In blockbuster WS showdown, Dodgers on cusp of Hollywood ending

NEW YORK – They crammed in crowded 4 and D trains, packed the Bronx’s sports bars and streamed through the Yankee Stadium gates, ready to lend their voices to the comeback cause. But it took all of three batters for those pinstripe-clad fans to be quieted, all of three batters for the seemingly unstoppable Dodgers to assert themselves in one of the most intimidating road environments in sports.

Sparked by – stop us if you’ve heard this one – a Freddie Freeman home run and steered by an exceptional outing from Walker Buehler, the Dodgers’ 4-2 triumph over the Yankees in Game 3 on Monday night put them on the verge of a World Series sweep.

How’d the Dodgers win this one? Well, they hit better, pitched better, ran the bases better and caught the ball better.

Any questions?

“I think this team is just different than the teams we've had before,” said Buehler, “in terms of the way we operate in there with the 26 guys that are active that day. There's this bond that's kind of different. We play for each other.”

Though they didn’t capitalize on opportunities to turn it into a blowout and the Yankees got some late life from Alex Verdugo’s two-run homer off Michael Kopech in the ninth, the Dodgers were in control early and often and are now just a win away from their second World Series title in five years and their first in a full season since 1988.

Game 4 will be back in Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, and the Yankees can’t let it go the way this one did.

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“Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But right now it's about trying to get a lead, trying to grab a game, and force another one, and then on from there.”

In all best-of-seven postseason series, teams taking a 3-0 lead have gone on to win the series 39 of 40 times (98%), including 31 sweeps. Just two teams down 3-0 have even forced a Game 7: The 2020 Astros, who lost to the Rays in the ALCS, and the 2004 Red Sox, who famously beat the Yankees in the ALCS.

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The Dodgers’ 3-0 series lead felt like a foregone conclusion early in this one.

Following two days of conversation over whether Shohei Ohtani would be able to swing a bat after popping his left shoulder out of its socket late in Game 2, Ohtani didn’t need to swing at all to reach base out of the leadoff spot in the first. Yankees starter Clarke Schmidt walked him on four pitches. And one out later, Freeman, whose Game 1 walk-off grand slam and important insurance swat in Game 2 already had him in pole position for the World Series MVP honor, connected on a cutter upstairs to send it over the short porch in right field and quickly give the Dodgers a 2-0 edge.

Freeman has now homered in each of his last five World Series games, dating back to his time with the Braves in 2021. His three dingers in this series have come while nursing a sprained right ankle.

“Like I've been saying the last few days, those days off [between rounds] were huge for me,” Freeman said. “I got my ankle in a spot where every single game afterwards, it's not as it was in the NLCS and NLDS. … I got my ankle in a spot where I could work on my swing, and I got it into a good spot, thankfully, going into the series.”

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Another run came in the third, when NLCS MVP Tommy Edman drew a walk, advanced to second on an Ohtani groundout and then made a great read on Mookie Betts’ opposite-field single to right to motor home and make it 3-0. The Dodgers could have broken the game open that inning after they loaded the bases and compelled Boone to go to his bullpen by bringing in Mark Leiter Jr. with two outs. But Will Smith grounded out to end the threat.

The Dodgers stranded two more runners in the fourth, but they manufactured another insurance run in the sixth when Gavin Lux got hit by a pitch, swiped second and scored on a Kiké Hernández single.

Those Dodgers runs quieted the crowd, and Buehler silenced the Yankees’ bats.

“Walker has been pitching big games for a long time, pretty much his whole career, even in college, when he was with Vanderbilt,” Freeman said. “So these lights aren't too big for him.”

Despite his big-game reputation, Buehler had an uncharacteristically difficult year in his first season back from Tommy John surgery. But in five scoreless innings in which he allowed just a pair of hits with two walks and five strikeouts, Buehler looked like his old self, with nice life on his fastball. He now has a 0.50 ERA in 18 career World Series innings.

“We play professional baseball for a living,” Buehler said. “When it's going good, there's not much else you'd rather do on this earth.”

The only time the Yankees got a runner to second base against Buehler came when Giancarlo Stanton doubled in the fourth. But when Anthony Volpe singled to shallow left with two outs, Yankees third-base coach Luis Rojas aggressively sent Stanton home, and the imposing DH was cut down by a perfect throw from Teoscar Hernández.

That the Yankees sent Stanton there speaks to how desperate they’ve been to get something going.

“We're going to challenge Teoscar there a little bit, especially when he's moving to the right,” Boone said. “Credit to him, he had a good throw.”

This was another ineffective evening for the Yankees' captain Aaron Judge, another night when they struggled to get help from the bottom half of their lineup (when they had two aboard and two out with Anthony Banda on the mound for L.A. in the seventh, Gleyber Torres was called out looking for strike three), another night when their starter didn’t have it. Though Verdugo’s two-out, two-run homer in the ninth put a late jolt into the building, it was too late to spark a real rally.

To think, the Yankees were once one out from a 1-0 lead in this Series. Everything changed when Freeman connected with a Nestor Cortes fastball and limped his way into the history books.

“You know, this year, we've battled, we've faced adversity, and we just keep coming back and punching back,” Freeman said. “And it's just a credit to our guys, our staff, everyone in this organization, we believe in ourselves, and we've been doing it so far.”

Now, if the Yanks don’t respond and start doing their own impression of the 2004 Red Sox, the Dodgers are dangerously close to turning this blockbuster battle of iconic franchises and signature stars into a matchup of minimum length.