After a uncommon, prolonged rain delay at Dodger Stadium, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the NL West rival San Diego Padres on Saturday evening (LA 5, SD 2), night the season collection at 2-2. The Dodgers have outscored the Padres 28-27 within the 4 video games, in order that they have been evenly matched within the early weeks of the brand new season.
Dodgers righty Gavin Stone retired the primary 15 batters he confronted Saturday evening, and, within the fifth inning, the benches cleared after Jurickson Profar took exception to an inside fastball. He’d squared round to bunt on the earlier pitch. As with most benches-clearing incidents, there have been no punches throw on this one. Just a few jawing and standing round.
To the motion footage:
“For a second, I believed it was due to (the bunt) and he is throwing a good recreation. However he would not do this throwing an ideal recreation,” Profar mentioned after the sport (by way of MLB.com). “… It was simply the warmth of the second. I wasn’t making an attempt to get the workforce energized or something like that. We do not want that. We have workforce. We do not want any of that.”
Dodgers catcher Will Smith, who exchanged phrases with Profar after the within pitch, had a much less diplomatic response: “I do not know why we’d have thrown at him … he is sort of irrelevant,” Smith told Dodgers Radio.
For what it is price, Profar is outperforming Smith to date this season — .948 OPS and 0.4 WAR vs. .865 OPS and 0.1 WAR — however we would not count on that to proceed by means of 162 video games. Profar’s profession hasn’t turned out as anticipated for the sport’s former No. 1 prospect, little question, but additionally Profar’s Padres have gained a postseason recreation extra just lately than Smith’s Dodgers. Irrelevance is within the eye of the beholder.
It would not look like Stone threw at Profar deliberately, although it should be mentioned that bunting to interrupt up an ideal recreation is 100% acceptable. Particularly on this case. It was a one-run recreation between two division rivals. Not being allowed to bunt throughout an ideal recreation is one in every of baseball’s dumber unwritten guidelines. That is the large leagues. You play to win at this degree.
Saturday’s win improved the Dodgers to 11-6 on the season. They’ve a three-game lead over the 8-9 Padres, who’re proportion factors forward of the 7-8 Arizona Diamondbacks for second place.
