Despite a late rally by the San Diego Padres, the Los Angeles Dodgers held on to secure a 7-6 win in Wednesday’s finale at Petco Park, improving to 9-4 on the season.
Ross Stripling set the tone early, limiting the Padres to just three baserunners over the first four innings of play. “Really, really happy with the way I threw,” he said. “I thought the ball was coming out well, I thought I held my stuff deep into those innings.
“The ones that make me mad are the Profar walk, the Machado walk and obviously the Tatis bomb. I felt like I was throwing the ball well, curveball was great, threw some good changeups, heater command was good. Box score doesn’t necessarily show how well I feel like I threw.”
The Padres didn’t get on the scoreboard until the fifth inning when Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a two-run homer that trimmed the Dodgers’ lead to 4-2. Such was made possible after Jurickson Profar extended the frame with a two-out walk.
“That one will keep me up tonight, for sure,” Stripling said of Profar drawing the walk. “The 3-2 pitch to Machado, I felt like that was right there and like I’d gotten that pitch throughout the night.
“I haven’t seen it yet but in real time it looked like one of the best pitches I’d thrown that inning. I think that one might actually haunt me more than the Profar one.”
All-in-all, Stripling allowed four runs on six hits with seven strikeouts in 5.2 innings of work. He picked up his third win of the season in as many starts.
The right-hander is lined up to make his next outing against the Padres at Dodger Stadium. “It’s a really, really good lineup,” Stripling said.
“They’re a good mix of patient hitters and aggressive hitters, guys that can do a lot of damage. Tatis, I had 0-2, and he hit it like 480 feet. It’s a good test. Now I’m going to turn around and face them again.
“Just keeping working the whole arsenal, mixing pitches in all counts and maybe try to throw some of those changeups to right-handed hitters just to give them another wrinkle. I feel like I threw the ball well and kept them off balance, so it will probably be more of the same and make them adjust to me.”
Stripling ‘went nuts’ after Chris Taylor threw out Trent Grisham
Clinging on to a 7-5 lead in the ninth, the Dodgers summoned Kenley Jansen out of the bullpen for the final three outs. After striking out Profar to begin the inning, he issued a walk to Tatis and yielded a single to Trent Grisham.
Tommy Pham made things interesting with a clutch RBI single that scored Pham and allowed Grisham to advance to third. With still just one out in the frame, Manny Machado represented the go-ahead run at the plate.
He hit a line drive to left field that was caught by Chris Taylor, who promptly threw out Grisham at home plate trying to score. “They have a weird feed. We’re just watching from the press box basically, so we can see it live,” Stripling said of the play.
“C.T. is a gamer, man. He catches that and throws it home. What a play. We went nuts in the locker room.”
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