Last weekend, the National League West first-place Los Angeles Dodgers took two of three from their division rival third-place San Diego Padres at Petco Park.

Exactly one week to the day later, the Boys in Blue kicked off yet another three-game series against those same Padres, this time in front of a much friendlier Dodger Stadium crowd of 49,399, where they took game-one the series by a score of 4-2, doing so in typical dramatic Dodgers fashion.

Twenty-five year old right-hander Dustin May was on the mound for manager Dave Roberts‘ Dodgers, tossing an impressive 90 pitches (58 strikes), allowing only two runs on five hits, walking one, and striking out three.

The popular Justin, TX native and Dodgers third round draft pick in 2016 out of Northwest High School in Justin was outstanding – until the seventh inning – when he ran into some trouble. But even at that, Roberts had high praise for his young right-hander postgame.

“I think that he’s only going to get better with experience, but I think that you know, trusting his stuff and how it plays in the hitting zone versus lefties versus righties,” Doc explained. “I think he’s really appreciating that now. And it just speaks to the efficiency in getting ahead of guys, can get back into counts when he needs to. But again, I thought he pitched great, going deep into the game and that’s kind of what we’re expecting now.”

Thankfully, the Dodger’s offense stepped up to provide run support to bolster May’s hard work. First baseman Freddie Freeman got the Dodgers offensive party started with his twelfth double of the season in the bottom of the third inning. His timely two-bagger put the Dodgers on the board 2-0.

San Diego answered in the top of the seventh inning by scoring two runs of their own, when the popular Dodgers redhead ran out of gas.

Cut to the bottom of the seventh, when The Blue Crew regained the lead with an astonishing pair of back-to-back homers.

The beloved first and second batters in the line-up really packed a punch to get LA back into the game. Right-fielder Mookie Betts belted his eighth home run of the season – a 426-footer that landed halfway up the Left Field Pavilion – to put the Dodgers on top again.

Betts’ solo blast was immediately followed by Freeman’s seventh home run of the season – a 370-footer into the Padres right field bullpen – to make it 4-2 Dodgers, the eventual final score.

In his post-game interview, Freeman shared his thoughts on his and Betts’ contributions.

“Mookie obviously getting the huge hit to put us back up, especially after them (the Padres) scoring two runs, was huge,” Freeman said of his friend and teammate.

“For us to be able to come back in that next half-inning and score two runs again,” the first baseman continued. “I think that’s just showing who we are the last couple weeks. Evan (Phillips) getting out of that jam, that was huge. Caleb (Ferguson) coming in and getting out of the seventh inning. It was overall a great performance tonight.”

Fans can attest that Friday was an eventful night at Chavez Ravine to kick off the series. The following two games should be just as action-packed. Freeman summed up the team’s strategy perfectly.

“We’ve been playing good baseball the last couple weeks,” Freeman stated. “So we’re not trying to play the opponent, we play our game. We play what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t really matter who we’re playing. We’ve been playing good baseball all the way around the last couple weeks.”

Let’s go Dodgers!

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