Padres blanked by Dodgers in do-or-die Game 5 of NLDS, ending their season

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Oct 11, 2024

Published in Baseball

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LOS ANGELES — The night needed a hero.

The Dodgers got two. The Padres did not get one.

It could have been Yu Darvish, save for one fastball and one slider that both got hit a long way and the fact that none of his teammates stepped into the breach to stop the season from bleeding out.

Instead, at the end of a season that will, once the disappointment ebbs, be remembered as being full of magnificent performances, the Padres shrank.

The Dodgers moved onto the National League Championship Series with a 2-0 victory powered exclusively by Kike Hernández’s home run in the second inning and Teoscar Hernández’s home run in the seventh inning.

The Padres, who led the NL Division Series 2-1, did not score in the final two games and finished their 2024 by going without a run in a season-high 24 consecutive innings.

Against a starting pitcher they had their way with in their three previous meetings, including six days earlier, they managed two hits and a walk.

Then the Dodgers bullpen continued its domination this series.

After Yoshinobu Yamamoto worked five innings at the start, Evan Phillips retired Kyle Higashioka, Luis Arraez and Fernando Tatis Jr. on 15 pitches in the sixth and struck out Jurickson Profar and Manny Machado to start the seventh.

Alex Vesia came in and struck out Jackson Merrill to end the inning.

Michael Kopech took nine pitches to run through Xander Bogaerts, David Peralta and Jake Cronenworth in the eighth.

Blake Treinen set down pinch-hitter Donovan Solano, Arraez and Tatis on nine pitches in the ninth.

And that was it.

A season in which the Padres won 93 games led to a wild-card series sweep of the Braves in two games and then this NLDS, their second in the past two years and second against the Dodgers.

It was just 72 hours earlier that the Padres had control of the series.

A 7-5 loss in Game 1 was followed by a 10-2 rout of the Dodgers in Game 2 and a 6-5 victory in their return home for Game 3. They had to win just one of the next two to advance to their second NL Championship Series in three years.

They did not. Not really even close.

After the Dodgers bullpen blanked them in an 8-0 loss Wednesday at Petco Park, the Padres bused to Los Angeles to try to keep this season going.

They had a season’s worth of evidence — of comeback victories and quickly bouncing back from losses — to boost their confidence.

But for just the second time in a span of 69 games, they lost a second straight game.

No champagne. Blank stares and quiet. A drive back down Interstate 5 without another game to play.

Darvish did all he could to make the season go on. The right-hander was arguably just as good in Game 5 as he had been on Sunday in Game 2, when he allowed a run on three hits over seven innings.

His final line would not look as good, with one more run and allowed the same number of hits while getting one less out.

A 94-mph fastball down and in to Kike Hernández that the right-hander turned on and sent halfway up the bleachers beyond left field to put the Dodgers up 1-0.

Their next hit would be Teoscar Hernández’s 420-foot blast on a 2-1 pitch that broke down and in and was also pulled into the left field bleachers.

The 26 straight batters Darvish, Yamamoto, Phillips and Vesia combined to retire was a postseason record.

The Padres’ streak would go on, as none of their final 19 batters reached base.

This postseason ending before they wanted will be largely remembered for their struggles against relief pitchers.

In the five NLDS games, the Padres batted .202 and scored six runs against the Dodgers bullpen. All of those runs came in Game 2 — three against a rookie making his fourth big league appearance and one off a pitcher who was removed from the roster the next day with a shoulder injury.

But they failed to score last night, as well, against Yamamoto, who had yielded 14 runs in nine innings in three games against them this year.

They welcomed Yamamoto to the major leagues by scoring five runs in what ended up being the only inning of his first start on March 21 in Seoul, South Korea. They scored three runs in five innings in his April 12 start, and in Game 1 of the NLDS, played at Dodger Stadium six days earlier, they scored five runs in three innings.

Their only threat came in the third inning.

One-out singles by Higashioka and Arraez provided a chance for Tatis, who had done so much damage for the Padres this postseason and who has had so many big moments at Dodger Stadium.

Tatis entered the game with seven hits in 16 at-bats in the series. He had struck out in the first inning and got a favorable 3-1 count before grounding into an inning-ending double play.