The San Diego Padres are one win away from playing for the National League championship, as they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-5 in Game 3 of the NLDS on Tuesday to take a 2-1 series lead.
Closer Robert Suarez struck out Gavin Lux with a 101-mph fastball to complete a four-out save and seal the victory.
San Diego can eliminate the Dodgers for the second time in three years Wednesday.
The Padres scored all six of their runs in a second-inning barrage off Dodgers starter Walker Buehler. The inning was set up when Freddie Freeman’s throw to second base hit Manny Machado for an error. Machado took an inside path while running to second, helping him get in the way of Freeman’s throw.
“I would have done the same thing,” Freeman said postgame, according to Chelsea Janes of The Washington Post.
The next batter, Xander Bogaerts, reached on a fielder’s choice that brought home the tying run, while the Dodgers weren’t able to record an out on the play.
San Diego took the lead for good moments later on David Peralta’s two-run double. A few batters later, Fernando Tatis Jr. punctuated the frame and drove in what stood up as the winning run with a two-run homer that sent a record crowd at Petco Park into a frenzy.
It was Tatis’ third homer of the series, leaving him one shy of the record for a single NLDS. He’s now hitting .500/.571/1.417 over the three-game series.
“When I hit it, I just blacked out, started screaming at my dugout. Energy through the roof,” Tatis said, according to Bernie Wilson of The Associated Press.
The Dodgers answered back in the top of the third, courtesy of a Teoscar Hernández grand slam off Padres starter Michael King that made it a one-run game.
But San Diego’s pitchers shut things down from there. The Dodgers went 1-for-20 following Hernández’s homer, with their lone baserunner down the stretch coming on a Freeman single in the eighth.
Buehler managed to grind out five innings for the Dodgers, allowing seven hits and walking one with no strikeouts.
“You can’t give up six runs in an inning in the playoffs and expect to win,” Buehler said. “I put us in a really bad spot, and we fought back, but the spot was too big.”
