One night after getting into a heated exchange with Yasmani Grandal in the dugout, Justin Turner single-handedly powered the Los Angeles Dodgers to a walk-off victory against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Turner hit the first pitch he saw from Zach Davies halfway up the left field pavilion to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. Julio Urias tossed five shutout innings, but Los Angeles lost their lead two batters into the sixth as Louis Coleman allowed back-to-back doubles.
Milwaukee took a 2-1 lead a few batters later on Scooter Gennett’s RBI double off Adam Liberatore. Tyler Thornburg replaced Davies in the seventh and gave up a game-tying home run to Turner with two outs in the inning.
With the score tied in the bottom of the 10th and the winning run on third base with one out, the Brewers elected to intentionally walk Chase Utley and Corey Seager. Four pitches later, Turner delivered a walk-off single.
“No, I think it’s what you do there,” Turner said when asked if he was surprised by the Brewers’ decision to put Utley and Seager on base. “You set up a force at home, (Jeremy) Jeffress is heavy sinker guy and gets a lot of ground balls.”
Perhaps more noteworthy than the clutch hit is Turner’s continued power surge. He has three home runs in the past eight games entering play on Saturday, and eight homers on the season. For Turner, it’s the pay off to his work.
“I feel like the quality of my at-bats have been good all year long, I just wasn’t getting results,” he said. “I stuck with it and stayed positive. I don’t know what it was on that last road trip, but I started getting better results and things have been going pretty good since.”
Turner is one of the veterans the Dodgers are counting on to round into form and help improve what’s largely been an inept offense outside of Corey Seager and Trayce Thompson. “We joked around and said we were going to start having over at the kids’ house since Seager, Pederson and Thompson have been hitting all the home runs,” Turner said.
He also dismissed the idea of the dust-up with Grandal providing any sort of fuel Friday night. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts echoed that sentiment. “I think that’s nice and makes a great story,” Roberts said.
“But even for JT, his vocal leadership and the way he cares, prepares and posts every day, that in itself is enough for me.”
