Inside The Dodgers

Dodgers Clap Back at Padres' Manny Machado, Mike Shildt in Epic Fashion

J.P. Hoornstra|
Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages (44) hits an RBI single against the San Diego Padres during the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.
Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages (44) hits an RBI single against the San Diego Padres during the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday. | Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

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Los Angeles DodgersSan Diego Padres

There are revenge games, and then there's what Andy Pages did to the San Diego Padres on Wednesday.

The Dodgers' second-year outfielder hit two home runs as part of a 4-for-4 performance in an 8-6 victory Tuesday at Dodger Stadium.

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The big game came on the heels of Manny Machado's postgame comments Monday, a game in which Pages took offense to being hit by a Dylan Cease pitch in the fourth inning of the Dodgers' 6-3 win.

"They've got way more superstars over there," Machado said. "(If) we want to hit somebody, they've got some big dogs over there we could hit."

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Mike Shildt, the Padres' manager, had some choice words for Pages himself as the 24-year-old outfielder stared down his pitcher.

It doesn't take a professional lip-reader to surmise that Shildt was questioning Pages' self-assessment of his own importance.

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The Dodgers kept the receipts.

In a series of posts to the team's official Twitter/X account Tuesday, the Dodgers made a couple allusions to the Padres' comments about Pages.

"And that's who Andy Pages is!" read the words in two separate posts — a clear nod to Shildt questioning who Pages thought he was when staring down Cease.

"Big Dog, Andy Pages," read another post, an obvious subtweet directed at Machado.

Pages' big night raised his batting average for the season to .293. He has 15 home runs, 49 RBIs, and is on pace for an outstanding 6-WAR season according to both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.

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Pages' 2.9 fWAR is 15th in MLB, trailing only Shohei Ohtani among his teammates, and an ironic 0.1 ahead of Machado.

Why did Pages take offense to being hit with a pitch in the first place?

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“They thought I was relaying signs when I was jumping at second base, I think,” Pages said in Spanish. “It’s impossible that he can’t miss a slider on the corner and he missed a fastball a strike zone inside.”

Pages told reporters after Wednesday's game that he saw a clip of Shildt's lip-reading moment and "didn't pay much attention to it."

Whether he was carrying extra motivation with him Tuesday or not, Pages' performance made the difference in a two-run win that extended the Dodgers' lead in the National League West to five games over the third-place Padres.

For more Dodgers news, head over to Dodgers on SI.

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J.P. Hoornstra
J.P. HOORNSTRA

J.P. Hoornstra is an On SI Contributor. A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers in California, J.P. covered MLB, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels (occasionally of Anaheim) from 2012-23 for the Southern California News Group. His first book, The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All-Time, published in 2015. In 2016, he won an Associated Press Sports Editors award for breaking news coverage. He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.

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