LOS ANGELES — They couldn’t have scripted it much better – even the part that wasn’t scripted.
The Dodgers rolled out the blue carpet again Friday night and received their 2024 World Series championship rings with all the pomp and pageantry you would expect. Then they went out and punctuated the occasion by coming from behind not once but twice, beating the Detroit Tigers, 8-5, on Mookie Betts’ second home run of the night, a three-run walk-off drive in the 10th inning.
“It’s a great thing to be a Dodger. A lot of cool things happen,” catcher Austin Barnes said of the start to the Dodgers’ season as defending champions. “Play a lot of cool games. Go to Tokyo. Get some rings. Opening Day. They do things right here. And we gotta do our job to go out there and win games.
“Yeah, it’s been a great little week.”
The Dodgers’ unbeaten record survived their globetrotting and the distraction of nightly pre-game celebrations – of baseball in Tokyo, of their World Series win in L.A. It also survived Tanner Scott’s first blown save with the team and another two-run rally by the Tigers in the 10th inning. The Dodgers emerged 4-0 for the first time since the 1981 team started the season with six consecutive wins.
“It kind of feels like we’re just picking up a little bit where we left off last year,” third baseman Max Muncy said.
Betts was the undersized hero Friday. Two weeks fighting off a stomach virus left him down almost 20 pounds – but unsurprised by his power game against the Tigers.
“Nah, I still feel like I’m good at baseball,” he said.
Down to 157 pounds at one point, Betts said he is back up to 165 now with hopes of adding another 10 to get back to his normal playing weight.
“I didn’t lose much strength,” he said, his cheeks still sunken and his uniform fitting more loosely than usual. “Relative for my weight, I’m still pretty strong. But if you can add on more weight, you can add on more strength.
“Right now, I’m just having fun hitting 160-pound homers.”
Betts gave the Dodgers one lead with a solo home run in the eighth inning then won it with his 10th-inning homer.
“Mookie doesn’t surprise me. He’s a freak, man,” Barnes said. “He’s one of the best baseball players on the planet. But yeah, he was down and out. So to come out here, put two homers on the board and win us a game was pretty impressive.”
As a member of the Dodgers for three months last year, Jack Flaherty will get his 2024 World Series ring privately on Saturday. As a member of the Tigers, Jack Flaherty did his best to throw a wet blanket on the occasion for his former teammates on Friday.
Flaherty held the Dodgers hitless into the fifth inning and scoreless through five.
At the same time, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s splitter was nearly unhittable Friday – nearly.
Yamamoto threw 28 of them through five innings. The Tigers swung 14 times, missed 10, fouled off three and only put one in play.
But that one was a solo home run by Dillon Dingler in the second inning. Yamamoto gave up another solo home run on a fastball to Gleyber Torres in the third and left after five innings trailing 2-0 despite a career-high 10 strikeouts (eight on splitters).
Tommy Edman broke up Flaherty’s no-hit bid with a broken-bat flare into right field for a single with one out in the fifth, Flaherty hit Andy Pages to load the bases with two outs before getting out of the inning.
With one out in the sixth inning, Betts singled. Flaherty’s next pitch was a slider that stayed out over the plate. Freddie Freeman rode it out of the park for a two-run home run that tied the score.
Betts came up with two outs in the bottom of the eighth and jumped on a first-pitch fastball from Tigers reliever Will Vest. Maybe if he hadn’t been laid low by the virus that had him living on smoothies and shedding weight for two weeks, Betts’ line drive would have landed somewhere deep in the left field pavilion. As it was, it just cleared the wall and survived a replay review for fan interference to give the Dodgers a 3-2 lead heading into the ninth.
“He’s super-human. I would say we’re not shocked by it because we’ve seen it so many times. He’s incredible,” Muncy said. “We were joking around that that first home run he hit was probably his best bulk that he’s got right now, with all the strength that he’s got. But he one-upped us. So we were all wrong on that one.”
Scott came in and gave up a leadoff single to former Dodgers prospect Trey Sweeney in the ninth. After two ground balls, the Dodgers were ready to celebrate another win but Manuel Margot drove in the tying run with a single.
Riley Greene doubled down the right field line and it looked like Margot had scored the go-ahead run, despite stumbling as he rounded third base and being beaten to the plate by the throw. Barnes made a lunging attempt to tag him while Margot veered wide and dove back toward home plate.
Initially called safe, Margot was ruled out after another replay review showed Barnes’ glove brushing Margot’s foot.
“I thought I got him,” Barnes said. “I didn’t know he slipped around third, because I looked at him and I saw the ball, and just the timing of it, usually, I thought that was gonna be a quick play. That I had to sweep him. But yeah, I thought I got him still.
“Glad they got it right, because it looked a little iffy on the big screen.”
In the 10th, the Dodgers turned to veteran reliever Luis Garcia who made the team as a non-roster invitee this spring. Two ground balls moved the free runner to third base. The Dodgers intentionally walked Zach McKinstry, bringing Dingler up to the plate.
He sliced a soft fly ball toward the line in left field. Michael Conforto made a diving effort but came up empty and two runs scored on Dingler’s triple.
Conforto had better luck at the plate in the bottom of the inning. His ground-rule double drove in the Dodgers’ free runner and he scored on Will Smith’s pinch-hit single to tie the score.
After Shohei Ohtani singled, Betts worked the count full against Tigers reliever Beau Brieske then drove a changeup well into the left field pavilion this time.
“He just does some special things,” Roberts said of Betts.
“Just given what he’s been under the last couple weeks and still to go out there and be ready and not be 100 percent and still give us everything he has, coming up huge – I can’t say enough about Mookie and just being able to post. He won a ballgame for us tonight.”
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