Freeman’s three RBIs and a stitched-together shutout send Dodgers past Padres 7-0

The second inning told the whole story

Los Angeles did not need long to draw the outline of the game. In the second inning, the Dodgers turned a cluster of baserunners into four runs, and the most damaging swings were not even the first blows. Tommy Edman drew a walk that brought home Teoscar Hernández for the opening run, Mookie Betts followed with another walk that scored Josue De Paula, and then Freeman lined a single to center that drove in both Edman and Andy Pages for a 4-0 lead.

That inning mattered because it showed the Dodgers winning the night’s smallest battles. De Paula reached three times, Pages scored twice despite going hitless, and Betts mixed a hit with a walk and an RBI. Los Angeles kept nudging traffic forward until San Diego had no clean escape. Michael King struck out five over 4.0 innings, but the damage from that second inning stayed on his line and on the scoreboard.

Freeman added another RBI single in the fourth, bringing home Betts to make it 5-0, and that extra run gave the Dodgers something close to complete control. Freeman’s final line — 2-for-4 with three RBIs — was not loud in a flashy way. It was simply decisive, the kind of line that explains a game better than any flourish does.

The home runs arrived after the game was already tilted

What made the Dodgers’ offense more convincing than explosive was the order of operations. The game was largely built before the power shots arrived. Edman’s 390-foot homer to left-center in the sixth and Will Smith’s 396-foot drive to left in the seventh were not rescue acts; they were the finishing marks on an offense that had already done the harder work of creating pressure with singles, walks and repeated traffic.

Edman’s night captured that shape neatly. He scored twice, drove in two, walked, and then added the homer that pushed the margin to six. Smith supplied the other long ball and one more RBI. By the end, the Dodgers had scored seven runs on nine hits with four walks and a hit batter, and they still left 10 runners on base. That last number matters: Los Angeles was productive, but there was room for the inning count to get even uglier for San Diego.

The Padres did steady things somewhat after the early avalanche. Wandy Peralta covered 2.0 innings and allowed one run, and Griffin Canning matched that over 2.0 innings of his own. But by then the Dodgers had already forced San Diego into a game of prevention rather than recovery, and the late homers ensured there would be no route back into it.

Eight arms, one shutout

If the Dodgers’ second inning established the result, their pitching group made sure nothing drifted. Los Angeles used eight pitchers to cover nine scoreless innings, with Kyle Hurt the only one to work more than a single frame. Collectively they allowed five hits, walked two and struck out 10, a line that says as much about avoiding the one damaging inning as it does about pure dominance.

San Diego did put men on base. Luis Campusano collected two hits, while Fernando Tatis Jr., Ethan Salas and Xander Bogaerts added one apiece. Manny Machado and Ty France each drew a walk. But the Padres never found lift in the box score: all five hits were singles, their total bases stayed at five, and 11 runners were left on. A lone Dodgers error never turned into trouble because there was no extra-base contact behind it.

The strikeout distribution helped keep the game from changing shape. Edwin Díaz and Alex Vesia each punched out two in one inning, Roki Sasaki had two in his inning, and Hurt added two over his 2.0 frames. The Dodgers’ staff also filled the zone more consistently, throwing 100 strikes in 147 pitches. San Diego’s pitchers needed the same 147 pitches to record eight innings, but only 89 were strikes, and the difference in command showed up most clearly in that four-run second.

Our take: this was control, not just margin

Our take: a 7-0 score can suggest a night of relentless force, but this game was more precise than overwhelming. The Dodgers controlled the leverage points. They turned free passes into runs early, got run production from the middle of the order through Freeman, and then let a parade of pitchers keep San Diego from stringing together the kind of inning that changes a shutout into a tense game. That is a sturdy formula, even on a night when 10 runners were left on and the offense was not perfect.

For the Padres, the route to improvement is visible in the numbers without requiring guesswork. They were not absent from the game; they produced seven baserunners through five hits and two walks and ran the Dodgers’ staff to 147 pitches. But the lack of any extra-base hit, combined with 10 strikeouts and 11 runners left on base, meant every opening closed before it became pressure. On the mound, the two run-scoring walks in the second were every bit as costly as Freeman’s single. Against a lineup this deep, that kind of traffic usually turns into exactly what it did here: a game decided early and protected easily.

Scoring moments

1. 2nd Inning

   Edman walked, T. Hernández scored, Pages to second, De Paula to third.

2. 2nd Inning

   Betts walked, De Paula scored, Edman to second, Pages to third.

3. 2nd Inning

   Freeman singled to center, Edman scored and Pages scored, Betts to third.

4. 4th Inning

   Freeman singled to center, Betts scored.

5. 6th Inning

   Edman homered to left center (390 feet).

6. 7th Inning

   Smith homered to left (396 feet).