Triple play ends game as flat Dodgers lose to surging Padres

There was only one way Shohei Ohtani wasn’t going to hit in the bottom of the ninth inning Tuesday night.

Stunningly, the Dodgers stumbled straight into the remote, far-fetched, absolute worst-case calamity.

With runners on first and second base, and the MVP frontrunner standing on-deck with no outs in a two-run ball game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called for Miguel Rojas to attempt a bunt on his first pitch at the plate.

However, when Rojas laid off a called strike, and the Padres infield shifted its positioning defensively, Roberts then changed his mind — and watched in horror at what happened next.

Rojas swung away and hit a ground ball to third baseman Manny Machado. He scurried to step on third before firing a throw to second. Then teammate Jake Cronenworth completed the relay with a quick strike to first base.

In a frenzied flash, the game was over.

Padres, 4. Dodgers, 2. In only the 28th major league game to end on a triple-play.

“There’s less than a 1% chance that Shohei doesn’t come up to bat,” Roberts said. “And unfortunately that small percentage came into play.”

The Dodgers (93-64) still lead the National League West by two games. They still have a chance to rebound against the Padres (91-66) in the next two night of this week’s pivotal series.

But if they don’t, and ultimately squander a division lead they’ve held since the opening day of the season, Tuesday’s loss will loom large in their reflections.

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A team accustomed to October collapses might have just gotten a head start this year.

"It's shocking,” Roberts said. “To not get Shohei up is obviously very disappointing."

Tuesday was never a game the Dodgers should have won in the first place, with the team coming out flat in its biggest series of the season.

On the mound, San Diego starter Michael King outdueled Dodgers rookie Landon Knack. While King gave up just an unearned run in five innings, Knack ran out of gas in a four-inning, four-run outing, a concerning result for an unproven pitcher who will likely be tasked with starting in the postseason.

At the plate, the Padres (91-66) were also more clinical, scoring all four of their runs with two out while the Dodgers stranded seven men on base and went two for 10 with runners in scoring position.

Mostly, though, the Padres played cleaner and — in a continuation of a trend Roberts highlighted coming into this series — with seemingly more intensity; out-executing a Dodgers team that knew it could clinch the division with a series win this week, but also slip to second place if they fail to avoid a sweep.

“They got the big hits when they needed,” Roberts said. “And when we needed to make a pitch, we just couldn't.”

And yet, despite a 4-1 deficit entering the bottom of the ninth, opportunity for salvation arose at the end.

Will Smith and Tommy Edman led the inning off with singles. Kiké Hernández then dropped a broken-bat floater in center for run-scoring hit.

With no outs in the inning, and the deficit trimmed to two, Ohtani walked in the on-deck circle to the excitement of a 50,369-person crowd. Anticipation built for him to take a potential game-winning at-bat.

But first, Rojas came to the plate. And in the dugout, Roberts and his staff rolled the dice on a couple high-stakes decisions.

On the first pitch from Padres closer Robert Suarez, Rojas was instructed to lay down a bunt. The veteran infielder squared around on a 97-mph fastball, but pulled back just as it clipped the bottom of the zone for strike one.

“I feel like I had an opportunity to get the bunt down early on that at bat,” Rojas said. “But I couldn’t get the job done there.”

When Rojas looked back up the line at third base coach Dino Ebel, he was relayed a new sign from the dugout: Swing.

As Roberts later explained, he saw the Padres infield shift to a “wheel play” after the first pitch — with the corner infielders moving onto the grass, Cronenworth shuffling toward the bag at second and shortstop Xander Bogaerts staying deep in the hole between second and third.

That alignment suggested the Padres were expecting bunt again. Roberts feared doing so would lead to one easy out, and potentially two if the Padres could turn the play quickly.

“You can’t bunt because you’re bunting into an out,” Roberts said. “With the infield in, Bogaerts out of position, the best chance is to put the ball in play and hopefully find a hole.”

Did the thought of a triple play even cross Roberts’ mind?

"No,” he said. “Not at all."

How about when Rojas' grounder one-hopped to Machado?

"No," he reiterated. "I thought [Machado] was going to go from third to first."

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Instead, Machado fired to second, where Cronenworth received it just ahead of Hernández’s slide. Rojas futilely sprinted toward first, but he never had much chance at getting there in time.

“I let the team down on that one,” Rojas said in a somber postgame clubhouse.

On the other side of the stadium, Machado and the Padres popped champagne bottles in celebration of clinching a postseason berth.

“I was thinking he was going to bunt,” Machado said. “[But when] he hit a ground ball right at me, instantly, you know, ‘Hey, let’s try to turn this and get us out.’"

Following the game, Roberts said he didn’t regret the decision to call off a bunt attempt.

“He hit the ball hard,” Roberts said. “And I just can’t play the game of, if it gets through then it’s a great play and then if it hits right at him it’s a bad play.”

Rojas also agreed with the decision, echoing Roberts’ point about the Padres’ defensive shift.

“The way they were playing on defense, I think it made sense for me to swing the bat there,” he said. “I’m totally confident that I can get to a fastball. Unfortunately, I hit it on the ground.”

Now, the Dodgers will have to regroup to avoid total disaster over the final week of the season.

If they can’t hold off the Padres — who, in case of an end-of-season tie, would own the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Dodgers thanks to their 8-3 record in the rivalry this year — the club would have to begin its postseason a week earlier than expected, in a best-of-three wild card round that could grind down its already shorthanded pitching staff.

“It's important,” Roberts said of his team’s need to rebound. “Really important."

So too, however, was getting Ohtani to the plate in the ninth inning Tuesday.

It was a near-certainty that didn’t happen.

The Dodgers can only hope their pursuit of a division title doesn’t suffer the same fate.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.