Friday could have been the night the Dodgers lost the National League West.
Instead, it turned into their best win of the season.
After leading Arizona by three runs early, the Dodgers were thrown a major plot twist in the second inning when Clayton Kershaw left the game after getting just three outs because of a bone spur on his left big toe.
Suddenly, an overworked bullpen that already was running on fumes needed to cover eight innings.
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That early three-run lead evaporated too, after the first reliever to enter the game, Joe Kelly, struggled with his command in a four-out, 47-pitch appearance.
From there, however, the Dodgers produced a potentially pivotal sequence of events, playing some of their best baseball of the season at its most important juncture yet.
They scored five unanswered runs between the sixth and eighth innings, including a critical three-run home run from Will Smith in the seventh. They pieced together five shutout innings from five worn-out middle relievers, several of whom weren’t supposed to be available.
And, even though they almost blew their lead by giving up four runs in the ninth, the Dodgers held on for a 10-9 win in front of a raucous 46,606 at Chase Field, extending their NL West lead to five games over the Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres.
“It was a huge win, team win,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It certainly came at a cost, but just the way that these guys banded together, came together and persevered was huge.”
Given the Dodgers’ growing pitching concerns, the coming days (and weeks) won’t be easy.
Kershaw could be the latest starting pitcher put on the injured list, because of a bone spur that has bothered him for “years,” according to Roberts, flaring up in the first inning to the point where he couldn’t push off the mound.
“Not a lot of answers right now,” Kershaw said about the severity of his injury. “But no matter what I did, I couldn’t really find a way to push off. Maybe it’ll feel better tomorrow. I don’t know.”
The Dodgers (81-54) might need to freshen their bullpen too, with the cascading effects of Friday’s eight-inning effort only amplifying the strain the group already was under.
“I’d be shocked if we don’t have to make a move or two tomorrow,” Roberts said.
But imagine if the Dodgers lost Friday night. Their division lead over the Diamondbacks (76-59) would have been three games. It would have been in danger of dwindling further by the end of the weekend. And if they finished the season anywhere other than in first place, Friday might have been a central reason why.
Instead …
The Dodgers opened this four-game series with the most challenging of triumphs. They have their largest division lead in almost four weeks. And even though major questions remain, a mixture of pride and relief permeated the clubhouse after the game.
“It’s one of the biggest wins just considering the circumstances of how the game unfolded,” third baseman Max Muncy said.
“We battled,” reliever Alex Vesia added. “That’s all you can do.”
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This game had a little bit of everything.
First baseman Freddie Freeman returned from a three-game absence and hit a two-run homer in the first inning, despite still playing with a fractured right middle finger.
The Diamondbacks answered with two runs in the bottom half, but squandered the opportunity for more when Teoscar Hernández made a diving catch in left field — the first of two run-saving catches he made — and doubled off Josh Bell at second base to end the inning.
The Dodgers went back in front by scoring three times in the second, taking a 5-2 lead behind Miguel Rojas (RBI single), Mookie Betts (sacrifice fly) and Freeman (run-scoring groundout).
That’s when things truly got interesting.
After his toe flared up in the first inning, Kershaw alerted Roberts of the situation in the dugout. Though Kershaw returned to the mound to try to pitch through it, his second pitch of the inning — a hanging 67.4-mph curveball that registered as one of the slowest pitches of his 17-year career — was clobbered by Corbin Carroll for a solo home run.
Before Carroll finished rounding the bases, Roberts and head athletic trainer Thomas Albert already were walking out of the dugout. Anticipating Kershaw might need an early hook, right-hander Joe Kelly had begun warming.
“It’s obviously not good,” Roberts said. “There’s swelling. There’s pain. He’s doing everything he can to kind of get through. Some starts it feels fine and it’s not impeding. Today certainly it was. He just, he had nothing. No legs today obviously. Then you start worrying about how it could affect his arm. There was just no other alternative but to take him out.”
The Dodgers’ pitching headache was just beginning.
Kelly stumbled through his outing, which included a run-scoring balk after he exceeded MLB’s new step-off limit. After a Jose Herrera single tied the game 5-5, Roberts turned to Vesia for a multi-inning effort, the first of several pitching decisions he was forced to reluctantly make.
“Your mind starts going and trying to figure out how you’re going to put together eight innings,” Roberts said. “How much you want to push them so they don’t hurt themselves.”
But, in the kind of sequence that could swing momentum in the late-season NL West race, the Dodgers bullpen rose to the occasion.
Vesia got four outs on 14 pitches to get through the fourth. Ryan Brasier, Michael Kopech, Daniel Hudson and Blake Treinen each followed with scoreless innings — despite Brasier and Kopech pitching four times in the last week, Treinen pitching three times in the last week (including a multi-inning outing Thursday), and Hudson throwing on consecutive nights after an extended nine-day break to manage his workload.
“We have some absolute dogs in our bullpen,” Vesia said. “Circumstances like this is where it comes out.”
Meanwhile, the Dodgers offense went to work.
Muncy led off the sixth inning with a double and later came around to score on a wild pitch. Smith had the night’s biggest swing in the seventh, launching a two-out, three-run home run to left-center — a much-needed blast for the catcher amid his second-half struggles.
Shohei Ohtani added more insurance in the eighth, becoming the first player in history to have 43 steals (he reached that mark in the second inning) and 43 home runs in a season by going the other way for a solo shot that made it 10-5.
“It’s super frustrating, obviously, to put the team in a really tough spot, having the bullpen cover eight innings,” Kershaw said. “But the team did amazing. They battled and grinded … It was a big win for us.”
It all nearly went to waste in the bottom of the ninth, when Anthony Banda, the Dodgers’ most-used reliever since joining the team May 19, was summoned to pitch for a third night in a row and fourth out of the last five.
He gave up a two-run single to Jake McCarthy, then a two-run home run to Eugenio Suárez that trimmed the lead to one.
But he got Carroll to foul out and Luis Guillorme to fly out to end the game, and the Dodgers still ended the night slapping hands, somehow entering the eve of September still with momentum in the race for their 11th NL West crown in the last 12 years — soaking in the afterglow of a victory that came against all odds.
“Tonight was pretty dicey, you just don’t have much margin,” Roberts said. “I feel bummed about Clayton. That’s where we’re at. It’s a little sour. But as far as a team, organization, it was a good day as far as the win.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.