Dodgers shut out by Padres, snapping 5-game winning streak

SAN DIEGO - The degree of difficulty has been raised.

The Dodgers romped through a weekend at Angel Stadium, scoring 31 runs in what amounted to live batting practice against the Angels' woeful pitching staff. But they were snapped back to reality by Michael King on Monday as the Dodgers lost to the San Diego Padres, 1-0, in the opener of a three-game series between the National League West's top teams.

The loss snapped the Dodgers' five-game winning streak and allowed the Padres (29-18) to move a half-game ahead of the Dodgers (29-19) in the division.

“It was a pitchers' duel,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Yosh made one mistake to the second hitter, he hits a homer and that's all they could muster up. Unfortunately we just couldn't put anything together.”

The least comfortable place to be in Petco Park on Monday night was the batter's box. King and Yoshinobu Yamamoto made it so. The two starting pitchers allowed 11 baserunners in their seven-inning duel while combining to strike out 17.

Yamamoto came into the game with a 5.71 ERA over his previous three starts with five home runs allowed. He had only one regret in his seven innings – a 2-and-2 splitter to Miguel Andujar in the first inning. The pitch stayed up on the inside corner and Andujar rode it out to left-center field for a solo home run.

“I was trying to get it down,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter. “That was my mistake.”

It was his only one.

The Padres had just two more hits off Yamamoto (who struck out eight) and didn't get a runner past first base after Andujar's home run trot until Jackson Merrill stole second base in the seventh inning. He was stranded there.

Meanwhile, King was confounding Dodgers hitters just as badly. He struck out nine in his seven innings.

“You’re trying to cover realistically 30 inches because you have ball-to-strike pitches,” Freddie Freeman said of King’s arsenal. “You’ve got back-door sliders that are starting as balls coming back. You’ve got front-door sinkers for lefties. So it’s not just the whole plate you’re worried about. You’re going to worry about a whole lot of different things. We haven’t seen many back-door sliders and me and Max (Muncy) got them the first time around. So then it opens the front-door slider and you look for that and you got these changeups through the zone.

“He had all of it working tonight.”

The Dodgers had just two baserunners in the first five innings against King – a single by Mookie Betts in the first inning and a walk of Shohei Ohtani in the fourth. Both were thrown out trying to steal second base.

The Dodgers finally got off first base in the sixth inning. Hyeseong Kim singled with two outs and went to third when Padres catcher Rodolfo Duran fielded Ohtani's swinging-bunt single (a robust 39.7 mph off the bat) and threw wildly to first base. Fernando Tatis Jr., starting the game at second base, scrambled to corral the wild throw on the outfield grass and fumbled it momentarily. But Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel threw up a late stop sign for Kim to hold at third base.

Betts popped out on the next pitch, stranding them both.

“It's kind of the timing of it where Tatis came up with the ball and Dino's got to make the decision. You don't know that he's not going to come up with it clean,” Roberts said. “At that point in time, to be quite honest, Dino had the best view of the runner coming in, Kim, and where they were at on the field.

“So it's one of those things, I'm definitely not going to second guess it. It's one of those that, yeah, it's unfortunate. Two outs. If we know something different, he probably would have done something different. But that's a hard one.”

The Dodgers got Kyle Tucker to second base against King in the seventh inning and Muncy made some of the best contact of the night — a drive that left his bat at 104.5 mph and traveled 389 feet … before settling into Merrill’s glove on the warning track in center field.

That left the Dodgers to face the buzzsaw that is the Padres' bullpen. The Padres are 20-2 when they lead after six innings this season.

“It's tough,” Roberts said. “It's tough because (Adrian) Morejon's thrown the ball well, (Jason) Adam has thrown the ball well and they've got (Mason) Miller at the back end. I think the last handful of years they've always had a good ‘pen. When they have a lead they don't relinquish it too often. You know the numbers — when they're ahead in the seventh inning they don't lose. You do have to be a little more aggressive and capitalize when you do get those chances.”

The Dodgers got their chances to buck that trend.

In the eighth inning against Adam, Kim worked him for an eight-pitch, two-out walk and raced to third when Ohtani grounded a single through the right side of the infield. The two were stranded at the corners when Betts bounced a grounder to Xander Bogaerts at shortstop.

They tried again in the ninth against Miller, the Padres’ flamethrowing closer. Miller walked the first two batters in the inning and looked like he had fallen behind 2-and-0 to Will Smith. But the Padres challenged the call and ABS showed it as a strike, turning the count to 1-and-1 instead. Three pitches later, Smith flew out to center field.

“That flipped the at-bat. If he goes 2-0 there, that could be a different at-bat,” Roberts said. “But he gets back into the at-bat then flies him out. But a guy like that, he's the best in the game. You know if you don't get him, there's swing-and-miss in there, there's soft contact. He was able to reset.”

Muncy took a called third strike when Miller followed a 101 mph fastball with an 88 mph slider on the inside corner. Andy Pages grounded out to third to end the game.

“Yeah, but we still had really good at-bats,” Freeman said. “There’s a silver lining to it. Scoring off Mason is going to be really hard to do. It’s going to take one of those kinds of innings where you can maybe walk a couple of guys and get a bloop. Not much squaring up going on against him. But we had an opportunity, maybe with him throwing a lot of pitches (22) might make him be down next game. You just try to have little wins.”

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This story was originally published May 18, 2026 at 9:22 PM.