Tom Krasovic: Sweep by LA puts Padres back in underdog role

Tom Krasovic, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Aug 18, 2025

Published in Baseball

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LOS ANGELES – A dugout full of San Diego Padres cheered Jose Iglesias as he returned to them Sunday after tying the game in the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium.

Iglesias had hit a run-scoring groundout while batting for Jake Cronenworth, who was among those to congratulate him.

Finally, the Padres were looking the Los Angeles Dodgers eye to eye. Since the series began Friday at Dodger Stadium, they’d been looking up at L.A. on the scoreboard save for an inning-and-a-half.

Now, despite failing to break the eighth-inning tie after Iglesias’ one-out blow, the Padres liked their chances.

After all, they could lean further on MLB’s best bullpen. And their offense was heating up, having erased a four-run deficit against a trio of Dodgers pitchers.

Three Padres pitches later, the Dodgers replied.

Mookie Betts launched closer Robert Suarez’s 2-0 fastball into the left-field pavilion for a 5-4 lead.

When Alpine product Alex Vesia closed out L.A.’s victory by getting his third, fourth and fifth outs, the Padres returned to a cramped clubhouse and tried to make sense of a three-game sweep that dropped them two behind the National League West-leading Dodgers with 38 games to go.

They were diplomatic in their comments, showing respect for the Dodgers but also acknowledging their own failings, notably in Saturday’s sloppy performance.

“They won the games,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “It’s that simple. We could play better.”

“They played well,” Xander Bogaerts said. “They’ve got some tough pitching. We’ve got some good pitching, too.”

Bogaerts added: “I wouldn’t give them all the credit.”

The season is too long to get worked up by three games in August.

No large theme was writ large by what transpired across the 27 innings.

And that would’ve been true if the Padres had applied the broom instead of being swept back down Interstate 5 toward the East Village, where they’ll begin a four-game series against a bad Giants club Monday.

The Padres still have a great chance of winning a wild-card playoff spot and advancing to the postseason. They’ll get three more games against the Dodgers this weekend.

To win the franchise’s first National League West title since Bruce Bochy’s final Padres club did it in 2006 and thus gain a possible first-round playoff bye, they’ll have finish with more wins than the Dodgers. A tie won’t do it, L.A. having earned the divisional tiebreaker Saturday by clinching the season series.

The best development for the Padres in Los Angeles centered on the continued good hitting from two regulars obtained in recent trades.

Ramón Laureano homered twice in the series, giving him four in 15 games with the Padres. In addition to homering off starter Tyler Glasnow, he doubled Sunday to help spur the comeback.

Freddy Fermin caught his 10th full game since arriving. Batting ninth, he drove a pitch off the right-field wall.

Yu Darvish, a day after turning 39, showed a younger man’s velocity Sunday.

Oddly, his old pitcher’s wisdom, he implied, got away from him, fueling L.A.’s four-run first inning.

Darvish threw three fastballs in a row to Freddie Freeman in the first inning. The third one landed in the right-field pavilion for a 3-0 Dodgers lead.

“You can’t go three fastballs in a row to a hitter like that,” the pitcher said. “So it’s about the pitch selection.”

It wasn’t a good series, health-wise, for the Padres.

A knee ailment that scratched 2024 ace Michael King on Friday created a pro-Dodgers matchup – Clayton Kershaw opposite starter Wandy Peralta and then bulk pitcher Randy Vasquez – that L.A. parlayed into a 3-2 victory.

But the Dodgers have been hit much harder by injuries this season, and had to dip much deeper into their depth chart throughout this series. Also, the game’s best all-around performer Sunday was a Dodger. Andy Pages homered off Darvish in the first inning — he clocked the second consecutive split-fingered fastball thrown him — and made a great defensive play, throwing out Fermin at second base attempting to stretch a single.

L.A. continues to show an ability to adapt to a wide array of challenges and thus improve its odds of earning a 12th West title in 13 years.

The Padres, like most San Diego sports teams throughout the decades, seem to do their best work as underdogs. See the upsets of the Dodgers and Mets in the 2022 postseason — and the recent surge that overtook L.A., if briefly.

They’re underdogs again. Maybe it suits them.

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