Originally published by DodgerBlue.com
The national nine-day-long nightmare is over as the Los Angeles Dodgers ended a seven-game losing streak with an extra innings win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday.
The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are now 6-6 against each other this year as L.A. tries to clinch the season series for the eighth straight year in the series finale on Sunday.
L.A. avoided its first eight-game losing streak, which would have been the most since losing 11 straight from September 2-11, 2017. The Dodgers also lost seven straight games in 2025 for their longest losing streak of last season.
Dodgers 2, Diamondbacks 1: key takeaways
Dodgers bullpen blows save, then finishes it
After Phillips got Yamamoto out of his jam, the Dodgers relied on Alex Vesia, Kyle Hurt, Tanner Scott, Edwin Díaz and jack Dreyer.
Both Vesia and Hurt struggled as the left-hander walked two of the first three hitters before working out of it, and the right-hander recorded two outs before loading the bases with a single and two straight walks.
Scott ended up stranding the bases loaded by recording a fly out.
Díaz was back on the mound in the ninth looking for the save one day after blowing his last save chance. He immediately allowed back-to-back triples that tied the game, but then stranded the winning run at third.
After the Dodgers took the lead in extra innings, Dreyer recorded the save, finishing it off with a double play.
The bullpen closing it out ended a historic streak to forget for the Dodgers. Prior to tonight’s win, the Dodgers had seven consecutive blown-lead losses for the first time in franchise history.
Before the current stretch, they had six-straight blown lead losses on three different occasions, most recently July 18-24, 1987 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs.
Kyle Tucker stays hot
Kyle Tucker has been the Dodgers best hitter since the All-Star break, and he had the biggest swing of the game to give the Dodgers the lead.
With the game tied 0-0 after seven innings, Tucker crushed a leadoff homer in the eighth.
That was Tucker’s first go-ahead home run in the eighth inning or later since joining the Dodgers. He has nine in his career.
Over the last seven games, the right fielder is batting .400/.478/.700, and since the All-Star game, he has four home runs after hitting just seven in the first half. He also extended his hitting streak to six games, which is the longest active on the club.
The Dodgers’ offense up until that point did nothing. Through the first six innings, Diamondbacks’ starter Brandon Pfaadt faced the minimum, and they failed to capitalize on their chance in the seventh.
L.A. didn’t get on the board again until the 10th inning when Shohei Ohtani hit a ground ball that the first baseman was unable to field, resulting in the free runner in extra innings scoring.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto battles
Yoshinobu Yamamoto didn’t have his best stuff or command, but he still battled to turn in a solid start and give the Dodgers a chance to win.
Yamamoto finished the day throwing 107 pitches over 5.2 scoreless innings, allowing three hits and three walks while striking out six.
The right-hander ran into trouble in the fifth inning with a leadoff single and one-out hit-by-pitch, but ended up striking out the next two hitters to end the inning.
He again allowed a leadoff single in the sixth, followed by a walk. Yamamoto then got the next two outs before Evan Phillips entered and retired the last out to strand the runners.
Yamamoto recently lost a significant amount of weight after dealing with an illness, but he has continued to pitch well and hasn’t missed a turn in the rotation.
Have you subscribed to the Dodger Blue YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows and giveaways, and stay up to date on all Dodgers news and rumors!