PHOENIX (AP) — Dave Roberts didn’t look like a manager whose team had just won a Major League Baseball game on Saturday night, wearing a tired, slightly-concerned look on his face while contemplating the 3 1/2 hours of baseball he had just witnessed.
He knows his two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t playing well right now. The only solace is that they’re back in the win column.
“That was a tough one,” Roberts said. “But we’ll take it.”
Shohei Ohtani brought home the go-ahead run in the 10th inning on an infield single and the Dodgers snapped a seven-game losing streak with a white-knuckle 2-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
There were definitely some good performances in the victory. Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings, Kyle Tucker launched a solo homer for a 1-0 lead in the eighth and Jack Dreyer earned his first save of the year after fielding a comebacker that started a game-ending 1-4-3 double play.
But the negatives were glaring: Edwin Diaz blew a save for the second time two days, giving up the tying run in the ninth. And considering the offense is filled with superstars like Ohtani, Tucker, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, runs are really hard to come by these days.
The Dodgers are averaging less than 3 1/2 runs per game over the past eight games. On Saturday night, D-backs right-hander Brandon Pfaadt breezed through the high-priced Dodgers’ lineup with seven scoreless innings.
“I just think offensively we’ve got to get going,” Roberts said. “It’s hard to win games when your margin is a razor’s edge. It’s not like guys aren’t trying, but it’s a tough way to pitch and have to be perfect.”
Tucker said he wasn’t worried about the team’s offense. His homer in the eighth was his 11th of the season and one of his best moments with the Dodgers after signing a $240 million, four-year deal during the offseason.
“Hitting’s tough — especially in this league,” Tucker said. “Everyone throws really hard, everyone has multiple pitches and when they locate them well it’s tough to hit. But we’re confident in our ability as hitters and there’s a lot of great ones in this lineup. You’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
There was also a silver lining to Diaz’s outing despite the blown save.
Diaz — who is in the first year of a $69 million, three-year deal — gave up back-to-back triples to Geraldo Perdomo and Corbin Carroll to start the ninth and it looked like a D-backs win was inevitable. But the veteran closer recovered to retire the next three hitters and send the game to extra innings.
Roberts said during those three outs, he saw the pitcher that was once among the most feared closers in the big leagues. The Dodgers have a little room to be patient — they’re now 8 1/2 games up in the NL West after Saturday’s win.
“It’s just the intensity,” Roberts said. “Once they scored the run, man on third base, we saw the intensity pick up, the stuff pick up, the fastball got better, the slider got better. Talking to him after the game — that’s how we have to be from the first pitch.
“That was the first game where I saw that he had some real intensity.”
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