NEW YORK — The Dodgers can’t lose in extra innings.
One night after ending an 11-game losing streak in extra-inning games that nearly matched history, the Dodgers went back for more, getting an RBI double from Cody Bellinger in the 10th inning to beat the New York Mets 2-1 Saturday night at Citi Field.
The back-to-back one-run wins in extra innings raised their record in those previously troublesome categories to 15-21 and 3-12.
“We know baseball is one of the biggest games of momentum, right?” Dodgers starter Walker Buehler said. “So, get a couple of these wins in extra innings and hopefully we can kind of change the tide on that. I think we got into this weird rut of extra innings. We lost a lot of them. So winning a couple definitely helps. Hopefully we can stay on that track.”
The sudden ability to win close games has allowed the Dodgers to win six of their past seven games, doing their best to keep the heat on the Giants in the NL West even as the third-place Padres fade.
“There’s a little bit of urgency for us and I think we’re playing like that finally,” Buehler said.
For most of the night, the Dodgers were urgently seeking a hit.
Mets starter Taijuan Walker took a no-hitter into the seventh inning — a far cry from his performance against the Dodgers in the first game of the 2017 NL Division Series.
Starting for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Walker staggered through a 48-pitch first inning, allowing four runs in the first loss of a three-game sweep by the Dodgers.
The next April, Walker underwent Tommy John surgery and a three-year, four-team odyssey has landed him in the Mets rotation where he was an All-Star this season.
Forty-eight pitches carried him into the fifth inning Saturday night, the Dodgers unable to put any pressure on Walker. The 29-year-old right-hander retired 18 of the first 20 Dodgers batters, walking Billy McKinney in the third and Buehler in the sixth. Three times in the first five innings, he needed fewer than 10 pitches to retire the side.
The Dodgers didn’t even come close to a hit during that stretch. Max Muncy’s ground ball to second in the fourth inning was the only ball that qualified as “hard-hit” by Statcast standards (95 mph or more off the bat — Muncy’s was 95.2).
“They both had electric stuff,” Bellinger said of Walker and Buehler. “Taijuan, he’s got miss, off-the-barrel stuff and he had it today. I had a pretty good view of our Walker dominating out there. He was doing his thing. It was definitely a pitcher’s duel today.”
Will Smith put an end to Walker’s no-hit bid with one out in the seventh inning, rifling a 444-foot shot into the first row of the upper deck in left-center field. It was the 40th home run of Smith’s budding big-league career. Seventeen of those homers have come in the seventh inning or later (including Friday night’s game-winner in the 10th inning).
“You could see it tonight. Two guys with really good stuff, two All-Stars. Both offenses swinging early. Pitchers missing barrels,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We were just kind of in and out of at-bats.
“That was a big hit by Will — which he has done time and time again.”
Corey Seager followed Smith’s lead and cracked a double off the wall in left field. He moved to third on a wild pitch before Walker exited the game but was stranded there when Bellinger struck out against lefty reliever Aaron Loup to end the inning.
With their bullpen depleted by recent usage (19 2/3 innings over the first four games of this trip), the Dodgers needed Buehler to be sturdy — and he was.
The last man standing in a starting rotation that has melted around him, Buehler went seven innings, allowing just one run on a solo homer by Michael Conforto and striking out 10.
Alex Vesia and Phil Bickford handled the eighth and ninth, sending the game into extra innings where Bellinger laced a one-out double into right field.
With Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen and Brusdar Graterol all unavailable, the game was closed out by one pitcher who didn’t figure into the bullpen to start the season (Vesia), another who wasn’t even in the organization (Bickford) and a third who spent three months rehabbing from an injury (Corey Knebel).
Bickford stayed around long enough to strike out the first two batters in the 10th with the tying run at second base. Corey Knebel came in to finish it off, getting Brandon Nimmo to ground out and end the game.
“They’re just really coming into their own and being comfortable in their own skin as big-league ballplayers,” Roberts said of the emergence of Vesia and Bickford as high-leverage options. “They’ve played a huge part in where we’re at and tonight obviously. … Those guys who before the season started I didn’t know who they were, for them to play such an impactful role for our club is really fun to see.”
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