Ohtani's injury makes for bittersweet Game 2 triumph, 2-0 WS lead
Anthony Castrovince
@castrovinceLOS ANGELES -- It was a night of loud noises. A pregame performance from L.A. legend Ice Cube. The ball bounding off the Dodgers' bats. A standing ovation for Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The gigantic center-field speakers blaring party music in a celebratory setting.
All that Game 2 noise went away when Shohei Ohtani injured his left shoulder on a failed seventh-inning stolen-base attempt and lay on the ground in obvious agony. The Dodger Stadium crowd quieted quickly, then got mighty tense when the Yankees nearly came back in the ninth. But while the injury to their iconic designated hitter hung heavy in the air, the Dodgers were able to feed off the Freddie Freeman frenzy from a night earlier with a 4-2 win Saturday night to take a commanding 2-0 edge in this best-of-seven Fall Classic.
Freeman, still nursing that sprained right ankle, went deep again, and this time he had the company of NLCS MVP Tommy Edman and All-Star Teoscar Hernández and the backing of 6 1/3 one-hit innings from Yamamoto. The party quieted when Ohtani went down, and the Yankees had everybody on the edge of their seats when they plated a run and loaded the bases in the ninth. But the Dodgers protected their home turf.
“You're not trying to lose in front of your home crowd,” said Freeman, who is in the pole position for MVP honors. “You want to get those wins early, and you’re going into a tough place to play.”
It could be tougher if Ohtani is out. But after their win, the Dodgers were optimistic that the shoulder subluxation Ohtani suffered might be manageable.
“We're going to get some tests at some point tonight, tomorrow, and then we'll know more in the next couple days,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But the strength was great. The range of motion, good. So we're encouraged.”
In all best-of-seven postseason series, teams taking a 2-0 lead have gone on to win the series 77 of 92 times (84%). The most recent comeback from a 2-0 deficit came in the 2023 NLCS, with the D-backs rallying against the Phillies. Under the current 2-3-2 format, teams winning Games 1 and 2 at home have gone on to take the series 45 of 56 times (80%).
And so the Yankees, who brought their band of slugging superstars to the West Coast, head east with a daunting deficit against a Dodgers team that had been an out away from angst in the opener, yet is now two wins from a ring.
Though the Yanks pressed hard late, Carlos Rodón’s struggles from the start had them playing behind most of the night.
“No one said it's going to be easy,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It's a long series, and we need to make it a long series now. We won't flinch. We've just got to keep at it.”
The Dodgers were at it early against Rodón.
Tommy Edman, the wiry utility man who came aboard in an unheralded midseason trade, continued his hero turn and sizzle against southpaws by taking Rodón deep with a solo shot in the second.
Though the Yankees struck back with a Juan Soto solo shot -- the lone mistake from Yamamoto -- in the top of the third, the game wasn’t knotted for long. In the bottom of the third, the loaded Dodgers lineup feasted on Rodón fastballs to mount a two-out rally.
First, Mookie Betts ripped a single to left. Then, Hernández, who came to L.A. as one of the lesser-publicized signings in the Dodgers’ $1.2 billion winter and turned in an All-Star campaign, smoked a 98 mph four-seamer up in the zone into the right-field pavilion seats for an impressive two-run blast that made it 3-1.
Dodger Stadium was still rocking after Teoscar’s tater when Freeman stepped to the plate. The jersey he wore for Kirk Gibson karaoke night was freshly encased near the stadium’s suite-level entrance, but Freeman made it clear that the epic ending to Game 1 was not the end of his contributions to this cause. He worked the count full, then connected when Rodón challenged him with another high heater.
As was the case a night earlier, Freeman left no doubt over where the ball would land, and the Dodgers were up 4-1.
“I’ve guessed right twice,” Freeman said.
Guess so.
That was the lead put in the clearly capable hands of Yamamoto, who had spurned the interested Yankees and one-upped their ace Gerrit Cole when he signed a 12-year, $325 million contract to join the Dodgers last winter. This was a night when Yamamoto showed the broad baseball world -- including an ample audience in his native Japan -- what all the fuss was about, confounding a dangerous lineup by allowing only the Soto swat and two walks and keeping the pressure off the oft-used L.A. bullpen by pitching into the seventh.
Yamamoto retired the last 11 hitters he faced and left to a stirring round of applause.
“Everything,” he said through an interpreter, “was working well today.”
All this rapture made the sound of silence when Ohtani lay in pain at second base all the more piercing. Ohtani had drawn a walk off Clay Holmes and attempted to swipe a bag, just as he had done 59 times in the regular season. This time, his left hand hit the ground hard on his slide, and the force went to his shoulder.
"That's tough,” the Yankees’ Aaron Judge said of the injury to his likely fellow 2024 MVP. “You never like seeing the best player in the game injured like that.”
The Ohtani injury changed the tone, and then the Yankees tried to change the lead by mounting a ninth-inning rally off Blake Treinen.
Soto singled and advanced on a wild pitch, and Giancarlo Stanton drove him home by banging a base hit off the third-base bag. Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled to put runners at first and second with one out, and Treinen plunked Anthony Rizzo with a 2-2 pitch to load the bases. But Treinen got a huge strikeout of Anthony Volpe, and Alex Vesia retired Jose Trevino on one pitch for the final out to bring the loud noises back again.
“It’s October, nothing's gonna be easy,” Freeman said. “The last three outs are the hardest. But all confidence involved in Blake, and Blake handed over to Alex. He got the out there. So we're up two games. It's a good start.”