non-tendered Justin Turner before he joined the Dodgers and Max Muncy spent two years failing to hit the ball with the A’s before producing a career .893 OPS as a Dodger. It just seems like as long as the Dodgers keep finding guys like this, they’ll be successful. While the Padres deserve credit for getting Tatis Jr. from the James Shields trade, the Dodgers are still much better at finding major league talent from seemingly out of nowhere.
In the first three games of Dodgers-Padres, we had big moments from just about every star on the two rosters, three close games and plenty of beef. We’ve got 16 more of these games the rest of this year and that’s before entertaining the thought of a possible playoff series. If the first three games are any indication, we’re in for another 16 games of excellent entertainment.
BSL Analyst
Rose Katz is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, where she worked for The Diamondback as the online managing editor and a sports blogger. As a student, she spent almost all of her time on campus in The Diamondback’s newsroom or at Xfinity Center, Ludwig Field and Maryland Stadium. Rose gained intern experience with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).