Just days after the San Diego Padres traded for the big splash arrival of Juan Soto; the Dodgers didn't hesitate to remind them who runs the division.
On Friday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers hosted The San Diego Padres in a divisional battle, with the regular season slowly concluding as October gets closer.
Earlier this week, the Padres made one of the biggest deadline trades in baseball's modern era by getting 23-year-old Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals, which shook the baseball world completely.
The Padres went on to win back-to-back games after the trade was made, but then they visited their divisional rivals in Los Angeles on Friday night.
The Dodgers won Friday night with an 8-1 scoreboard, which felt like a statement from Los Angeles amid the Soto-trade.
The third game for the new-look Padres seemed more familiar than that.
After last night's loss, the Padres have officially lost the season's series against their division rivals for 11 consecutive years. Also, last night resulted in their sixth loss against them out of 8 encounters this season.
Manager Bob Melvin said about the loss: "It didn’t feel very good."
However, Melvin knows that they didn't lose to just another team last night, but it was none other than the team with the best record in the whole National League. He added that they would continue to take every game seriously for the rest of the year to close out the year big.
“These guys have the best record in the National League, and there’s only so many games left,” Melvin said of the Dodgers before Friday night's game. “So every series is gonna be big, especially against a team like this. It’s a little different lineup for us. … We’ll see how we match up against their ace as well. “
Padres superstar Manny Machado spoke after Friday night's game to express his trust in this team going forward this year. Manny said that even while being down 8-0 last night, the team still showed character in wanting to make something happen at Dodger Stadium.
“We’re losing 8-0 and the dugout was still in fighting (mode),” Manny Machado said. “We were still fighting. We had no hesitation. We weren’t down. It was like it was a 1-0 ballgame. You can take that like we don’t care or were we not a game? But it’s not like that. It was more of a perspective of we know what we have over here.”
The Padres and Dodgers are currently playing the second game of this series as the Friars look to secure their first away win with their newest roster additions.
