The Los Angeles Dodgers just refuse to lose. After being down 5-3 heading into the bottom of the 10th inning, the Dodgers scored five runs, including three on a walk-off, three-run home run by Mookie Betts, to take down the Detroit Tigers and move to an incredible 4-0 on the year. Here’s a video of the Betts homer, his second home run of the night.
Betts missed over two weeks dealing with a brutal stomach illness, losing nearly 20 pounds and unable to eat solid foods. Yet, he was in the lineup for Thursday’s Opening Day, and then broke out on Friday, going 3-for-5 with two home runs and four runs batted in. Before Betts came up in the bottom of the 10th inning, Michael Conforto hit an RBI double, scoring Tommy Edman, who was the ghost runner on second base. Then, after a groundout, Will Smith hit a pinch-hit RBI single on his 30th birthday, and Shohei Ohtani followed it up with a single. With runners on second and third and one out, Betts didn’t let the game go on any longer, and continued L.A.’s undefeated season in dramatic fashion.
As for the rest of the game, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jack Flaherty (now with the Tigers) had a pitchers duel. Yamamoto struck out a career-high 10 across five innings, allowing two runs. Flaherty was dominant through five innings, but then gave up a game-tying, two-run home run to Freddie Freeman. The Dodgers took the lead in the bottom of the eighth inning on a Betts solo home run, but Tanner Scott blew the save in the top of the ninth. However, three impressive defensive plays from Edman kept L.A. alive. Luis Garcia pitched the 10th and allowed a two-run double that fell just under the glove of a diving Conforto.
However, Conforto was the one to start the 10th inning rally, and Betts capped it off with the Dodgers’ first walk-off home run since Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in World Series Game 1. The Tigers, for the second straight night, went toe-to-toe with the defending champions, but for all their grit and resiliency, they start the season 0-2.
The Tigers took a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th but could not hold on. A bloop, opposite-field, ground-rule double by Michael Conforto scored the free runner and cut the lead to 5-4. With one out, pinch-hitter Will Smith grounded a single to left, scoring Conforto and tying the game. Shohei Ohtani followed with a ground single to right, moving Smith to third and then Mookie Betts ended it all with a three-run homer, his second of the game.
With two outs in the top of the 10th inning, Dillon Dingler, who homered in the second inning, dropped a broke-bat liner in front of a diving left fielder Michael Conforto. The ball bounced by him to the track, two runs scored on the triple, and the Tigers held on to a 5-4 lead, dampening the Dodgers’ ring ceremony.
The Dodgers took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the eighth when Mookie Betts slammed a first-pitch, center-cut fastball from reliever Will Vest just over the wall in left. The Tigers challenged the play, claiming a fan interfered with left fielder Riley Greene, who leaped at the wall and came up empty. Video upheld the home run call.
The Tigers valiantly tied the game in the top of the ninth off lefty reliever Tanner Scott. Manny Margot delivered the club’s first hit this season with runners in scoring position, a two-out line drive single that scored Ryan Kreidler from second. It looked like the Tigers took a 4-3 lead when Greene lashed a double into the right-field corner. Margot, though he was stumbling around third base, was called safe at home, with umpire John Tumpane ruling that Margot eluded the tag of catcher Austin Barnes. The Dodgers challenged, and the call was overturned after video review showed that Barnes tagged Margot’s foot.
Tommy Kahnle, in his Tigers’ debut, worked a clean bottom of the ninth to get the game into extra innings. All of that drama upstaged what was the marquee storyline—Jack Flaherty’s return to Los Angeles. Tarik Skubal was asked how he thought Flaherty would handle facing his former team, the Dodgers, on the night they got their World Series rings. Skubal got a big smile on his face. “I watched him against his former team last year, St. Louis, and it went pretty well,” he said. “I expect him to be just as good as that. He lives for moments like this.”
Flaherty was pitching for the Tigers on April 30 when the Cardinals, the team that drafted him, the team he broke in with, came into Comerica Park. It wasn’t a fair fight. Flaherty struck out 14 in 6.2 scoreless, two-hit innings. He came at the Dodgers with a similar focus and fury, though it didn’t end quite as happily. One regrettable pitch left a first-pitch slider over the plate to lefty-swinging Freddie Freeman in the sixth inning, and that ball landed 411 feet away into the bleachers in left-center. The two-run homer tied the game 2-2.
Flaherty, a key piece of the Dodgers World Series run last year, left to a well-deserved rousing ovation. He walked leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani to start the game and then dispatched 11 straight hitters, not allowing a hit through four innings. He gave up a broken-bat single to Tommy Edman in the fifth. After a walk and a hit-batter loaded the bases, he locked in and got Austin Barnes on a fly out to end the inning. He was at 70 pitches entering the sixth inning and facing the top of the Dodgers order for the third time.
He got Ohtani to ground out to start the inning but Betts slapped a single to center. Manager AJ Hinch, with lefty Tyler Holton starting to loosen in the bullpen, stayed with Flaherty against Freeman, who was hitless in two at-bats against Flaherty. But Freeman jumped the first-pitch slider. Flaherty departed after getting Teoscar Hernandez to ground out. He’d allowed just three hits and two walks with five strikeouts in 5.2 innings. He kept the Dodgers hitters off-balance throughout the game, mixing sliders and knuckle-curves with his 93-94 mph four-seam fastball. He got 11 misses on 36 swings with 14 called strikes. The Dodgers whiffed on four of nine swings at the knuckle-curve and took nine fastballs for strikes.
The Tigers, meanwhile, had all they could handle with Los Angeles righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Throwing 91-mph splitters off 95-mph four-seamers, he struck out a career-high 10 in five innings. The Tigers were able to put two good swings on him. Dillon Dingler launched a hanging splitter 410 feet on a line into the seats in left-center in the second inning. And in the third, Gleyber Torres lined a 94-mph sinker just over the wall in left, another solo homer. Torres was holding his side as he trotted around the bases and was pulled from the game in the sixth inning.
