Dodgers' division title hopes might have a great equalizer: the Padres' bullpen

SAN DIEGO -- The drums of Korn and the flashing lights at Petco Park welcomed Mason Miller, who is the final boss to the Los Angeles Dodgers' hopes of continued division dominance. Little has made sense for the San Diego Padres as they've hung with the Dodgers through mid-May, except for the fact that they possess perhaps the best bullpen in the sport. That could be the biggest equalizer for a club trying to chase the Dodgers down as they attempt to win a third straight World Series title. When the Padres have mustered a lead, they've held it. They are now 25-1 when taking a lead into the eighth inning, and their 0.42 ERA in the ninth inning or later is the best in the majors. "You know the numbers," manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers' 1-0 loss Monday. "When they're ahead in the seventh inning, they don't lose." Miller is the guy no one wants to face. The Padres closer entered the ninth inning of a one-run game and held it there Monday, putting a bow on a pitching classic in the first matchup of the season between these two rivals. "We had some opportunities," Freddie Freeman said, "but it's hard to score against Mason Miller." The Dodgers could not break through even on a night where the otherworldly Miller appeared merely mortal. The right-hander had issued walks to Freeman and Kyle Tucker, throwing balls on eight of his first nine pitches. "It's going to take one of those kinds of innings where you can maybe walk a couple of guys and get a bloop," Freeman said of facing Miller, who leads the majors with 15 saves and has a 0.82 ERA. "Not much squaring up going on against him." Miller was down 1-0 again to Will Smith when he fired a fastball that home-plate umpire Nate Tomlinson called a ball, but it had nicked the inside part of the plate according to an ABS challenge. The ensuing 11 pitches were all strikes to end the game, extinguishing the Dodgers' hope and showing again how the Padres are doing this. Smith flew out to shallow center. Max Muncy struck out looking at a nasty slider. Andy Pages dribbled a groundball to set off some more music to celebrate another successful Padres ninth inning. Bad Bunny's "DtMF" played at the end of the first game of this three-game series. San Diego is in the bottom 10 in the majors in runs scored (196), dead last in batting average (.223) and has the fifth-worst offense in baseball by wRC+ (90), thanks to their stars not hitting. Their rotation is tied for 20th in ERA (4.39) and 25th in innings pitched (227 1/3), even after getting seven brilliant shutout innings from Michael King on Monday. Yet they are 29-18, a half-game up on the Dodgers in the National League West division, because of their bullpen. Their margins are slim, having outscored their opponents by a grand total of eight runs. The Dodgers have outscored their opponents by 93. That carried weight when Yoshinobu Yamamoto tried to get a two-strike splitter down to Miguel Andujar in the first inning. The pitch stayed up, and Andujar shot it into the stands for the game's only run. "That was my mistake," Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. It was the only mistake he made over seven innings. The dominant Padres bullpen was front of mind when the Dodgers finally generated a chance against King with two outs in the sixth inning. Shohei Ohtani squibbed a ball in front of the plate that rookie Padres catcher Rodolfo Durán fired into the outfield. Hyeseong Kim was rounding third as Fernando Tatis Jr. initially fumbled the ball. By the time the ball trickled away, third-base coach Dino Ebel had already thrown up a late stop sign. "It's one of those that, yeah, it's unfortunate," Roberts said. "Two outs. If we know something different, he probably would have done something different. But that's a hard one." Tatis owns one of the strongest throwing arms in the game. It's not a guarantee that Kim would have scored. Against teams with less fearsome bullpens, that he didn't might have mattered less. This was as close as anyone came to scoring for Los Angeles all night. Especially once the bullpen doors opened. Jason Adam took the eighth inning after King exited. When Kim drew a two-out walk, the depth of the Padres' bullpen presented manager Craig Stammen with a situation that had no wrong answer. He had left-hander Adrian Morejon warm for the left-handed Ohtani, or the lane of left-handed hitters in the middle of the order. Stammen left Adam in. Ohtani singled, but Betts could not cash in his second chance with runners on the corners in a span of three innings. He hit a grounder 96.9 mph that shortstop Xander Bogaerts had to go to his knees to field cleanly, but it was the third out of the inning. Morejon never even had to enter. Same for Jeremiah Estrada, or anyone else from the most vaunted relief corps in the game. The best way to avoid Miller is to never let San Diego hold a lead in the first place. "When they have a lead," Roberts said, "they don't relinquish it too often."