SAN DIEGO – On what could have been the final day of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ season, Freddie Freeman and his manager had breakfast. The subject turned to the obvious, and it was a conversation that Freeman has often made difficult on Dave Roberts. It has never been easy to take Freeman out of the lineup, but the circumstances deemed it necessary.
Freeman’s sprained right ankle needs weeks to heal. A bone bruise in the foot added to the agony. His side aches. Injections and treatment have allowed him to start and finish nine innings just once as the Dodgers have battled the San Diego Padres in this National League Division Series. Each game appearance by him has taken hours to put the former MVP back together again.
There was no way, Freeman and Roberts agreed, that the first baseman could play in Game 4 on Wednesday, even with the Dodgers facing elimination.
Roberts wrote Freeman’s name in the lineup again anyway.
“It was a little gamesmanship,” Freeman said. A little less than two hours before first pitch, Freeman was officially scratched.
So Freeman donned a blue Dodgers hoodie to pair with the heavy tape job he sported on his ankle. Even playing to the extent he has this postseason has required yeoman’s work.
“What he’s been doing,” Max Muncy said, “has been gladiator-style.”
So, Muncy said, “every single guy in here went up to Freddie and said, ‘Hey, we got you. Don’t worry.’”
The Dodgers will get another opportunity to keep their season alive on Friday. The Dodgers’ 8-0 victory in Game 4 gave them, and Freeman, another 48 hours. It took everyone else to get them there.
Eight Dodgers relievers combined to shut out a Padres lineup that has battered their starting staff. A bottom half of the Dodgers lineup that had combined to hit .196 through the first three games of this series produced, even without Freeman and an injured Miguel Rojas. The NLDS will go five.
“When you get into the postseason, it’s a street fight,” Roberts said. “It’s about people, players, and your desire has got to be more than your opponent. And for me to see our guys go through what they’ve been through and respond the way they have really makes me excited about Game 5.”
They can thank a collective offensive effort. Mookie Betts, mired in a mental funk just days ago amid a history of October struggles, gave the Dodgers their second first-inning homer in as many nights. Shohei Ohtani and Betts expanded the lead to 3-0 an inning later.
Everyone else boosted the stars. The bottom five spots in the batting order combined to go 10-for-51 through the first three games of this series. With Teoscar Hernández sliding up to Freeman’s spot in the order Wednesday, the six hitters that followed combined to go 7-for-25.
That bottom half of the order set the table for Ohtani and Betts in the second, with Gavin Lux drawing a walk and Kiké Hernández scorching a single against Padres starter Dylan Cease to generate traffic. Muncy, after a 2-for-13 start to the series, waited until he got a sinker over the plate from Bryan Hoeing and hooked it into the corner for a double. A batter later, Will Smith, hitless through nine at-bats so far this postseason, recreated his division-clinching homer from two weeks ago by driving a fastball a projected 432 feet to center field.
The swing expanded the Dodgers’ lead to 5-0, with the five runs representing their largest advantage in any postseason game in two years.
Tommy Edman grew the advantage in the seventh with a well-executed squeeze bunt up the first-base line. A batter later, Lux turned on the first changeup he saw from Wandy Peralta for a home run. That was his first hit off a left-handed pitcher in 25 months and punctuated what Kiké Hernández called “a very complete game on offense.”
The Dodgers set the stage by chasing Cease after just 38 pitches. Cease was working on short rest for the first time in his big-league career and gave up three runs in 1 2/3 innings. Given a chance to build a large advantage for the first time in multiple postseasons, the Dodgers battered the underbelly of the Padres’ vaunted bullpen.
Rather than simply being carried by the superstars that litter the top of their order, they managed to make up for Freeman’s absence and then some.
“That,” Smith said, “is just who we are.”
Muncy endured an arduous summer. He missed months for an oblique injury that was supposed to last days. A visit to a chiropractor, of all people, cured his discomfort but only after multiple visits. And yet, on a check swing Tuesday, he appeared to aggravate matters all over again. Through his first 13 at-bats, he chased outside of the zone. He swung recklessly. Valued for his patience at the plate, he didn’t look like himself. Until he did. And he nearly added a solo homer in his next at-bat, too.
Then there’s Smith, whose yearslong struggles against fastballs had cut into the profile of one of the most prolific offensive catchers in the sport. He found life against them 13 days ago, driving the two-run shot off a fastball that helped the Dodgers topple these Padres for the NL West. Mired in another skid to start the postseason, with a swing that hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc called “a little sensitive,” Smith connected.
Edman filled in for Rojas after the veteran shortstop aggravated his torn adductor in Game 3, shifting from center field to shortstop. The utility man has fit everything the Dodgers love, but the switch-hitter had struggled mightily from the left side of the plate. With the right-handed Alek Jacob on the mound and an opportunity to build on the Dodgers’ lead, he contemplated bunting. Roberts agreed.
Lux, the would-be shortstop who lost his job two weeks before Opening Day, was kept around for his bat but sat with a .562 OPS at the All-Star break. For years, the former top prospect bounced between offensive identities. A torn ACL and defensive woes cost him a job in consecutive years. So Lux just decided to swing harder, and more aggressively. Like a hitter capable of swings like the one he unleashed Wednesday. Lux posted an .899 OPS after the break. He’s tied for the team’s lead in hits through four postseason games.
Then there’s Kiké Hernández. The Dodgers traded for him in July with an eye on October but he didn’t log his first 2024 playoff start until the Dodgers faced elimination. He didn’t play at all in Game 3, even as the Dodgers climbed back to within a run of an early deficit. The longtime utility man bounced from third base to center field and back, collecting two hits on the night.
To combine for a win, Edman said, was “resilience.”
Facing elimination without their top star, the Dodgers will see a winner-take-all game on Friday night.
“I don’t know what it says, honestly dude,” Kiké Hernández said. “We were very injured all year, somehow we had the best record in the league. I feel like tonight was an example of what this team is capable of doing.”
(Top photo of Will Smith: Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
