LOS ANGELES — Once upon a time, the Dodgers did not consider the San Diego Padres their rivals.
Those days are gone.
In a game featuring taunting and trolling by Padres outfielders Jurickson Profar and Fernando Tatis Jr. and unruly behavior by the Dodgers’ fans surrounding them in the pavilion seats, the Padres upped the intensity of this National League Division Series, hit a postseason record-tying six home runs and evened the series with a resounding 10-2 victory over the Dodgers in Game 2 Sunday night.
The Padres are the first team to hit six home runs in a postseason game as the road team.
The best-of-five series will take a breath Monday before resuming at Petco Park on Tuesday night – where decorum will likely be breached once again.
The intensity bubbled over as the Dodgers were set to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning. A ball was thrown from the left field pavilion at Profar – who had been taunting fans since stealing a home run from Mookie Betts in the first inning. He reacted angrily and the umpiring crew gathered in shallow left field where Padres manager Mike Shildt gestured angrily at the fans.
When the Padres tried to return to their positions, debris was tossed onto the field from the right field pavilion with Tatis making gestures at the fans that looked like he was telling them to wipe away their tears.
In all, the start of the inning was delayed by about 12 minutes. The Padres clearly relished their heel turn – they put the game away with back-to-back home runs in the eighth inning and scored three more in the ninth (featuring Tatis’ second home run of the game).
It didn’t matter to Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish, who trapped Dodgers hitters in the spin zone all night.
Darvish dipped into seven different categories on the Statcast pitch chart while holding the Dodgers’ offense to just three hits and two walks over seven innings.
Darvish’s kitchen sink included 17 sweepers, 16 sliders, 15 curveballs, 12 splitters, six sinkers, five cutters and only 11 four-seam fastballs. He held Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani – who called Darvish his “childhood hero” – hitless in three at-bats.
The two Japanese stars are friends off the field. But Darvish’s best friends Sunday were his outfielders.
In the first inning, Betts – hitless in his past 22 postseason at-bats through Game 2 – drilled a first-pitch sweeper from Darvish down the line in left field and went into his home run trot. The stadium sound system went into home run celebration mode.
But Profar reached into the stands, took the ball away from the fans there and a home run away from Betts. Profar taunted the fans as he strutted away with the ball in his glove – a sign of trolling yet to come.
In the fourth inning, Freddie Freeman got one of Darvish’s four-seamers and lined it hard into right field over the head of Tatis – who reached up on the run and grabbed it, robbing Freeman of a leadoff extra-base hit. Like Profar, Tatis taunted the fans, dancing to the boos that rained down on him from the right field pavilion.
Just an inning later, Freeman left the game with renewed discomfort in his injured right ankle.
Center fielder Jackson Merrill joined the outfield highlight reel in the sixth inning when he went back to the wall to haul in Kiké Hernandez’s long fly ball.
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The Dodgers had Darvish’s own back to the wall in the second inning but let him off the hook. They loaded the bases with no outs on singles by Teoscar Hernandez and Max Muncy and a walk of Will Smith. Gavin Lux drove in one run with a sacrifice fly but Tommy Edman lined a ball directly at first baseman Luis Arraez, who then doubled Smith off first to end the inning.
While Darvish was outstanding for the Padres, Jack Flaherty gave the Dodgers their best postseason start in years – a seriously low bar.
Flaherty gave up a solo home run to Tatis in the first inning and a two-run home run to David Peralta in the second. While playing with an elbow injury that he wasn’t completely honest with the Dodgers about last season, Peralta didn’t hit a home run after July 8.
But Flaherty did pitch into the sixth inning – the longest postseason start by a Dodgers pitcher since Max Scherzer went seven innings in Game 3 of the 2021 NLDS against the San Francisco Giants.
More to come on this story.