PHOENIX — For the second straight night, closer Edwin Díaz faltered with a one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. But on Saturday night, it did not sink the Dodgers.
After a winless week, the Dodgers were at last able to put their season-high losing streak to bed with a 2-1 victory in 10 innings at Chase Field. A Shohei Ohtani RBI infield single was the difference maker as L.A. ended its skid at seven games, matching the team’s longest slide since July 2025.
“Man, that was a tough one,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ll take it.”
By coming through in extras, the Dodgers avoided losing eight straight games in which they led at least once. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only three teams in MLB history have had such a streak: the 1876 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the 1949 Boston Braves and the 1983 Seattle Mariners.
The middle game of the weekend series began as a pitchers’ duel between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Brandon Pfaadt. Yamamoto grinded through 5 2/3 innings on 107 pitches, while Pfaadt held the Dodgers to a pair of infield singles — both by Andy Pages — and a walk in seven innings.
Kyle Tucker broke a scoreless tie by taking reliever Jonathan Loáisiga deep to lead off the eighth. L.A. continued the rally by putting a pair of runners on with one out, but Ohtani and Pages struck out to strand them.
“Just kind of kept trying to grind through it,” Tucker said of the Dodgers’ mindset while facing D-backs pitching. “Just put up good at-bats, and it’d eventually go our way.”
With a one-run lead in hand, the Dodgers were faced with the question of how they would close out the game. Both Tanner Scott and Díaz had pitched the night before, and neither was sharp, with Díaz suffering a blown save on Ryan Waldschmidt’s walk-off homer.
Scott had a redemptive outing, getting out of the eighth inning cleanly after Kyle Hurt loaded the bases with two outs, but Díaz did not, allowing the tying run to score on back-to-back triples but stranding the would-be winning run on third in the bottom of the ninth.
While Saturday marked another shaky outing for Díaz — who has only converted one of three save opportunities since his July 29 return from surgery to remove loose bodies from his right elbow — Roberts was hopeful that the way he ended the outing might be something to build on.
“You saw once they scored the run,” Roberts said. “Man on third base, nobody out, you saw the intensity pick up, the stuff picked up. The fastball got better. The slider got better. Even talking to him after the game, that’s how we have to be from the first pitch. That was the first game I saw this year where he had some real intensity.”
In the top of the 10th, the Dodgers scratched across Tucker, the automatic runner, on an Ohtani grounder to first base. In the bottom half of the inning, left-hander Jack Dreyer worked around a one-out infield single to convert the save, starting the game-ending double play that landed L.A. in the win column for the first time in August.
“I’m typically not an emotional guy. I think that was the most emotion I’ve ever showed,” said Dreyer, who let out a roar and pounded his glove after converting the save. “It was nice because I knew I wouldn’t go back out for the next inning, something like that. The game was over. So kind of let the emotions take over for a little bit.”
Despite the Dodgers’ extended slide, they did not lose significant ground in the standings in that span. Their NL West lead over the D-backs slipped from 12 games to 8 1/2, which is still tied for the largest divisional lead in the Majors (the Braves hold the same advantage in the NL East).
Before the losing streak began, the Dodgers had a 1 1/2 game lead over the Brewers for the best record in the NL, but through Saturday’s action, they’re tied with the Braves for the second-best record, three games behind the Crew, which could have ramifications in the quest for a first-round postseason bye.
Now that the Dodgers are back in the win column, they know they need to play better — especially on the offensive side — to stay there.
“I think collectively, we just gotta come together,” Roberts said. “We’re just better than this.”
