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SAN DIEGO — Rivalries in baseball can sometimes be difficult to define.
There are the obvious ones. The Yankees and Red Sox. The Cardinals and Cubs. And for the Dodgers, going back to their founding in New York, a generations-old hatred for the Giants.
“By definition, you can’t just decide to choose your rivalry because one team gets good,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “And for the Dodgers, that’ll always be the Giants.”
But periodically, there are other emotionally charged, highly competitive, and intensely simmering clashes; often taking root between simultaneous contenders, bad-blooded division foes or closely situated fan bases sharing a mutual dislike.
Over the last half-decade, that’s what has slowly been built between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres.
And in their first renewal of the season Monday night at Petco Park, the two clubs lived up to the ever-growing hype in an 8-7 extra-innings win for the Dodgers.
“Both teams are good. The fan bases are very adamant. Both environments have been hostile over the last several years,” Muncy said. “It brings everything that a rivalry should bring.”
A traditional rivalry, it’s still not quite. The Dodgers have as many World Series titles as the Padres do playoff appearances (eight each). Since the Padres last won the National League West in 2006, the Dodgers have done it 13 times.
But after three playoff meetings in the last five years, and a seemingly tight division race on tap this season, Dodgers-Padres is now a full-blown, certifiably contentious rivalry — at least in the eyes of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“I think it’s become a rivalry,” Roberts said before Monday’s game, “because the stakes have been higher.”
That was certainly the case last October, when the Dodgers outlasted the Padres in a memorable five-game National League Division Series. That series included controversy involving Roberts himself, when Padres third baseman Manny Machado — the leading antagonist for the Dodgers in their meetings with the Padres in recent years — threw a ball in his direction in the Dodgers’ dugout on the same night Dodgers fans hurled trash toward Padres players on the field.
Clayton Kershaw scatters six hits and gives up one earned run, and the Dodgers’ offense finally shows life in a 7-3 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
“No, I haven’t talked to him,” Roberts said when asked if he had since discussed the incident with Machado. “I’m sure we’ll chat a little bit. But there’s a mutual respect. Like I said last year, it’s gamesmanship. We’re doing what we can to help our clubs win.”
Indeed, whatever tensions lingered from October had been replaced over the first two months of this season. Entering Monday, the Dodgers were at least one game ahead of the both the Padres and Giants in the NL West.
And with their next 10 games coming against those two teams — including a return visit from the Padres for a four-game series at Dodger Stadium next week — the importance of this week’s rematch had been magnified for other reasons.
“It’s going to be an intense series,” Roberts said pregame. “It probably will feel like a playoff game tonight.”
It certainly played out that way.
Both teams scored twice in the first inning. The lead then changed hands three times between the second, when the Padres scored on a Will Smith throwing error; and the third, when Smith answered with a two-run homer to punctuate a three-run rally, only for the Padres to score three on a bases-loaded triple from Tyler Wade that got past a diving Teoscar Hernández in right center.
The Dodgers (40-27) tied the score again in the fifth, with Hyeseong Kim doubling home Muncy in a rare opportunity against a left-handed pitcher (he is three for three in such situations this season).
The Padres (37-28) had to skirt more trouble along the way. In the fourth, the Dodgers couldn’t take advantage of an infield pop-up that dropped between three Padres fielders. In the eighth, San Diego reliever Adrian Morejon misfired on the most routine of throws to first base with two outs, letting Shohei Ohtani reach second, but then struck out Freddie Freeman to escape unscathed.
“It wasn’t a pretty game, to be quite honest,” Roberts said. “But we found a way to win.”
The decisive sequence came in the top of the 10th. Andy Pages led off with a line-drive RBI double that outfielder Brandon Lockridge badly misread in left. Tommy Edman followed with an RBI single that ricocheted off second base.
And though closer Tanner Scott gave up an RBI double to Jackson Merrill in the bottom half of the inning, he got a borderline strike call to ring up Machado — a call Machado and Padres manager Mike Shildt immediately argued with home plate umpire Mike Estabrook — and limited the damage against his former team from there.
Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages left his native Cuba to pursue his baseball dreams, and he’s making the most of the opportunity he has earned in L.A.
“It’s our rival,” said Scott, whom the Dodgers signed away from San Diego with a $72-million contract in the offseason. “Any team that plays a rival, there’s always a little added intensity.”
Not every Dodgers player was so quick to use the R-word Monday.
Like Muncy, Freeman noted the Dodgers’ richer history as rivals with the Giants.
“I think the media wants it to be a rivalry,” Freeman said with a laugh. “But I don’t know. I think anything within the division is considered very, very important.”
Clayton Kershaw, meanwhile, recounted the revolving door of rival foes the Dodgers have faced over his 18 years with the team.
“Being here as long as I have, the Diamondbacks were our quote-unquote rivals. The Giants were quote-unquote rivals forever. And now [the Padres],” he said. “The one thing that never changes is us … I just know the Padres are a great team that are chasing us in the standings.”
Shildt acknowledged the rivalry’s significance to fans in his pregame address, also anticipating a lively atmosphere for what he said “likely is the best rivalry in baseball.” But he also repeatedly downplayed the idea that the Padres had added motivation for this week’s series after being eliminated by the Dodgers last fall.
“We don’t need more motivation,” Shildt said. “If you want to talk specifically about the team we’re playing, we beat them head-to-head during the season. We lost in the fifth game of the playoffs. That’s as close as you can make it.”
That dynamic, however, is exactly why Roberts — a former Padres player and coach who once downplayed the intensity of the rivalry before the Padres’ rise in recent years — now considers things differently.
“I just have a hard time believing something could be a rivalry when there’s no stakes,” he said. “And I think that with the talent that they’ve accrued, and the way they’ve played over the last few years, the stakes have gotten higher.”
Given the tight division race the two teams find themselves in, this season is setting up to be no different.
Round 1 went to the Dodgers on Monday night. More heavyweight fights figure to follow.
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