Max Muncy completes Dodgers redemption arc with mammoth milestone grand slam

On Sunday evening, with the Dodgers down by three and the bases loaded for LA, Max Muncy had the opportunity to do the one thing that might shut his detractors up indefinitely.

In March and April, Muncy coming up to the plate in a bases-loaded situation with one out would've immediately made fans want to turn off their TVs to avoid having to watch the inevitable inning-ending double play he'd ground into. May - and especially June - Muncy have been an entirely different story.

Going into Sunday's game, he was batting .296 with a .977 OPS in June, looking a lot more like the Max Muncy fans have grown accustomed to seeing. Even though he'd flown out and struck out in his first two at-bats of the day, his presence alone still lent reassurance that the Dodgers would be able to make something happen.

Muncy jumped on a hanging sinker from Nats starter Jose A. Ferrer and demolished it, sending it over the center field wall for a grand slam. It was his 200th career home run in a Dodgers uniform and seventh career grand slam.

Max Muncy's 200th Dodgers homer was a grand slam that perfectly capped off his redemption arc

He didn't stop there, and instead homered again in his very next at-bat for No. 201. Muncy's just two homers behind Matt Kemp on the Dodgers' all-time home run leaderboard and currently stands at No. 8. If he keeps this up. If the Dodgers exercise their club option to keep him in 2026, he could very well pass Kemp, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, and maybe even Roy Campanella in fourth place with 242.

Muncy's second homer of the night brought in three runs to make LA's series finale against Washington a true rout. The offense came to life after Muncy's slam, and Shohei Ohtani cleared the bases on a triple his next time out, then Mookie Betts followed with a single to score Ohtani before Muncy made the score 11-3. Ohtani also reclaimed full possession of the NL homer crown from Eugenio Suárez with a two-run homer in the eighth - on the same day he also opened the game on the mound (and allowed zero hits with two strikeouts).

While the chatter has already died down to a whimper, Muncy's grand slam proved decisively that Dodgers fans wrote him off too quickly at the beginning of the season, and he did it in perhaps the most poetic way possible.