The Los Angeles Dodgers have acknowledged a rivalry exists between them and the San Diego Padres, but it’s always meant more to the latter.
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The Padres headlined the trade deadline by acquiring Athletics closer Mason Miller, cementing their bullpen as the best in baseball. But San Diego still managed to turn their attention toward the Dodgers.
Miller revealed the Padres quickly informed him of their dislike for the Dodgers.
“They told me right away,” Miller said on Foul Territory. “‘Obviously, we don’t like those guys a whole lot.’”
Meanwhile, the defending champions had no such discussions with newly-acquired reliever Brock Stewart and outfielder Alex Call.
“That’s a ‘their’ thing,” Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia said of Miller’s comments.
“I wasn’t a part of a meeting like that (with Stewart or Call) so I’m going to go with ‘No (we don’t do that).’”
Manager Dave Roberts believes the Dodgers will have to want to win the weekend series as much as the Padres do, since San Diego remains focused on taking LA down.
“I do think it’s one of those things where they’re very hyper-focused on us,” Roberts said. “But I guess it’s a compliment. Still, we’ve got to match their intensity because they want to beat us more than anything.”
With the exception of 2021, the Dodgers have won the NL West for the last decade. No player understands the stronghold LA has on the division more than future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw.
The veteran found the Padres’ conversation with Miller amusing, and he explained why San Diego doesn’t phase him.
“That’s fine,” Kershaw said to the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett. “I don’t feel any one way about them. I just want to win the division.
“I think every team goes through ebbs and flows when they’re good or not. In the whole time I’ve been here, it’s gone from the Giants to the Rockies to the Diamondbacks to the Padres to the Giants again. So … I think the one constant is we’re always in it. It’s just kind of the next-best team changes. Right now, it’s them.”
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Photo Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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