Wow, what a week in sports. USC defeats Michigan, a Dodger pitches a complete game for the first time in the postseason since 2004 and they sweep the Brewers to go to the World Series for the second consecutive year after being 0-6 against Milwaukee during the regular season. Perhaps Michael Conforto will be added to the roster and win MVP in the World Series.
Jeff Hershow Woodland Hills
While basically sleepwalking through the first three games of the NLCS, Shohei Ohtani saves his best for last. He goes “Hollywood” and produces the single greatest performance in MLB history as the final curtain comes down on the Milwaukee Brewers and extends the Dodgers’ magical journey to repeat as World Series champions.
Stay tuned for the sequel!
Rick Solomon Lake Balboa
It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no, it’s superhuman Shohei! He pitches a shutout, strikes out 10, and hits three tape-measure home runs. Wow!
Marty Zweben Palos Verdes Estates
In the history of Major League Baseball, has there ever been a player like Shohei Ohtani? I don’t think so. Shohei is the best ever. Enough said.
Chris Sorce Fountain Valley
Now that the Dodgers have effortlessly powered their way back into the World Series, it’s quite obvious that $400 million actually does buy what it used to!
Jack Wolf Westwood
At last, the second coming of the Dodgers has happened. We’ve been waiting for it and hoping for it, and now it’s here. Great offense, great defense and superb pitching. Our new chant should be “all the way L.A., all the way.”
Cheryl Creek Anaheim
Statistically speaking, there is a case to be made in comparing the postseason accomplishments of Sandy Koufax and Blake Snell. From a historical perspective, there is no comparison.
Koufax is a legendary lifetime Dodger who pitched until he physically was no longer able to do so. Snell famously refused to take the ball in his last Giants start to save himself for a free agency money windfall.
Bill Waxman Simi Valley
Stop the presses! The world is still spinning on its axis! Holy Toledo, Dave Roberts finally figured out a starting pitcher’s arm doesn’t fall off after 100 pitches. Too bad he didn’t come to that revelation during Blake Snell’s Game 1 performance, but better late than never as the saying goes.
MILWAUKEE — He did not scream. He did not pump a fist. He showed hardly any of the emotions the moment seemed to call for, accomplishing something no major league pitcher had achieved in almost a decade.
Instead, after completing MLB’s first postseason complete game since 2017, and the first by a Dodgers pitcher since 2004, Yoshinobu Yamamoto simply walked around the mound, casually removed his glove, and didn’t break into a smile until he looked back at the center-field scoreboard.
“Wow,” he finally mouthed to himself, as the realization of his nine-inning, three-hit, one-run gem finally started to set in.
The reaction came after his old-school, matter-of-fact performance lifted the Dodgers to a 5-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.
“I was able to pitch until the end,” Yamamoto said in Japanese afterward. “So I really felt a sense of accomplishment.”
In an era of strictly controlled pitch counts and a steadfast reliance on relievers come October, Yamamoto turned back the clock on a night reminiscent of a bygone generation.
He dominated the Brewers with ruthlessness and efficiency. He controlled the game with a steady rhythm and confident demeanor. He gave up a home run on his first pitch, a fastball that Jackson Chourio launched to right field, then barely looked stressed for the 110 throws that followed.
He struck out seven batters. He walked only one. And he left manager Dave Roberts with an easy ninth-inning decision, going back to the mound to finish what he started.
“He’s got true confidence from me that [even the] third time through, at pitch 90, he feels that he’s the best option,” Roberts said. “For me, that just gives me that confidence. … The way he was throwing, I felt really good about him starting the ninth.”
Yamamoto’s outing wasn’t quite like what Blake Snell did in Game 1 of this series, when the team’s other co-ace dazzled with virtually unhittable stuff in a scoreless eight-inning, one-hit, 10-strikeout gem — a start in which he probably could have also gone the distance, had Roberts not turned to his shaky bullpen in the ninth.
Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers during Game 2 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Rather, Yamamoto collected outs much in a more industrious manner — giving the Brewers plenty to hit, with the confidence they wouldn’t punish him.
“From the start, I felt they were being very aggressive,” Yamamoto said. “And I threw pitches that took advantage of that.”
Early on, it did take time for the 27-year-old right-hander to find his footing. After Chourio’s homer, he had to work around baserunners in each of the next four innings.
But eventually, Yamamoto dialed in his trademark splitter, found a groove while sharing pitch-calling duties with catcher Will Smith, and finished the night by retiring the final 14 batters.
He made it all seem so easy and simple, the way modern postseason pitching is no longer supposed to be.
“What he did tonight,” Smith said, “that was just domination.”
So much so, Kiké Hernández joked he got “bored” playing left field.
It had been eight years to the day since Justin Verlander tossed the majors’ last complete game in the playoffs. Not since José Lima’s shutout in the 2004 NL Division Series had a Dodgers starter accomplished the feat.
Of the 23 postseason complete games in the club’s Los Angeles history, Yamamoto’s three hits given up were tied for the fewest. His four baserunners allowed were fewer than Sandy Koufax or Orel Hershiser or Fernando Valenzuela had ever yielded in such an outing.
“Good pitching beats good hitting any day of the week,” said future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, who has never thrown a complete game in the playoffs. “And you’re seeing that right now.”
It helped that the Dodgers had plenty of good hitting themselves, staking Yamamoto to a lead by the time he returned to work in the second.
Teoscar Hernández hits a solo home run for the Dodgers in the second inning against the Brewers on Tuesday in Game 2 of the NLCS.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
After Chourio’s home run, Teoscar Hernández tied the score with a solo home run in the second inning. Andy Pages added a two-out RBI double three batters later, putting Brewers ace Freddy Peralta in a hole he wouldn’t dig out of.
Peralta’s final pitch led to another run in the sixth, with Max Muncy taking him deep with what was his 14th career postseason homer, setting a franchise high.
In the seventh and eighth, the Dodgers added on again, including an RBI single from Shohei Ohtani that snapped his one-for-23 drought since the start of the NLDS.
“Right now, our entire team is playing the best baseball we’ve played all year,” Roberts said. “We’re peaking at the right time.”
Still, all the Dodgers really needed on Tuesday was the brilliance they got from Yamamoto.
After working around an error from Muncy in the second, then third- and fourth-inning singles before a walk in the fifth, the pitcher was in total control by the night’s end.
From the fifth inning on, the Brewers only hit two balls out of the infield as Yamamoto mixed curveballs, cutters and sinkers to go along with his late-biting splitter and high-riding fastball. The Brewers’ plan was to be aggressive, but all it did was allow Yamamoto — who never threw 20 pitches in a single inning, and needed just 46 total for the final four — to stay on the mound.
“Sometimes,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said, “great pitching brings out the worst in you.”
“Just super efficient tonight,” Smith added. “That was really special.”
Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Brewers in Game 2 of the NLCS.
The outcome has the Dodgers in total command of this series, leading 2-0 and having hardly even exposed their bullpen.
Tyler Glasnow is set to start Game 3 at Dodger Stadium on Thursday. Ohtani will follow him in Game 4. Even if things go sideways, Snell and Yamamoto will be back on deck for the two games after that.
Technically, this remains a battle for a pennant. But really, it has become a showcase for a Dodgers rotation that has a 1.54 ERA in the playoffs — and the first complete game in recent postseason memory.
“All of them are throwing the ball amazing, but we kind of knew that,” Kershaw said, describing this starting staff as the best he’s ever seen in his 18 years with the Dodgers. “Snell did it, and you can’t pitch much better than that. And then what Yama did today was amazing.”
MILWAUKEE — Technically, Roki Sasaki was available to pitch in relief for the Dodgers on Tuesday night.
Realistically, he wasn’t.
“I wouldn’t say unavailable,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “But it is unlikely that we will use him.”
Without the most electric arm in their unreliable bullpen, how could the Dodgers record the final outs required to win Game 2 of the National League Championship Series?
Here’s how: By making their bullpen a non-factor.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto tossed a complete game, becoming the first Japanese pitcher to do so in a postseason game. The offense spared Roberts another late-inning scare by tacking on insurance runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.
The result was a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field that extended the Dodgers’ lead in the NLCS to two games to none.
Two more wins and the Dodgers will advance to the World Series for the third time in six seasons. Two more wins and they will be positioned to become baseball’s first repeat champions in 25 years.
Ninety-three teams have taken a two-games-to-none lead in a best-of-seven postseason series. Seventy-nine of them have advanced.
In other words, this series is over.
If the Philadelphia Phillies couldn’t overturn a 2-0 deficit against the Dodgers, these overmatched tryhards in Milwaukee certainly won’t.
With the next three games at Dodger Stadium and Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell scheduled to start those games, the most pressing question about this NLCS is whether it will return to baseball’s smallest market for Game 6.
Don’t count on it.
The Brewers’ bullpen was supposed to be superior to the Dodgers’, but that advantage has been negated by the Dodgers’ superior starting pitching.
Reaching this stage of October has forced the Brewers to exhaust their relievers, so much so that by the time closer Abner Uribe entered Game 2 in a sixth-inning emergency, he might as well have been Tanner Scott.
“We’re more depleted than the Dodgers are,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
The workload made the Brewers’ bullpen as rickety as the Dodgers’, and that was with Sasaki just spectating.
What decided the game was that Murphy had to rely on his bullpen and Roberts didn’t.
Brewers starter Freddy Peralta pitched 5 ⅔ innings. A day after Snell faced the minimum number of batters over eight innings, Yamamoto registered every one of the 27 outs required to win a game.
Roberts said he didn’t hesitate to send back Yamamoto to the mound for the ninth inning. The night before, he called on Sasaki to close, and the decision to remove Snell nearly cost the Dodgers the game.
“Obviously,” Roberts said as diplomatically as he could, “there’s been things with the bullpen.”
Things now include Sasaki, whose ability to shoulder an October workload has come into question after he failed to complete the ninth inning in Game 1. In the game in question, Sasaki gave up a run and had to be replaced by Blake Treinen.
Sasaki’s form in Game 1 sounded alarm bells, and rightfully so. The converted starter still looked exhausted from his three-inning relief appearance against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the NL Division Series. His fastball velocity has gradually declined over the postseason, and he’s not the type of pitcher who can be as effective throwing 96 mph as he is when he’s throwing 100 mph.
Sasaki has never pitched as a reliever in the United States or Japan. He spent 4 ½ months on the injured list this year with a shoulder impingement. Just as the Dodgers didn’t know what they could expect from him when they first deployed him out of the bullpen, they don’t know what they can expect from him now moving forward.
“It’s one of those things that we’re still in sort of uncharted territory with him,” Roberts said.
At various stages of the season, the Dodgers have asked themselves the same questions about their downtrodden bullpen: How could they survive when their firemen on their roster were also arsonists? How could they win a World Series with such an untrustworthy group of late-inning options?
In this NLCS, the Dodgers have shown how. They will use them as infrequently as possible.
Leave it up to Seth Hernandez of top-seeded Corona High to find a way to impress the many pro baseball scouts attending Tuesday’s Southern Section Division 1 playoff opener with not just his arm but his bat.
He hit two three-run home runs to help Corona defeat Los Osos 11-2. Corona trailed 2-0 into the third inning until the Panthers started going deep. First was a home run by Jesiah Andrade. Then Hernandez started sending balls over the fence. He also struck out 10 and walked one in six innings.
Seth Hernandez of Corona celebrates his second three-run home run.
(Nick Koza)
Corona advances to play Big VIII rival Norco in Friday’s quarterfinals.
Norco 4, Laguna Beach 2: Dylan Seward had three hits and four RBIs while Landon Hovermale threw a complete game.
Crespi 5, El Dorado 2: The Celts rallied for four runs in the sixth inning. Diego Velazquez had a two-run double. Jackson Eisenhauer threw a complete game, striking out seven. Crespi will play Mira Costa in the quarterfinals.
Mira Costa 5, Arcadia 4: An RBI double by Joaquin Scholer in the fifth inning broke a 4-4 tie. He finished with two doubles.
Los Alamitos 8, Orange Lutheran 0: Tyler Smith drove in four runs and three pitchers combined on a five-hit shutout to eliminate the Lancers. Los Alamitos will play Santa Margarita on Friday.
Santa Margarita 6, Huntington Beach 5: Chase Marlow singled in the go-ahead run in the seventh inning to give the Eagles an upset over Sunset League champion Huntington Beach. Brennan Bauer struck out four in 4 1/3 innings of relief.
Villa Park 8, Aquinas 2: Jake Nobles struck out five with no walks over five innings and Val Lopez had three hits and two RBIs. Villa Park will play St. John Bosco on Friday.
St. John Bosco 5, Vista Murrieta 4: Noah Everly had three hits and two RBIs while Miles Clark homered for the Braves, who rallied with a three-run sixth inning.
West Ranch 12, Crean Lutheran 0: Mikey Murr and Matt Castellon combined on a no-hitter in Division 2.
Sultana 6, Loyola 5: The Cubs dropped the Division 2 game on an error in the ninth inning.
Servite 12, Anaheim Canyon 1: Tomas Cernius hit a three-run home run and Michael Cabral had four RBIs. Servite will play Etiwanda in the Division 2 quarterfinals.
Etiwanda 6, Gahr 1: Angel Mejia finished with four RBIs and Nico Hamilton threw six innings for the Eagles.
Torrance 3, Oaks Christian 2: Mateo Rickman hit a three-run home run to power Torrance, which will face Fountain Valley on Friday.
Fountain Valley 7, Trabuco Hills 0: Josh Grack threw the shutout and also contributed two RBIs.
Foothill 3, San Clemente 2: Ezekiel Vargas and Aidan Colburn each had two hits for Foothill, which plays Mater Dei on Friday.
Mater Dei 6, Simi Valley 4: The Monarchs eliminated second-seeded Simi Valley by scoring six runs in the top of the seventh inning. Brady Guth hit a three-run home run.
Quentin Young of Oaks Christian is in his final days of high school baseball, giving pro scouts one final chance to evaluate his immense skills.
Fans have already decided his entertainment value is off the charts. He hit his 14th home run on Friday in the opening round of the Southern Section Division 2 playoffs — a three-run blast — that helped send the Lions to a 9-2 victory over Redlands East Valley.
Young finished with two hits and four RBIs. Joshua Brown and James Latshaw also hit home runs. Ty Hanley threw a complete game.
Triton Baseball shuts out Westlake 8-0 behind Mike Erspamer’s masterful 7k/1hit complete game in CIF-SS Playoffs 1st Rd! Kaden Raymond got things going early with a 2 Run HR & Tritons get 12 hits & play excellent defense throughout.👍@ocvarsity @latsondheimerpic.twitter.com/Ckn2iTYdo3
San Clemente 8, Westlake 0: Stanford commit Mike Erspamer threw a one-hit shutout with seven strikeouts and one walk. Kaden Raymond had a two-run home run.
Servite 1, Riverside Prep 0: Toby Kwon gave up two hits and no walks in the complete game.
Mater Dei 3, South Hills 0: Brandon Thomas struck out seven, walked none and gave up four hits in a Division 2 playoff opener. Ezekiel Lara had two RBIs.
West Ranch 4, Palm Desert 3: Hunter Manning had three hits and three RBIs and also threw six innings with six strikeouts to lead West Ranch to a road victory in Division 2. Mikey Murr got the save with a scoreless seventh.
Simi Valley 3, Ventura 0: Kyle Casey struck out four and walked none in a complete game for No. 2-seeded Simi Valley in Division 2.
Crean Lutheran 6, La Habra 1: Ben Keller had three hits and three RBIs as Crean Lutheran toppled top-seeded La Habra in Division 2.
Etiwanda 11, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 5: Angel Mejia and LJ Roellig hit home runs for Etiwanda, which had a six-run fifth inning.
Gahr 10, La Salle 0: Andres Gonzalez and Adrien Ramirez each had three RBIs and Jake Ourique struck out eight in six innings.
Trabuco Hills 4, Bonita 3: Ryan Luce had two doubles for Trabuco Hills.
Fountain Valley 4, El Segundo 2: A three-run fifth inning helped Fountain Valley come back from a 2-1 deficit.
Anaheim Canyon 10, Maranatha 6: Cooper Stevenson had a two-run double in the first inning to ignite the Comanches. Camden Goetz had a home run.
Foothill 6, Long Beach Millikan 4: Gavin Lauridsen threw 6 1/3 innings, striking out seven.
Torrance 5, Chino Hills 1: Hector Chavez hit a two-run home run for Torrance.
Murrieta Mesa 6, Santa Monica 0: Tanner Blackmon struck out seven and gave up three hits in the Division 4 victory.
Valencia 4, Northview 1: Lincoln Hunt had three hits for the Vikings.
Saugus 22, Wise Da Vinci 3: Zach Seeley hit two home runs and finished with nine RBIs.
A high school baseball regular season that began with Sherman Oaks Notre Dame learning its No. 1 pitcher wouldn’t be available is ending with the Knights clinching a playoff berth after a 1-0 victory over St. Francis on Monday in Mission League play.
Juju Diaz-Jones, recruited to be the team’s new ace pitcher, threw a complete game, striking out eight while giving up three hits. Notre Dame (14-13, 9-7) holds fourth place but could finish in third if it wins again on Tuesday and Loyola loses to Harvard-Westlake.
Crespi 9, Chaminade 4: Jackson Eisenhauer struck out 10 in six innings in his final appearance before starting in the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs next week. Crespi is in position to be a top-four seed. Josh Stonehouse went three for three with three RBIs and a home run and Troy Miller added three hits.
Harvard-Westlake 11, Loyola 3: James Tronstein hit two home runs and had five RBIs.
Sierra Canyon 6, Bishop Alemany 3: Theo Stafford went four for four and Dezi Delgado had three RBIs.
El Dorado 18, Villa Park 2: Xavi Cadena had three hits, including a home run, to help El Dorado clinch a playoff berth out of the Crestview League. Diego Gonzalez also homered and had three RBIs.
Foothill 3, Dana Hills 0: Gavin Lauridsen allowed one hit in four innings. Sean Green had two hits and two RBIs.
Simi Valley 6, Royal 4: The Pioneers (10-1) pulled into a first-place tie with Royal (10-1) in the Coastal Canyon League going into a final game at Simi Valley on Wednesday. Jaxon Herron had two hits and two RBIs. Kyle Casey threw a complete game with seven strikeouts.
Cleveland 11, Chatsworth 7: Quinton Riepl had three hits in the West Valley League victory.
Sylmar 5, Kennedy 3: Alex Martinez struck out seven for Sylmar.
Softball
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 16, Harvard-Westlake 6: The Knights won their third straight Mission League title under coach Justin Siegel. Adiah Fountain had three hits and four RBIs.
