Every Dodgers game in the 2026 season has been decided in nine innings, and the lack of extras hasn’t been for lack of trying. The Tampa Bay Rays loaded the bases in the ninth inning, coming dangerously close to bringing home the equalizer. On Friday, Dalton Rushing’s RBI single should have tied the game with two outs in the ninth.
“With the base hit, I was thinking about extra innings. I was thinking the play was going to be made, and I actually didn’t see it get by the catcher,” manager Dave Roberts
said Friday night. “I wasn’t in tune, I was kind of moving to the next play.”
But the ball did get by Baltimore Orioles catcher Samuel Basallo, allowing a second, winning run to score, and the Dodgers decided yet another game before having to deal with the automatic runner on second base.
The Dodgers are nearly at the halfway point of their season, as Friday was their 76th game of the campaign, and have still not played in extra innings in 2026. The Texas Rangers have played in two such games and the San Diego Padres in three. Every other team has played in at least four extra-inning games by now, with the MLB average about six per team. Last year the Dodgers played in 15 extra-inning games in the regular season, tied for seventh-most in the league, including nine games by this point in the year.
Seventy-six games is the longest Dodgers stretch at any point in any season they have played without an extra-inning contest, dating back to at least 1898 (the earliest year for which Baseball Reference has full play-by-play data). The previous longest streak in franchise history was 73 games by Brooklyn from May 27-August 27, 1899.
To start a season, the Dodgers’ streak of 76 games with none in extra innings is the second-longest in MLB history. They trail only the 2005 Boston Red Sox, who went 98 games into that year before playing in extra innings.
The Dodgers are 4-0 on this homestand, with all four wins coming by one run, narrowly missing extra innings, the longest MLB streak since the San Francisco Giants pulled off six straight one-run wins from June 4-10, 2025.
Four games is the Dodgers’ longest streak of wins all by one run since May 30-June 2, 2010 against the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. The Dodgers on Saturday have a chance to tie their franchise record for longest streak of one-run victories. They’ve had three such five-game streaks, the last coming 32 years ago:
- May 17-22, 1961 vs. Braves (one game), at Giants (three games), Reds (one game)
- July 4-8, 1966 vs. Reds (three games), vs. Braves (two games)
- May 9-14, 1994 vs. Astros (three games), vs. Padres (two games)
Saturday game info
- Teams: Dodgers vs. Orioles
- Ballpark: Dodger Stadium
- Time: 7:10 p.m.
- TV: SportsNet LA, MLB Network (out of market)
- Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)
