Andy Pages comes through vs. Mason Miller to key Dodgers' win

SAN DIEGO -- The first pitch Mason Miller threw after the errant pickoff throw that put the winning run on third base was a fastball clocked at 100.8 mph. Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages fouled it off, falling behind in the count 0-2 in Tuesday's ninth inning, but he was confident.

"I never thought he was going to strike me out or dominate me," Pages said. "I was 100% certain I was going to move the ball forward."

Miller, the San Diego Padres closer who has been practically unhittable this season, proceeded to attack with 101 mph fastballs and knee-buckling sliders, and Pages either fouled them off or took them for balls. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, he drove a 101.5 mph fastball just far enough for pinch runnerAlex Call to barely beat the relay throw home in a thrilling5-4 Dodgers victoryat Petco Park.

Freddie Freeman, who homered twice, called it "one of the greatest at-bats I've ever seen in person, and I've been playing a long time."

Miller entered with a 0.82 ERA and major-league-leading 15 saves, the last one coming in a 1-0 Padres victory Monday that saw him recover after two leadoff walks. Of the 84 batters he had faced, 45 had struck out. Of the 50 fastballs at 101 mph he had thrown for strikes, zero had been put in play and only 17 had been fouled off. Pages fouled off two such pitches himself, then lifted the other for the winning RBI -- 24 hours after grounding out against Miller to end Monday's game.

"To me, he's simply a pitcher who throws hard," Pages said. "He's a good pitcher, but to me, he's simply a pitcher who throws hard, and if you're able to get on time against him, you can do damage against him."

The Dodgers entered this three-game series against their bitter rivals with a half-game lead in the National League West, and through the first two nights, nothing has changed.

Michael King and Yoshinobu Yamamoto navigated a classic pitchers' duel in Monday's opener, withMiguel Andujar's first-inning solo homer providing the only run. On Tuesday, Freeman and Manny Machado each snapped relatively long homerless droughts to make it a 2-2 game after the first inning. After Andujar followed with a two-run homer in the third, the Dodgers got a run-scoring groundout from Shohei Ohtani in the fifth and a tying solo homer from Freeman in the sixth.

Three innings later, with one out in the top of the ninth, Max Muncy challenged a full-count slider that was called a strike and got it overturned. Call came in to pinch run and attempted to steal second base, hoping to take advantage of a pitcher who rarely attempts pickoffs. Call broke too early and got caught in between, but Miller's throw sailed into right field, allowing Call to advance to third base.

"I just let it speed up on me a little bit and yanked it," Miller said. "I probably threw it a little harder than I should've, too."

The Padres have been one of the NL's best teams this season, keeping pace with the star-studded Dodgers, despite a patchwork rotation and minimal offensive production from Machado, Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr., the latter of whom remains homerless. They've done so largely because of their dominant bullpen, highlighted by the game's best closer.

In their first two encounters, though, the Dodgers have made Miller sweat.

"He's great, and no one's gotten him," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "We feel good about our guys, and still, the game plan is to keep him out of the game. That's still the plan. But I felt that in two nights against him, we put together some good at-bats to stress him a little bit."