Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto propel Dodgers to Fourth of July win over Padres

Fireworks began going off outside Dodger Stadium as soon as Saturday’s Fourth of July game began.Inside, however, the pyrotechnics were on hold until the bottom of the sixth, when Freddie Freeman detonated a sold-out crowd in the Dodgers’ 3-0 home win over the Padres.In an unexpected pitcher’s duel between All-Star Yoshinobu Yamamoto and over-7.00-ERA Griffin Canning, Freeman delivered the biggest blow with a solo home run in his third trip to the plate, doubling the Dodgers’ lead en route to a series-clinching victory.Up to that point, the Dodgers had needed –– and gotten –– near perfection out of Yamamoto, who protected the one-run lead they had taken in the third on an Andy Pages RBI single.Then, once Canning was finally out of the game, Freeman greeted reliever Kyle Hart with a no-doubt blast on the third pitch he saw, launching his 15th long ball of the season into the right-field pavilion on the same day he had been selected to his 10th career All-Star Game.While that only made it a two-run game, it felt like much more.After working around three singles in the first two innings, then stranding his lone walk of the night in the fourth, Yamamoto validated his own All-Star selection from earlier in the day, retiring 11 of his last 12 batters to complete a scoreless seven-inning outing.From there, all the Independence Day crowd had to do was wait for the actual postgame fireworks show.Alex Vesia stranded a Padres runner in the top of the eighth with a three-pitch strikeout.Freeman stretched the Dodgers’ lead with the bottom of the inning –– against Padres superstar closer Mason Miller, no less –– with an RBI single.

And in the ninth, Will Klein collected his second save of the season. After dramatic come-from-behind wins in the first two games of this series, the Dodgers (58-31) produced a much more straightforward wire-to-wire victory Saturday, one that knocked the Padres (43-45) out of second place entirely in the division.Now, the Ar...