ST. LOUIS — Watch them pull a rabbit out of their hats.
For the second time in their past three games – and nearly the third – the Dodgers made a five-run deficit (or more) disappear, falling behind 6-0 after six innings Wednesday night but coming back to beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-6.
The six-run deficit is the largest the Dodgers have erased to win a game since they came back from six runs down to beat the Colorado Rockies on August 31, 2016 — a comeback that featured a ninth-inning grand slam by Andrew Toles.
“Tonight was a fun win,” said Max Muncy who drove in the tying run with a sacrifice fly. “It was a full team win. Everyone was involved.”
There has been a lot of full team engagement recently.
The Dodgers fell behind 8-3 in the third inning of Sunday’s game before rallying to beat the Chicago Cubs. On Tuesday, the Cardinals built a 6-1 lead after four innings, then held on to win despite the Dodgers twice pulling within a run.
On Wednesday, Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin gave up five runs in the first five innings — his worst start since his MLB debut in June 2019 coming in his final start before the All-Star Game — and the Dodgers were down 6-0 after six innings.
“I kind of sound redundant when I say it was the biggest win of the year. It was a big one,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“It’s just validation that we can beat you in a lot of different ways — whether we get a lead and close the door or hang in there and get you in the end.”
Most of the damage against Gonsolin came in the third inning. The Cardinals scored four times after there were two outs – two on a two-strike single punched through the right side by Paul Goldschmidt and two more when Nolan Arenado followed with a two-strike home run. Gonsolin hadn’t given up more than three runs in a start this season until that inning.
An inning later, the Cardinals’ No. 9 hitter, catcher Andrew Knizner, drove in another two-out run with a double – his fifth hit and fourth RBI in the first two games of this series.
For Gonsolin, the five runs are the most he had allowed since he allowed six in his major-league debut against the Arizona Diamondbacks three years ago. He entered the game with an MLB-best ERA of 1.62 and exited after five innings with a 2.02 mark, the first time it has been over 2.00 since his second start of the season.
“I wasn’t really great today,” Gonsolin said. “My slider was really bad. I didn’t do a good job executing pitches with two strikes.”
To that point, the Dodgers’ offense had been de-clawed by Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright, running up the veteran’s pitch count but not leaving a scratch.
Wainwright threw 114 pitches but allowed just four hits over his 5-1/3 innings – two of them by Freddie Freeman, who had his third consecutive multi-hit game, reaching base five times Wednesday (a double, two singles, a walk and a hit by pitch) after getting four hits in each of the previous two games. Freeman is 12 for his past 14 in this hot streak and 39 for 99 over his past 24 games in a longer boil.
But the rest of the Dodgers were 2 for 17 against Wainwright, including 0 for 5 with a runner in scoring position as he took the shutout into the sixth inning.
“Wainwright’s always tough,” Trea Turner said. “Usually he’s got 100 pitches in eight innings. Today we did a good job of grinding him down. But he held us scoreless. So you could say ‘Good job. Bad job.’ I guess it’s a good job because we won the game.”
They set about getting that done beginning with two outs in the seventh inning when Will Smith followed Freeman’s third hit of the game (a two-out single) with a two-run home run.
They made it a one-run game in the eighth on an RBI double by Mookie Betts and a two-run single from Trea Turner.
“Just kept inching back,” Cody Bellinger said. “I think we felt we had a chance once Will hit that homer. Then we definitely felt it after Mookie’s double. We had momentum on our side then.”
A wild pitch moved Turner to second base, putting the tying run in scoring position with two outs.
Smith grounded out to end that threat but Justin Turner led off the ninth with a double to put the tying run in scoring position again. Austin Barnes pinch-ran for Turner – and stumbled rounding third when Bellinger flared a single into center field.
Barnes scrambled back to third, drawing a throw that allowed Bellinger to take second base. Later, Bellinger joked that Barnes had made “a great heads-up play” by drawing a throw and allowing him to take second.
“Turned out, he won us the game kinda,” Bellinger said.
Barnes stayed upright long enough to score on Muncy’s sacrifice fly.
“I let the team down yesterday. I had the chance to do the same thing and didn’t get it done,” said Muncy who popped out with the tying run on third in the seventh inning Tuesday night. “So for me it was really big for me to come through today.”
Bellinger moved to third on the fly ball and scored the go-ahead run when Hanser Alberto lined a two-out single into left field, capping their National League-best 26th come-from-behind win this season.
“We don’t ever feel we’re out of it. It doesn’t matter what the score is,” Muncy said. “We know who we are. We know what we’ve been doing lately. You’ve just got to find a way to stay in the game even when it seems like it’s really bad. You’ve just got to keep finding a way to stay in the game and we’re really good at that.”
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