‘They’re the dragon up the freeway’: Three things the Padres must do to (finally) beat the Dodgers

ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

Peter Seidler now presides over the San Diego Padres but famously came of age with the Los Angeles Dodgers, as the grandson of famed owner Walter O’Malley and a devout listener of legendary broadcaster Vin Scully. Since helping to purchase the Padres a decade ago, Seidler has made it his mission to elevate the franchise to the Dodgers’ level of excellence, a pursuit that has become increasingly more overt in recent years. And so he was the ideal person to cut to the heart of the matter.

“They’re the dragon up the freeway that we’re trying to slay,” Seidler said during an in-game interview on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball.

The Dodgers have won the National League West eight of the last nine years and will likely cruise to another division title in 2022. The Padres have made the postseason only once in the last 15 years — during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season — and are struggling to maintain ground at the moment. The events of last week seemed telling.

The Padres stirred the sport with a massive haul leading up to the trade deadline, acquiring not just Juan Soto — quite possibly the biggest trade acquisition in baseball history, given his age and his accolades — but also Josh Bell, Brandon Drury and Josh Hader. The Dodgers, meanwhile, did relatively little. And yet they dominated the Padres during their series in L.A. this weekend, out-scoring them by a combined 16 runs in a three-game sweep.

The Padres are 2-8 against the Dodgers this season and have lost 17 of their last 19 against them. That seems like a big problem, given their aspirations — a problem they’ll need to solve quickly.

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