Braves 1 win from WS after beating Dodgers
ARLINGTON, TEXAS » Marcell Ozuna homered twice, MVP candidate Freddie Freeman delivered the go-ahead hit off Clayton Kershaw and the Atlanta Braves movedwithinonewinof endinga two-decadeWorld Series drought by routing theLos AngelesDodgers 10-2 on Thursday night.
The Braves took a 3-1 lead in
the NL Championship Series, bouncing back from getting pounded 15-3 theprevious night.
Atlanta will try to reach its first World Series since 1999 when it plays Game 5 Friday night.
Ozuna had four hits and drove in four runs. Itwas 1-all in the sixthwhen the Braves scored six times, with Freeman hitting a tiebreaking double and Ozuna following with an RBI double that chased Kershaw.
Anight after theDodgers had a record 11-run first, they managedonly onehit — a solohomer by Edwin Ríos — over six innings against 22-year-old rookie right-hander BryseWilson in his postseason debut.
While the Braves’ outburst also lasted more than a halfhour but without as many runs as LA’s a day earlier, it wasmore than big enough after Ronald Acuña Jr. led off the decisive sixrun sixth with an infield single on a play that ended with him,
Kershaw and second baseman Kiké Hernández all on the ground. They all took tumbles because of their effort, and weren’t knocked down by the sometimes bothersome breezy conditions in the new Texas ballpark with the roof open.
Freeman and Ozuna each added RBI singles in the eighth.
Atlanta had gotten even 1-1 in the fourth when Ozuna turned an 86-mph slider from Kershaw into a 109- mph rocket that went 422 feet to left for his second postseason homer. Ozuna went even deeper in the seventh, a 434-foot shot to straight away center.
Kershaw, scratched from his scheduled start in Game 2 two days earlier because of back spams, struck out four, walked one and allowed four runs on seven hits in five-plus innings.