The Arizona Diamondbacks had a base open.
They decided to pitch to Freddie Freeman anyway.
In the Dodgers’ come-from-behind, walk-off 6-5 win over the Diamondbacks on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, Freeman provided the pivotal moment in a winning two-run rally in the ninth, hammering a two-strike double to tie the score before scoring the winning run on Teoscar Hernández’s game-ending single an at-bat later.
It was the kind of late-game sequence the Dodgers have mastered of late — with the home team thrilling a sold-out Chavez Ravine crowd for their 18th comeback win of the season.
For most of the night, the two teams traded blows in a back-and-forth game.
The Dodgers took an early two-run lead. Bobby Miller avoided implosion in a two-run fourth inning. Then, after a monstrous two-run blast from Shohei Ohtani gave the Dodgers a 4-3 lead in the seventh inning, the club’s bullpen gave up runs in the top of the eighth and ninth innings to see the Diamondbacks to surge back in front.
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The Arizona lead, however, wouldn’t last.
With two out in the ninth, Will Smith sparked the winning rally by lining a two-run double off the center-field wall.
That left a base open for the Diamondbacks to potentially walk Freeman, the first base slugger who was coming off his best month of the season in June.
Instead, Arizona let closer Paul Sewald pitch to the former MVP.
In an 0-and-2 count, the decision backfired spectacularly.
With chants of “Fredd-ie! Fredd-ie!” raining from the stands, Freeman turned on a 93-mph fastball over the outer edge of the zone, roping a tying double into the right-center field gap.
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Moments later, Hernández completed the comeback by bouncing an RBI single through the left side of the infield, sending the crowd into delirium as the club collected its third walk-off win of the season.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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