LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers began this weekend in second place, a position they had not been in this late in the season in four years.
After a statement sweep, they ended it sitting alone atop the NL West once more.
Mookie Betts hit a go-ahead homer after the Padres had clawed their way back to a tie in the eighth inning, and Alex Vesia got the final five outs of the Dodgers' 5-4 victory on Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.
For the first time in six weeks, Los Angeles has won three straight games. The team turned a one-game deficit in the division into a two-game edge over San Diego. The Dodgers have also clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker, winning eight of their first 10 games against the Padres this season.
“Very satisfying, considering where we were four days ago," manager Dave Roberts said of the sweep. "Just the way we ramped up the focus, the intensity and obviously winning three ballgames here, tight ballgames, well-played games."
After hanging four runs on Padres starter Yu Darvish in the first inning on Freddie Freeman's three-run homer and Andy Pages' solo drive, the Dodgers' offense went dormant in the middle innings. Darvish was done after four innings, while Tyler Glasnow departed with a 4-2 lead after five.
It was a battle of the bullpens from there.
The Padres made a high-profile addition to a daunting back end of the bullpen ahead of the Trade Deadline, acquiring Mason Miller from the A's. The Dodgers opted not to add a closer type, instead banking on the talent they already have to realize their full potential.
With little room for error, the Dodgers' relief corps went toe to toe with their opponent's super bullpen. And while the Padres eventually pulled even in the top of the eighth -- when Vesia inherited runners on second and third and allowed the tying run to score on a groundout -- it wasn't long before Betts put his team on his back with one big swing.
Betts led off the bottom of the eighth by crushing a 2-0 fastball from Padres closer Robert Suarez to deep left-center. Amid a down year at the plate, Betts has lately begun to look much more like himself since shifting his focus from trying to turn his season around to simply ending it on a better note.
"Every at-bat is the same at this point. Just trying to do something productive," Betts said. "It definitely helps to not carry burdens from previous at-bats."
But the job wasn't done.
Vesia's afternoon was supposed to be over after he got the final two outs of the eighth. But he wanted the ninth.
Entering Sunday, Vesia had allowed at least one run in four straight outings. Before that stretch, he had been the Dodgers' most reliable leverage reliever all season. In addition to the track record, Roberts leaned on one other thing when he ultimately decided to keep Vesia in the game.
“My gut," Roberts said. "And he came to me, to be quite honest, and said, 'I want the ninth if we take the lead.' It’s one of those moments where you’ve got to just trust your player, and I trusted him.”
Roberts' gut did not lead him astray. Vesia capped a clean ninth inning by striking out Manny Machado on a foul tip. Never one to hold back his emotions, the Dodgers' left-hander was clearly fired up on the mound as the Dodger Stadium faithful erupted in elation around him.
Not only was Sunday a redemptive performance for Vesia, but the weekend series was a strong effort for the bullpen as a whole. The relief corps covered 10 innings across three games and allowed only three runs.
"It's the dawg, right? We still have that," said Vesia, referring to last postseason's "Bullpen Dawgs" moniker. "That doesn't just go away. Every single one of us, we're leaning on each other. And we know as a group how good we are."
The same goes for the Dodgers, who played up to their standard when the stakes were as high as could be in a mid-August series.
"I think we all know who we are in here, in this team and how good we can be," Freeman said. "We just got to play good baseball like we did this weekend. Now it’s a little bit of a sprint, 38 games left. I think that’s outside. We know who we are inside. And got to keep it going.”