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There are walk-off wins.
And then there are walk-off sighs of relief.
On Monday night, in a game they led by five runs through five innings, the Dodgers experienced the latter, needing Tommy Edman’s two-run single in the bottom of the 10th to save the day in a 7-6 victory over the Miami Marlins.
“I was telling the coaches earlier tonight, it just seems like we’re a .500 team given what’s going on [lately],” manager Dave Roberts said, with his club sitting at 19-10 (one game behind the New York Mets for the best record in the majors) despite an 11-10 mark since their 8-0 start.
“The month of April has been up and down for us,” added infielder Miguel Rojas. “Even though our record is good, we feel like we haven’t really hit the gear that this team can hit.”
Highlights from the Dodgers’ 7-6 win over the Miami Marlins on Monday.
On Monday, at least, they avoided a stark shift into reverse.
Coming off a needed series win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, and opening their first of two series against the rebuilding Marlins, the Dodgers knew this was a soft spot on the schedule. A chance to rebuild momentum after their up-and-down play in recent weeks.
“I think this is a stretch where if we play good baseball … we can win a lot of games and put ourselves in a good position for down the road,” Rojas said.
Good baseball and winning baseball, however, aren’t always the same.
And on Monday, the Dodgers played a little of both, roaring out to a 5-0 lead before rallying late for their third straight win.
The Dodgers put Tyler Glasnow on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation after he made an early exit in Sunday’s win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“I think that’s a good thing as far as there’s no complacency with our ballclub,” Roberts said. “All the stuff that we’ve gone through with having the inconsistencies with the offense, some hiccups sometimes with the defense, with the injuries, and still to be where we’re at — I think that that’s a bad sign for the rest of the league.”
Monday, of course, should have been a much more straightforward win for the Dodgers.
Shohei Ohtani scored in the first inning after a leadoff single, a steal of second base and an RBI single from Freddie Freeman. Mookie Betts doubled the lead in the third with a bases-loaded hit. Rojas, a former Marlins shortstop, tacked on again in the fourth, roping a double down the left-field line for the loudest of his three hits.
That set the stage for what felt like a game-sealing sequence in the fifth, when Teoscar Hernández followed Freeman’s leadoff walk with a sky-high two-run blast to left, making it 5-0 with his team-leading ninth long ball of the season and fourth in the last five games.
“We’re doing things fundamentally really well now offensively,” Roberts said, after the Dodgers recorded their third straight game of double-digit hits (they finished with 12) and eighth in the last 12 overall (something they failed to do once in the season’s first 17 games)
“Some good things are happening,” Roberts said.
Bad things, though, are still happening.
And in the top of the sixth, they coalesced in a calamitous inning.
Following five scoreless frames, Dodgers right-hander Dustin May was chased with one out in the sixth, giving up a run on two singles and a walk to get the hook after 83 pitches. With two left-handed hitters looming for Miami, Roberts summoned southpaw Anthony Banda from the bullpen. A sensible plan in theory, but with a disastrous outcome two batters later.
Lacking any consistent command, Banda walked his first batter on five pitches before falling behind again to pinch-hitting righty Dane Myers. Facing a three-and-one count, Banda tried to climb the ladder with a 96 mph fastball. Myers, however, was all over it, clobbering a no-doubt grand slam to left that stunned Chavez Ravine into silence. Just like that, the score was 5-5.
“[Dustin is] continuing to want to get better and go deeper in games and I’m going to give him that opportunity,” Roberts said, explaining that May’s injury history and inconsistent stuff throughout Monday’s start — he gave up five hits and walked three batters while recording just three strikeouts and escaping a couple earlier jams on double-play balls — factored into his decision to go to the bullpen.
“We needed [Banda] to be better,” Roberts added. “Unfortunately tonight, he just wasn’t on it.”
For the next few innings, neither was the Dodgers’ lineup.
Despite getting runners on base in each inning between the sixth and ninth, they couldn’t cash in, entering extras three for 13 with runners in scoring position and stranding 11 on base.
The Marlins (12-16) — whose new manager, former Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough, received his 2024 World Series championship ring before the game — made matters worse in the 10th, when Jesús Sánchez’s two-out double off Kirby Yates gave them their first lead.
Yet, in the end, the Dodgers managed to survive.
Announced as the co-National League Player of the Week pregame, hot-hitting Andy Pages led the bottom of the 10th with a walk. Kiké Hernández advanced Pages and automatic runner Michael Conforto to second and third with a sacrifice bunt. Then, after coming off the bench earlier, Edman walked it off with a first-pitch, line-drive, disaster-averting single to right.
“You’ve got to fight for every win,” Edman said. “We’ve done a good job of it, even though we’ve made some games close. We’ve done a good job pulling out a lot of wins.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has offered steady support to the Palisades Charter High baseball team ever since wildfires burned some of their homes.
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