Coming off a big sweep over the second-place Colorado Rockies, the Los Angeles Dodgers welcomed the last-place San Diego Padres to town for the final regular-season series at Dodger Stadium.
With a 2.5-game lead in the National League West and only eight games remaining in the season, every contest for the Dodgers is important to win. Particularly when they’re playing an inferior opponent like the Padres.
Unfortunately, the Dodgers played one of their worst games in weeks in the series opener, falling 5-3. Coupled with a win by the Rockies over the Arizona Diamondbacks, their division lead dropped to 1.5 games.
Now at risk of losing a series to the Padres and potentially seeing their lead shrink even further, manager Dave Roberts essentially called Saturday’s game a must-win for the Dodgers, via Rowan Kavner of Dodger Insider:
“It’s a game that we need to win,” Roberts said.
Justin Turner took responsibility for the loss after uncharacteristically making two errors. But it is hard to place a loss on one player when the team only managed to score three runs against a left-handed pitcher, which has been a bit of a theme throughout the course of this season.
What really makes the loss disappointing is that it appeared the Dodgers may have been turning a corner, playing their best baseball of the season in winning seven of their last eight heading into Friday night.
They have to have a short memory in regards to the loss though as they will have to be at their best for the remaining games of the season if they want to win a sixth straight division championship. It’s looking like the race between the Rockies and Dodgers could come down to the very last game.
