Riverside

Vicente Padilla will get the nod to pitch Game Three of the NLDS on Saturday against the St. Louis Cardinals as manager Joe Torre chose to go with Padilla over the early season ace, Chad Billingsley.

He also was awarded the start over Jon Garland, who possesses post-season experience and even a World Series championship ring, but Padilla has done yeoman’s work in the final months of the season and has earned the right to toe the rubber.

Six walk-off hits—four of which have been long balls.

That’s what Andre Ethier has done this season for the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers.

The six walk-off winners are an all-time high for a single player in the divisional era. In fact, he has the most walk-off hits in a single season since 1974, and his four walk-off homers are also the most since ’74.

Justin Morneau was the last player to hit three walk-off homers in a season, doing so in ’07.

September baseball can often feel like October playoffs. Monday night, Mike Scioscia managed his squad like it was the last game of the World Series.

On the cusp of what could be the most important week of the season for his Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Scioscia took over the one-game make-up contest against the New York Yankees as if his whole season was riding on it.

He pinch ran, pinch hit, and defensively substituted players all over the field. In every way, Scioscia outfoxed and out-managed his counterpart in the Yankee dugout.

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Workhorse.

In a season that has seen 12 different starting pitchers for the Los Angeles Dodgers thus far, that’s the only way to describe how Randy Wolf put the starting staff on his back from the end of June until early September.

Wolf, in 14 starts from June 29-September 5, tossed 93.2 innings—good for an average of 6.2 innings per start.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers made it through the weekend and took care of business.

The offense finally came alive and boomed for 19 runs in the first two games against a tough Giants pitching staff.

On Friday night, they worked Matt Cain for a 31-pitch first inning, in which they plated two runs en route to a 10-3 win.

The key hit in the first inning was a James Loney two-out, two RBI double.

Hiroki Kuroda gave up two runs on just three hits in eight strong innings, and the Dodgers touched-up Merkin Valdez and Bob Howry in a five-run seventh inning in a 10-3 Dodger rout to open a three-game set at AT&T Park in San Francisco, in front of 39,212.

If you’ve followed the National League West this season, complete this sentence:

The Los Angeles Dodgers welcomed Manny Ramirez back into the starting lineup, at a sold-out Petco Park in San Diego.

Dodger fans made the trip south en masse, at times out-vocalizing the home town Padre fans, to welcome back their slugging outfielder from his 50-game banishment for violating baseball's PED rules.

In his first at bat, Manny drew a walk in the middle of a Dodger five-run outburst, which pretty much ended the game as soon as it started.