SAN DIEGO — The Rage Against the Machine warmup song was familiar – “Bulls on Parade.” But post-evolutionary Walker Buehler has changed.
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Less bull and more guile now, Buehler held his former team to one run on three hits over 5⅓ innings and the San Diego Padres broke the game open late, beating the Dodgers 7-1 Friday night in the opener of a weekend series at Petco Park – and the first of seven meetings in the next 10 days.
“Badly,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said when asked how much he thought Buehler would like to beat the Dodgers in his first chance to face them on the opposite side of this rivalry. “He would love nothing more than to shove it up our you-know-whats. We know that. We love him for it.”
Buehler has been on a voyage of re-discovery since closing out the 2025 World Series with his last pitch for the Dodgers. It’s beginning to work with the Padres. He has a 3.81 ERA in 16 starts for the Padres after posting a 4.93 mark with the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies last season.
The fastball that once averaged 96.8 mph averaged 94.1 mph against the team that made him their first-round draft pick in 2015, paid for his two Tommy John surgeries and sent him to the mound 131 times in his first seven major-league seasons (plus 19 more times in five postseasons).
But he only threw the four-seam fastball 18 times against the Dodgers, relying instead on a cutter and slider while mixing in an assortment of changeups, knuckle curves, sweepers and sinkers.
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Mookie Betts turned on one of those four-seamers, Buehler’s first pitch of the second inning, and sent it into the left-field seats for his third home run in seven games (and sixth hit in 11 at-bats).
That was all the damage the Dodgers could do against Buehler.
Meanwhile, Roki Sasaki’s own voyage of self-discovery hit another pothole.
Sasaki struggled with his control early, walking three of the first five batters he faced including Manny Machado (on a 10-pitch struggle) and Gavin Sheets back-to-back to start the second inning.
The Padres cashed those in when Sasaki rolled an 0-and-2 slider over the plate to Ty France and he sent it into the left-field seats for a three-run home run.
He gave up a leadoff double to Fernando Tatis Jr. in the fifth inning then issued his fifth walk of the game, bringing Roberts out of the dugout. It was the second time in three starts since he pitched seven scoreless innings against the Angels that Sasaki has failed to complete five innings. He has given up 13 runs in 14 innings since that start seemed to signal a breakthrough in his development.
Jack Dreyer cleaned up Sasaki’s mess in the fifth inning and the bullpen kept it close until the ninth inning when the Padres scored four times against Jonathan Hernandez.
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More to come on this story.