{"id":898320,"date":"2026-06-28T09:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T09:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/898320\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T09:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T09:12:22","slug":"kyle-tucker-and-dalton-rushing-hit-homers-as-dodgers-rout-padres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/898320\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Tucker and Dalton Rushing hit homers as Dodgers rout Padres"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0One after another, Kyle Tucker<\/a> and Dalton Rushing<\/a> broke up their offensive slumps with home runs.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u2019 sixth-inning rally, en route to a 15-3 victory<\/a> against the Padres at Petco Park Saturday, featured blasts from the two hitters who needed individual victories at the plate.<\/p>\n

Tucker, who entered Saturday with just a .700 OPS, had gone four straight games without a hit. Rushing went hitless in the previous five, in a rough seven-week stretch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d Tucker said of his uncharacteristically slow offensive start. \u201cYou just have to try and stay positive as much as you can. … We\u2019re going to enjoy the win, but you\u2019ve got another game tomorrow, and you\u2019ve gotta move on to that. Anything that happened yesterday, you\u2019ve got to move on, do your best at that, move on to the next game, and try to improve and try to help your team win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tucker and Rushing\u2019s home runs started the sunflower seed showers in a nine-run inning, which included a home run by Mookie Betts. Four of the runs scored in the sixth were unearned.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u2019 Dalton Rushing celebrates with Alex Freeland after hitting a home run against the Padres Saturday in San Diego.<\/p>\n

(Tony Ding \/ Ap Photo\/tony Ding)<\/p>\n

The Dodgers took full advantage of the Padres\u2019 defensive mistakes to jump-start their offense.<\/p>\n

In the second inning, Max Muncy<\/a> hit a line drive into the corner, and Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. dove after it. But he missed the catch, and the ball bounced behind him. Muncy legged out a triple. And that put him in position to score easily on Tommy Edman\u2019s<\/a> double to the center-field warning track for the first run of the game.<\/p>\n

The Padres evened the score with a Gavin Sheets\u2019 solo home run off Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a>, who\u2019d go on to limit the Padres to two runs through six innings.<\/p>\n

Shaky defense, however, came back to haunt the Padres the next inning.<\/p>\n

With Freddie Freeman<\/a> standing on second base, after a leadoff double against Padres right-hander Randy V\u00e1squez, Muncy hit a sharp grounder to second baseman Will Wagner, who muffed the play. Freeman raced around the bases, scoring on a close play at the plate.<\/p>\n

Then Edman, who\u2019s been swinging a hot bat since making his season debut last week, tripled to drive in Muncy.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Tucker, who went three for five with four RBIs Saturday, stepped up to the plate. He won a nine-pitch battle, sending a cutter over the right-field fence.<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of been looking for it all year,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cI just kind of caught the ball at the right point of contact. I didn\u2019t really stay through it great, but I put a decent enough swing on it, got it to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rushing was next, and also went long in a two-strike count.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers kept extending the inning, with two walks and three more hits, including Betts\u2019 three-run homer off Padres reliever Ron Marinaccio. It was Betts\u2019 third home run in as many games.<\/p>\n

The Padres chipped away at the lead with an RBI single from Sheets off Yamamoto in the sixth and another run against Dodgers reliever Kyle Hurt, who gave up two hits and issued two walks in one-third of an inning.<\/p>\n

But the lead the Dodgers compiled in the sixth inning, plus the four runs they tacked on in the eighth with Muncy\u2019s infield single, Edman\u2019s bases-loaded groundout, and Tucker\u2019s opposite-field single, was too steep to overcome.<\/p>\n

By the ninth inning, both teams had position players pitching.<\/p>\n

Injury update<\/p>\n

The Dodgers hope to activate Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> (strained left hamstring) from the 10-day injured list on Monday, manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said before Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez homered in all three of his triple-A rehab games, entering Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cTriple-A pitching is not comparative to big league pitching, I think we all know that,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cBut if he\u2019s healthy, he\u2019s an easy guy to bet on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Catcher Will Smith<\/a>, on the other hand, has not returned to baseball activities since receiving an injection to address his neck injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re all surprised how long it\u2019s taken,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI hope he\u2019s back before the All-Star break. But the more time he\u2019s off, he\u2019s going to have to play some [rehab] games. So that kind of cuts into the time of return to us. So I don\u2019t really know. I don\u2019t want to add any pressure to him. I want him to be healthy and then once he\u2019s healthy we can have that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0One after another, Kyle Tucker and Dalton Rushing broke up their offensive slumps with home runs. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":898321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,35123,2442,1910,140185,19498,5949,5605,2961,224,5337,8327,2749,8037,51384,10201,5395,88045,6599],"class_list":["post-898320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-dalton-rushing","tag-dodgers","tag-game","tag-gavin-sheets","tag-hit","tag-home-run","tag-kyle-tucker","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-max-muncy","tag-mookie-betts","tag-padres","tag-plate","tag-run","tag-saturday","tag-second-inning","tag-tommy-edman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116826966864873559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}