Darvish fans 11, Padres get 2 big homers to beat Dodgers 6-2

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Yu Darvish struck out 11 in six brilliant innings to become the fastest big leaguer to reach 1,500 for his career, Manny Machado and Jake Cronenworth homered and the San Diego Padres beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 on Monday night in the opener of a three-game series between the NL West rivals.

Darvish (7-2) reached 1,500 strikeouts on the nose in 197 starts. He held the Dodgers to two hits, including Mookie Betts' solo homer, and walked just one.

The Padres improved to 5-3 this season against the Dodgers.

After playing two entertaining series before limited-capacity crowds, this was the first time this season the teams faced each other in a full-capacity ballpark after California's reopening plan went into effect last week. The sellout crowd of 42,220 appeared to be fairly evenly split between Dodgers and Padres fans.

The Dodgers swept the Padres in their NL Division Series last year en route to the World Series title.

Darvish's only big mistake was allowing Betts' homer to center with two outs in the third, his ninth. That ended a string of seven straight strikeouts for Darvish.

Darvish notched his milestone 1,500th strikeout when he got Steven Souza Jr. looking leading off the sixth. After Cronenworth's error at first base allowed Gavin Lux to reach with two outs, Darvish allowed just his second hit, a single by Justin Turner.

Rookie second baseman Kim Ha-seong then made a nice play on Will Smith's hard smash to end the inning, although he appeared to injure a finger and was replaced by Cronenworth the next inning.

Machado hit a three-run homer off Julio Urías (9-3) to give the Padres a 4-0 lead before the Dodgers got an out in the first. Urías allowed Tommy Pham's leadoff double, walked Fernando Tatis Jr. and allowed Cronenworth's opposite-field...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Darvish-fans-11-Padres-get-2-big-homers-to-beat-16264179.php