LOS ANGELES — Wednesday’s series finale at Dodger Stadium needed every inning it could get. Shohei Ohtani took the mound under an early afternoon sun looking to lock down a sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays, and for five innings it looked routine. Then the fifth happened. Four runs, all earned, and suddenly the Dodgers were chasing a game they were supposed to be controlling. They caught it. Freddie Freeman put Los Angeles back in front for good with a two-run homer in the sixth, the bullpen survived a bases-loaded scare in the ninth, and the Dodgers held on for a 5-4 win that completed the three-game sweep of Tampa Bay.
Ohtani’s Day Gets Complicated
Through four innings, Ohtani looked like a pitcher running away with his afternoon. He scattered a couple of singles, issued one walk all day, and kept the Rays off the board while his offense built a 2-0 cushion. Then the fifth inning turned on him all at once. Victor Mesa Jr. walked, Hunter Feduccia ripped a double to bring him home, and from there Tampa Bay just kept hitting. A sacrifice fly, a single, another single, a force out that still scored a run, one more single. By the time the inning was over, four runs had crossed and the Rays had the lead, 4-2.
Ohtani did not let it linger. He came back out for the sixth and put the Rays away in order, the kind of bounce-back inning that does not show up in a box score but matters every bit as much. He finished his day having thrown six innings, allowing four runs on seven hits with five strikeouts. Not his cleanest start of the year. Good enough, in the end, to pick up the win.
Freeman Answers
The Dodgers did not wait long to respond. Andy Pages opened the bottom of the sixth with a sharp double to left, and two batters later Freeman turned on a fastball and sent it out to center field. Two runs in, lead retaken, 5-4. It was Freeman’s 12th homer of the season and the biggest swing of the afternoon, the one that decided which dugout would be celebrating a few hours later.
There was a strange footnote to the inning. Two batters after Freeman’s homer, Ohtani himself stepped to the plate as a pinch hitter for Miguel Rojas, the same Ohtani who had just given up four runs an inning earlier now trying to add to his own cause as a hitter. He grounded out. It did not matter. The lead was already his to protect.
The Bullpen Walks the Tightrope
Edgardo Henriquez took over for Ohtani in the seventh and worked around a leadoff single with a double play, stranding the tying run before it ever got going. Jack Dreyer followed and slammed the door on the eighth, getting both outs he needed without much fuss. That set up Alex Vesia for the ninth, and Vesia made it interesting.
A leadoff walk to pinch hitter Austin Slater turned into a stolen base. Two outs later, Vesia intentionally walked Yandy Diaz to set up a force at any base, then walked Jonathan Aranda anyway, loading the bases with the Rays’ lineup turning over and the tying run 90 feet away. Cedric Mullins stepped in as the last chance for Tampa Bay. He swung through strike three. Game over, series over, Vesia’s third save sealed with the bases loaded and absolutely no margin left to work with.
Edman Is Back
The headline before the first pitch was Tommy Edman’s return to the lineup, back at third base after a long road back from offseason ankle surgery. His day was quiet by box score standards, a walk and a few groundouts before Max Muncy pinch-hit for him in the seventh, but quiet is exactly what a return like this is supposed to look like. The bigger story is that he is back on the field at all, with a real spot in the lineup waiting for him going forward.
Mookie Betts, Dalton Rushing, Alex Freeland, and Kyle Tucker each chipped in run-scoring hits in a fourth inning that briefly made the Rays’ bullpen look shaky, and Andy Pages quietly put together a two-hit afternoon that set up Freeman’s go-ahead shot. None of it would have mattered without the bullpen closing the door behind them.
Up Next
The Dodgers move on to a three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles, opening Friday at Dodger Stadium with Roki Sasaki on the mound. After dropping four runs in a single inning and still finding a way to sweep, Los Angeles will take the version of this team that answers immediately over the version that cruises. Wednesday proved they have both in them.
