It was Max Muncy’s night.
His third home run — a no-doubt-about-it 401-foot walk-off to right-center field, gave the Dodgers an 8-7 victory over the Texas Rangers on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
They improved to 10-3, winning despite closer Edwin Díaz’s first blown save as a Dodger.
Muncy’s first home runs, in the second and fourth innings, gave the Dodgers a 1-0 lead and then pulled them within a run, 3-2.
Those homers — Nos. 2, 3 and 4 this season — gave him 213 for his Dodgers’ tenure, tying and then surpassing Steve Garvey for third-most in the franchise’s Los Angeles history. They also gave him his 20th career multi-homer game.
And they kept the Dodgers in a game that went back and forth, up and down, bobble-head style.
Andy Pages went three for three with four RBIs and had a go-ahead two-run double and a two-run home run to provide crucial insurance that kept his club in the game.
His double in the sixth — he smacked Robert Garcia’s 84 mph slider into right field to bring home Muncy and Teoscar Hernández — gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead.
And Pages’ two-run home run to center field off Luis Curvelo in the eighth brought home Muncy, who had singled. It also brought his MLB-leading batting average to .426 — and wasn’t just icing on the cake but fortification against the Rangers’ hitters who wouldn’t quit.
After Dodgers’ starter Tyler Glasnow exited after pitching six innings and giving up four runs on five hits — including two home runs — while striking out seven, Alex Vesia and Tanner Scott both pitched a scoreless inning before closer Díaz entered in the ninth.
The Dodgers’ closer gave up a single to former Dodger Joc Pedersen and then a two-run home run to Evan Carter that cut the lead to 7-6. Then Ezequiel Duran singled in Sam Haggerty to tie the score.
The Dodgers made it interesting by playing from behind for the ninth time in 13 games: The Rangers quickly responded to Muncy’s first homer, taking a 3-1 lead in the third inning when former Dodger Corey Seager teed off for a 409-foot, two-run home run to center field.
(Back on June 12, 2024, in his only other game at Dodger Stadium as a member of the Rangers, Seager hit a three-run home run. That one was a go-ahead blast off Walker Buehler that gave Texas a 3-2 victory.)
In the fifth inning Friday, Wyatt Langford deposited a Glasnow curveball into the Dodgers bullpen; his first home run this season pushed Texas’ advantage to 4-2.
But in the bottom of the fifth, Hyeseong Kim kept it close when his sacrifice fly drove home Pages, who walked and advanced to third on Alex Freeland’s single to left, to make it 4-3.
Ohtani then singled to right to move Freeland to third — and, notably, to extend his on-base streak to 44 games, the most ever for a Japanese-born player and the fourth-longest such streak in Dodgers history.
Ohtani has also reached base on all seven of his bobblehead nights.
This season, the Dodgers determined that they needed two games — Friday and July 8 — to honor Ohtani’s “Greatest Game” with the bobblehead treatment.
On Friday, all 53,675 fans went home with a bobbling figurine of Ohtani at the plate, a memento honoring his performance in Game 4 of the NLCS October. He not only pitched six shutout innings and struck out 10 in that 5-1 NLCS-clinching victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, but he also hit three home runs that traveled a combined 1,342 feet.
The Dodgers’ Miguel Rojas won’t take bereavement leave or travel back to his native Venezuela following the sudden death of his father, Miguel Rojas Sr., Dave Roberts said before the game.
“There’s a lot going on in Venezuela,” the Dodgers manager said. “And a lot of his family is kind of dispersed around the world, essentially. He just feels they’ve got a handle on it down there, so he’s going to stay with us.”
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