Everyone trusts Max Muncy to lay off bad pitches. The trick was to lay off carbs.
The Dodgers’ 35-year-old third baseman gave up bread and came into this season 17 pounds lighter. Older and quicker, healthy and ready to fight for a third consecutive World Series crown.
The best version of himself, having the best of games when the Dodgers needed it.
He hit three home runs Friday in an 8-7 victory over the Texas Rangers as the Dodgers improved to 10-3 and became baseball’s first team to achieve double-digit victories.
Muncy’s third long ball — a two-out, no-doubt-about-it, 401-foot solo shot to right-center in the bottom of the ninth inning — was the game-winner. He’s the first player with a three-home run game that included a walk-off homer since the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Jack Suwinski did it in 2022. He is only the second player in Dodgers history to have a walk-off homer as part of a three-home run game, joining Don Demeter, who accomplished the feat on April 21, 1959, according to Elias Sports Bureau.
Max Muncy hits a walk-off home run to cap his three-home run night in an 8-7 win over Texas.
Muncy’s first two home runs Friday — Nos. 2 and 3 this season — came in the second and fourth innings and were the 211th and 212th in his Dodgers’ tenure, tying and then surpassing Steve Garvey for third-most in the franchise’s Los Angeles history.
“It’s just special, any time you hit a home run in a big league game is special, let alone three,” said Muncy, who now has 20 multi-homer games and two with three home runs. “I still think about the first time I did, so it’s just a special night, and to get the win on top of it was great.”
Muncy and Andy Pages, the Dodgers’ scorching-hot seventh hitter, combined to go seven for eight and score seven runs, drive in seven runs and hit four home runs. Pages’ big league-leading batting average climbed yet higher, to .449.
Max Muncy hits a walk-off home run to lift the Dodgers to an 8-7 win over the Texas Rangers at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Together, they kept the Dodgers afloat in a game that went back and forth, up and down, bobble-head style.
They found themselves playing from behind for the ninth time in 13 games, and coming back to win one of those games for the sixth time. And even though closer Edwin Díaz blew a save for the first time as a Dodger, he wound up with the win, thanks to Muncy’s final blast.
The closer served as something of a setup man — setting the stage for Muncy to save them in the ninth inning with his fourth career walk-off home run.
Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow pitched six innings, struck out seven and gave up four runs on five hits — including two home runs, one of them to former Dodger Corey Seager, whose 409-foot, two-run shot gave Texas a 3-1 lead in the third inning.
Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers in the first inning against Texas on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Relievers Alex Vesia and Tanner Scott both pitched a scoreless inning before closer Díaz entered in the ninth, with the Dodgers ahead 7-4.
Díaz 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.
“I was talking to some of the guys and they say that perennially that’s what [Díaz] does,” Dodgers manager Dave Robert said, acknowledging that his much-ballyhooed new closer isn’t throwing as hard as he has in the past. “Starts a little slower and then the velocity starts to creep up. So not too much of a concern.”
Neither is the Dodgers’ knack for falling behind, Roberts insisted.
“I would actually say that’s a good sign in the sense that we keep fighting, and we can come back,” he said. “That’s the sign of a good team.”
Teoscar Hernández tosses sunflower seeds at Andy Pages after Pages hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning against Texas on Friday night.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
With Texas leading 4-2 in the bottom of the fifth, Hyeseong Kim hit a sacrifice fly to drive home Pages, who had walked and advanced to third on Alex Freeland’s single to left, to make it 4-3.
Shohei Ohtani then singled to right to move Freeland to third — and, notably, to extend his on-base streak to 44 games, the longest such streak by a Japanese-born player and the fourth-longest in Dodgers history.
Ohtani — who went one for four with a walk and a strikeout Friday — has also reached base on all seven of his Dodgers bobblehead nights.
“He hasn’t really got going yet,” Roberts said. “For us to win the games we’ve won, scored the runs we’ve scored … and Sho isn’t going? He’s going to get hot. That’s a good thing for us.”
This season, the Dodgers determined 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 last 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 death of his father, Miguel Rojas Sr., Roberts said before the game.
“There’s a lot going on in Venezuela,” Roberts 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.”