Dodgers beat Padres, ruin Rich Hill’s debut with new team
SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers and Padres went car shopping at the trade deadline and each drove off with a high-mileage, used vehicle.
Between them 43-year-old Rich Hill and 36-year-old Lance Lynn had logged over 3,200 innings in the big leagues before joining their latest new teams this week. Matched up Sunday at Petco Park, the Dodgers took the new-car shine off their former teammate, scoring six times in the first two innings against Hill on the way to an 8-2 victory over the San Diego Padres.
In his second start for the Dodgers, Lynn looked even better than he did in his debut against the lowly Oakland A’s. He allowed just one run on four hits and two walks while striking out six in six innings.
The Padres made plenty of hard contact – four outs in the first five innings left the bat at 97 mph or higher – and Lynn got just six swings-and-misses in 96 pitches. But they scored just once, on a solo home run (of course) by Gary Sanchez, inflating Lynn’s major-league leading total to 32 home runs allowed this season.
The echoes from Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow” (Hill’s warmup song) had barely faded before Hill’s debut with his 13th MLB team started to go badly. He hit Freddie Freeman with a 72-mph curveball and served up a two-run home run to Amed Rosario on a fly ball that dropped into the “Petco Porch” just inside the right-field foul pole.
Singles by Kike’ Hernandez and Miguel Rojas put runners at the corners with one out in the second inning. Austin Barnes drove in a run with a bunt, the call on the play at the plate overturned when it was ruled Padres catcher Gary Sanchez had blocked the plate against Hernandez.
Two batters later, Hill got ahead 0-and-2 on Freeman but couldn’t put him away. On the 10th pitch of the at-bat, Freeman drove a three-run home run into the right-field seats and Hill’s debut with the Padres fit the team’s season-long theme of disappointment. He was out of the game after three innings and 77 pitches, having retired just nine of the first 17 batters he faced while wearing Padres camo.
The Dodgers’ offense went silent against reliever Pedro Avila who struck out seven in 4 2/3 innings before Mookie Betts’ solo home run in the eighth inning. It was Betts’ 30th of the season.
According to ESPN Stats and Info, Freeman and Betts are the first pair of Dodgers teammates to each have 60 extra-base hits through the team’s first 110 games of a season since Babe Herman and Johnny Frederick in 1929. Freeman has 65, Betts 60.