Coming off a bit of a rough road trip, the Los Angeles Dodgers had to have been happy to return to Dodger Stadium, where they entered Friday night with the best home record in baseball and a streak of three-straight walk-off victories.
While it wasn’t looking pretty for most of the game, the Dodgers wound up coming back against the Arizona Diamondbacks to earn a fourth consecutive walk-off win, and the latest may have been more impressive than the rest.
The Dodgers went into the bottom of the ninth trailing 4-3, and Diamondbacks closer Greg Holland looked sharp early, getting two quick outs.
Holland completely lost it from there though, walking Chris Taylor to bring the winning run to the plate before walking three more batters – Russell Martin, Alex Verdugo and Matt Beaty – to bring home the tying run.
That was enough for Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo to pull his closer from the game in favor of left-hander T.J. McFarland to face Cody Bellinger. The only problem was that McFarland couldn’t find the strike zone either, and he walked Bellinger to bring home the winning run in the Dodgers’ 5-4 victory.
The 2019 Dodgers became the first team in franchise history with four-straight walk-off victories, and are the first MLB team to earn at least that many since the 2004 Oakland Athletics had five consecutive walk-off victories.
On top of the Dodgers’ improbable rally coming via five-straight walks was that the stretch began even though Taylor fell behind 0-2 in the count.
Earlier in the game, Ross Stripling helped out his own cause with an RBI single up the middle to get his team on the scoreboard. Stripling may have allowed four runs in 4.2 innings on the mound, but he went 2-for-2 at the plate.
The only home run on the night for Los Angeles came in the bottom of the fourth inning. With the Dodgers trailing 3-1, Kiké Hernandez stepped to the plate with a runner on base and he tied the game by hitting his 14th home run of the season.
