ANAHEIM — Amid all the talk about Shohei Ohtani returning to Angel Stadium, there was another obvious storyline to Tuesday night’s installment of the Freeway Series.
The pitchers sharing the mound – Angels left-hander Reid Detmers and Dodgers right-hander Walker Buehler – are desperately trying to recapture past glory during the final month of the season.
Each of them allowed two runs, a pair of encouraging outings, but it was Buehler who could enjoy his performance in a winning clubhouse. The Dodgers won, 6-2, in 10 innings on Tuesday night, delighting the blue-clad portion of the sellout crowd of 44,731.
Miguel Rojas drove in the free runner with a single. After Ohtani was intentionally walked, Mookie Betts hit a three-run homer. It was Betts’ fifth home run in 21 games since returning from a broken hand.
The Angels couldn’t even get their free runner home in the 10th.
Their best late-inning performances were from relievers.
Ben Joyce ended the ninth with a 105.5 mph fastball to strike out Tommy Edman. It was the hardest pitch in the majors this season. José Quijada struck out Freddie Freeman at the end of a 12-pitch at-bat to end the eighth, stranding the go-ahead run at second.
The Dodgers (84-55) won for the 18th time in their last 24 games as they try to close out another NL West title, while the Angels (57-81) are now just one loss away from their ninth consecutive losing season.
Considering the position of the two teams in the standings, the outcome of the game was arguably less important than the work of the two starters.
Buehler is trying to prove that he can be a playoff contributor for a Dodgers team trying to patch its rotation together around a handful of injuries.
Detmers is trying to regain his spot on the organizational pitching depth chart after spending three months banished to the minor leagues.
The Angels sent Detmers down with a 6.14 ERA, and he didn’t have any sustained success at Triple-A until his last three starts.
In his return to the major leagues, though, he allowed only two runs in six innings, striking out 10. He allowed only three hits, and they came in a span of five pitches to the MVP-laden top of the Dodgers order in the third inning, driving in both runs.
After that, he retired the last 11 hitters he faced, striking out seven of them. His slider, which he said he changed while in the minors, got whiffs on 42% of the Dodgers’ swings.
Detmers is just the fourth starter to strike out 10 Dodgers this season. He did so at a time when the Dodgers were coming off scoring 32 runs in their previous four games.
Buehler certainly had an easier task in dealing with an Angels’ lineup that has been in a slump for a month. Still, Buehler came into the game with an ERA of 5.88, even though he’d shown incremental signs of improvement in each of his four starts since returning from a hip injury.
Buehler got through five innings – for the first time since June 12 – and the only runs he allowed were homers by Logan O’Hoppe in the second inning and Taylor Ward in the fifth.
Buehler struck out six, finishing four of them with a curveball that has been a significant improvement for him in the last two starts.
As for the Ohtani show, the ballpark rocked every time he stepped to the plate, although at least half of the fans were wearing blue.
There was a public debate about how the Angels should acknowledge Ohtani in his first regular-season visit to Angel Stadium since his six years wearing red. The Angels played a tribute video during the exhibition Freeway Series in March. This time, the main video board flashed “Welcome back Shohei Ohtani,” above a picture of him in an Angels uniform and a list of his most significant accomplishments.
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Any smattering of Angels fans who chose to boo him were drowned out by the grateful Angels fans and the Dodgers fans.
The fans – many of whom were wearing blue – cheered him loudly as he came to bat for the first time. When Ohtani tripled in the third, driving in the Dodgers’ first run of the game, fans cheered and chanted “M-V-P! M-V-P!”
Before the game, Angels manager Ron Washington said he enjoyed competing against Ohtani, and hoped his players would be able to contain him.
“A special ball player,” Washington said. “So every time you get a chance to be on the same field with him, you try to keep your jaw up, because he can do some things out there that make it fall. I just hope we can keep our jaw up instead of watching him and have it fall.”
More to come on this story.
Staff writer Bill Plunkett contributed to this story.
