LOS ANGELES -- Alex Vesia made his 58th appearance in Sunday's eighth inning, retired the two batters he faced, then walked into the dugout and delivered a message to Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
"If we're up in the ninth," Vesia recalled saying, "I want it."
Vesia had been relied upon heavily all season, but a sweep against the San Diego Padres -- the team that shockingly pulled ahead in the division earlier this week -- was in play. The top of the lineup was due up, the bullpen was shorthanded, and so Vesia wanted the ball again. Roberts, who had already burned through all of his available high-leverage relievers, responded affirmatively.
"You got it," he said.
Three pitches later, Mookie Betts delivered a tiebreaking home run, paving the way for Vesia to quickly retire the side and seal a 5-4, sweep-clinching victory at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers held a nine-game lead in the National League West as recently as July 3, then went 12-21 over a six-week stretch and approached this highly anticipated weekend series trailing the Padres by a game. It might end up being the best thing to happen to them.
"It was the first time we'd seen ourselves down," Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages said in Spanish, his team up two in the division and set to play the last-place Colorado Rockies over the next four days. "I think we told ourselves, 'That's not where we should be.' That's what helped push us forward."
Clayton Kershaw, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow combined to allow just three runs in 17 innings in their three starts against the Padres, but the contributions from some of those who had been struggling were just as important.
Teoscar Hernandez, who began this series with a .287 on-base percentage, homered in each of the first two games. Michael Conforto, with a batting average below .200 for most of his first year with the Dodgers, tallied three hits in eight at-bats over the weekend. Betts, navigating the worst offensive season of his career, drove in the winning run in the finale, snapping an 0-for-9 stretch in this series. But it was the bullpen -- a bullpen that blew two leads while the Dodgers suffered a sweep at Angel Stadium earlier this week, and one that is down as many as six high-leverage relievers at the moment -- that really shined.
Seven Dodgers relievers combined to allow three runs in 10 innings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
"It's the dawg, right?" Vesia said. "We still have that. That doesn't just go away. Every single one of us, we're leaning on each other. And we know as a group how good we are. The last three games, it's shown, and that's from one guy picking up the next. We kind of call it passing the torch. You get kicked down in this game from time to time, right? We put our heads down and keep going."
The Padres were swept in a series for the first time since May 20-22, against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Dodgers, who snuck past the Padres in last year's NL Division Series while on their way to a championship, won three in a row for the first time since the beginning of July and moved to 8-2 against the Padres this year. The two teams will stage their final matchup of the regular season next weekend from Petco Park in San Diego.
"I don't think anyone in that clubhouse doubted our abilities and how good we can be," Roberts said. "Honestly, it was just good to play a really good series start to finish. I think we respect those guys, I think they respect us, and now we've got to turn the page and move on."
The Dodgers rode a strong start from Kershaw and a gritty bullpen effort to snatch a close win in Friday's opener, then took advantage of an erratic Dylan Cease and an overly aggressive Padres running game to take an early five-run lead and cruise to another victory on Saturday. On Sunday, the Dodgers pounced on Yu Darvish immediately, getting a three-run homer from Freddie Freeman and a solo home run from Pages to take a 4-0 lead after the first inning.
Darvish and the Padres' bullpen kept the Dodgers scoreless over the next six innings, allowing the offense to cut its deficit to one. In the top of the eighth, the Padres manufactured the tying run on a hit by pitch, a double and a groundout. But Betts gave the Dodgers the lead again by turning on a 2-0 fastball from Robert Suarez and sending it 394 feet to left-center field.
Betts' 2025 season has been a perplexing one. He has overcome perhaps the toughest challenge of his career by successfully transitioning to shortstop in his 30s, but for perhaps the first time in his life, he has also struggled to be an adequate hitter. Betts' slash line stood at .240/.313/.369 at the start of August. At some point around then, he told himself to forget about the numbers. They were going to be wind up being terrible anyway, and so he vowed to approach each at-bat with the mindset of simply helping his team however he could.
It's been freeing.
"Every at-bat is the same at this point -- just trying to do something productive," Betts said. "It definitely helps to not carry burdens from previous at-bats."
After Vesia took the ball again in the ninth, he got Fernando Tatis Jr. and Luis Arraez to pop out, then struck out Manny Machado, who went 1-for-12 in the series. The Padres were 14-3 entering their series against the Dodgers, then led for just one of 27 innings over the course of three games.
When they needed it most, the Dodgers displayed the type of dominance they hadn't shown in a while.
"People who really know this team know that's still in there," said Pages, who made a big play of his own by gunning down Freddy Fermin trying to stretch out a double in the third inning. "We're that type of team. Maybe we went through a rough stretch, but the season's really long."
