Will Smiths walk-off home run rescues Dodgers

Sunday was gut-check time for the Dodgers.

Even before they blew a late-game, three-run lead.

As a clearly annoyed Dave Roberts put it forward of first pitch, the staff needed to “not get embarrassed” in the face of a potential three-game sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks, and play with a degree of “pride” that had been lacking the earlier two nights in this unexpectedly difficult weekend sequence.

“Whatever it is, we’ve got to do it right now,” the supervisor said. “We’ve got to win today. We’ve got to play better baseball. … There’s more in there. There just is.”

In the 5-4, walk-off win over the Diamondbacks that adopted, his staff finally delivered despite self-inflicted adversity.

After letting the Diamondbacks (68-70) get back into the sport, and almost squandering Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s seven-inning gem, the Dodgers prevailed on Will Smith’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run in the underside of the ninth, transferring two video games up in the National League West standings after the San Diego Padres’ rubber-match loss to the Minnesota Twins earlier in the day.

The win ought to have been less complicated.

Yamamoto gave up just one run and tied his career-high with 10 strikeouts without conceding a single stroll. The Dodgers’ lineup, meanwhile, wore down Arizona starter Brandon Pfaadt with aggressive early at-bats. They scored twice in the first after leadoff hits from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, plus an RBI double from Freddie Freeman, and again in the fourth and fifth when Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages each delivered full-count singles to rating a run.

“I thought today there was a lot of fight,” Roberts said. “Today was a good sign. I was pleased with today.”

Tanner Scott, however, nearly wasted the nice vibes.

In the eighth, he gave up a pair of two-out singles before Corbin Carroll took him deep for a tying three-run blast. The long ball was the ninth Scott has surrendered this 12 months, in contrast to the 11 complete he had yielded over the past three seasons. It got here on the type of misplaced, center-cut fastball that has plagued him repeatedly, leaving the $72-million offseason acquisition to be booed on his approach off the mound as his ERA rose to 4.44.

“You never want to see the ball leave the park, especially in that situation,” Scott said. “It’s super frustrating.”

Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott pitches in the eighth inning Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Yet, at what felt like another inflection level in the season, the Dodgers responded.

And, in an sudden flip, it was Smith who saved the day.

After main the NL batting race for a lot of the season, the veteran catcher had been mired in a deep hunch. He was batting .147 in August. He had hit only two home runs in his earlier 28 video games.

Behind the scenes, though, coaches continued to reward his work. When pressed on his struggles, Smith pointed to mechanical flaws he was making an attempt to iron out.

“I always say the game honors you, and Will has been going through it,” Roberts said. “But he’s been working his tail off. And today he reaped some benefit.”

Indeed, his reward got here in the shape of a 420-foot, stinging missile of a walk-off homer — driving the second pitch he noticed into the left-field pavilion.

“We needed it. We needed a win in this series,” said Smith, who has 4 profession pinch-hit, walk-off homers — the second most in MLB historical past.

“The first two [games of this series] got away,” Smith added. “Had the early lead [today]. Yoshi pitched really well, gave us a great start. Unfortunately, they got back in it, tied it up. But yeah, we were able to come up on top. … Every win going forward is going to be huge.”

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1. Dodgers catcher Will Smith celebrates after hitting a walk-off home run in the ninth inning Sunday. 2. Freddie Freeman, left, and Alex Call, middle, and other Dodgers gamers rejoice with Will Smith, proper, as he crosses home plate. 3. Will Smith, left, celebrates with Alex Call, proper, and his Dodgers teammates. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Granted, any feeling of progress from the Dodgers (78-59) will stay tempered for now.

Whether Sunday proves to be a momentum-builder — or just another flash of promise that once again fizzles — stays to be seen as they enter September.

Coming into the weekend, the Dodgers appeared to be using high. They had received 4 straight video games, including a three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds. Their offense regarded to be rounding a nook, finally pairing up with a strong run of pitching the way in which the entrance workplace envisioned when they constructed this supposed juggernaut in the winter.

But then, Friday and Saturday produced the type of maddening, reality-check performances that have dogged the membership repeatedly over the second half of the season.

There was listless offense at the plate both nights, amounting to one run off Arizona’s beleaguered pitching employees in 18 innings. There have been basic miscues on the bases and on protection, lapses Roberts boiled down to a simple lack of focus.

“I wish I had an answer for you,” Rojas said of the staff’s struggles to discover consistency. “We’re all frustrated. Coming out of the off-day [on Thursday, we played] pretty flat the last couple days.”

It was yet another sudden drop in the staff’s roller-coaster season.

Another instance of the staff taking two steps ahead, then one stark leap back in their efforts to strive and shield first place in the division.

“There has to be a point where that has to be sharpened,” Roberts said. “And that’s where, I feel, the time is now.”

Asked before the sport why his staff has wavered so a lot, Roberts struggled to discover an reply.

He alluded to a potential World Series hangover, noting “when you’re playing a long season, you’re defending champions, people are coming after you — which we know and understand — it’s just hard to keep that dialed-in focus every single night. That’s just reality.” (Rojas also talked about that dynamic, though insisted it’s “not an excuse.”)

Roberts highlighted the dearth of dependable manufacturing from veteran gamers, as effectively — coinciding with his resolution Sunday to depart Teoscar Hernández on the bench, in favor of Alex Call in proper subject, amid a current three-for-27 hunch that has been compounded by persistently shaky protection.

“He’s an everyday guy,” Roberts said of Hernández, whom the staff hopes will benefit from a “two-day reset” between Sunday’s break day and Monday’s journey day. “But I do think that where we’re at, you’ve got to perform too, to warrant being out there every single day.”

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers during the fourth inning Sunday against the Diamondbacks.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Roberts said that pondering would apply to the remainder of the lineup, too, in an intention to raise his gamers’ late-season urgency and regular their ever-teetering focus.

“I do think that a flip can be switched,” Roberts said. “Each day should be equally important. Every little play, pitch, should be equally important. ‘How you do anything is how you do everything,’ that kind of adage, I believe in that.”

And on Sunday, at least, his staff managed to persevere.

“It’s just really focus on this last month, just go pitch to pitch … and do what we need to do, do the little things,” Smith said. “We can’t try to win the game in one pitch. All the little things add up each and every day, each and every inning. That’s how you win baseball games.”

The problem will probably be replicating that components over the season’s ultimate month, and guaranteeing Sunday’s gut-check victory shouldn’t be wasted on clunkers marred by self-inflicted errors.

“It’s going to take every little ounce of us to do what we want to do,” Rojas said. “I feel like we should be playing way better baseball than what we did the last couple days, and today we showed that we play a really quality game.”