Fans threw baseballs toward San Diego left fielder Jurickson Profar and then tossed trash onto the field, causing a long delay before the Padres defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-2 on Sunday night, tying their NL Division Series at one game each.
Yu Darvish held the Dodgers’ strong offense to just one run and three hits over seven innings, while Fernando Tatis Jr. hit two home runs, helping the Padres match the postseason record of six homers in a game.
David Peralta and Jackson Merrill each contributed two-run homers, and Xander Bogaerts and Kyle Higashioka added solo shots. At just 21, Merrill became the youngest Padres player to hit a postseason homer.
“Six of them is a special treat for us,” Merrill said.
The delay in the seventh inning lasted 12 minutes, triggered when two balls were thrown from the stands toward Profar. He chased one, but a security officer reached it first. Trash was left scattered on the warning track near the Padres bullpen.
“I feel like when it went over the line, when they started throwing stuff onto the field,” Tatis said. “I felt like that should not be happening in a big league game.”
The sellout crowd of 54,119 was continuously booing, making it the largest attendance at Dodger Stadium this season.
“The bear’s been poked for a while. It’s been poked previous years, decades,” Merrill said. “We just finally got the firepower; we finally got the team to take it to them. They’re a good team. I love the way they play. They give us a battle every time. They don’t stop.”
Security rushed onto the field as Padres manager Mike Shildt and his team gathered in shallow left. They were joined by the umpires, and security appeared to be trying to find those responsible in the crowd.
“We were looking for a higher security presence out in the left-field corner to ensure that that behavior didn’t continue,” crew chief Dan Bellino told a pool reporter, “and to make sure that if anybody did throw anything out on the field, they would be identified immediately and removed from the stadium.”
The Dodgers did not respond right away when asked if there were any arrests made. Manny Machado gathered his teammates in the dugout to lift their spirits before the game continued.
The Dodgers have lost four consecutive Game 2s and seven of their last eight playoff games. The best-of-five series will move to San Diego on Tuesday.
Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty hit Tatis with a pitch in the sixth inning, and Profar had a verbal exchange with Dodgers catcher Will Smith.
“There’s too much of an important series just to be throwing at guys,” Tatis said. “When he hit me, he just gave me more energy. My boys gave me more energy.”
The Dodgers thought they had tied the game in the bottom of the first inning. Mookie Betts hit a deep fly ball to the corner, and left field umpire Adrian Johnson signaled a home run with his arm.
However, Profar battled with fans reaching for the ball and managed to catch it in the webbing of his glove. He hardly reacted to his impressive catch, stepping back while staring at the shocked fans.
“That was hilarious,” Merrill said about Profar teasing the fans. “He’s having fun. He was playing like a little kid and I love that.”
Later, there were more verbal exchanges between fans and Profar.
The Dodgers lost first baseman Freddie Freeman, who left after five innings due to discomfort in his sprained right ankle. He struck out and flied out in his two at-bats. Freeman got injured on September 26 and has been struggling to stay healthy for the playoffs.
Just like in Game 1, the Padres jumped to a quick 3-0 lead. Tatis hit a home run in the first off Flaherty, and former Dodger Peralta added a two-out, two-run homer in the second.
Darvish struck out three batters and walked two against his former team. He managed to shut down fellow Japanese player Shohei Ohtani, who struck out and grounded out twice against his friend.
“I was trying to see how he reacted to some of the pitches that I was throwing,” Darvish said through an interpreter. “On top of that, I was trying to keep him off-balance by holding a little bit longer. I think it worked pretty well.”
Ohtani ended up 0 for 4 with another strikeout. Mookie Betts has not gotten a hit in six consecutive playoff games.
Pitching close to where he grew up in Burbank, Flaherty allowed four runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings, becoming the first Dodgers starter to reach the sixth inning of a postseason game since Max Scherzer in 2021.
Max Muncy hit a home run for the Dodgers in the ninth inning.
