Price pitches Red Sox past Dodgers 4-2 for 2-0 Series lead
BOSTON — From playoff flop to World Series ace in one legacy-changing October, David Price earned his second postseason victory in a row Wednesday night and delivered the Boston Red Sox their second straight World Series win.
The Red Sox lefthander pitched six innings of three-hit ball, and major league RBI leader J.D. Martinez broke a fifth-inning tie with a two-run single during another two-out rally to lead Boston to a 4-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers and a 2-0 lead in the World Series.
Game 3 is Friday in Los Angeles. The Dodgers need a win to avoid an 0-3 deficit that no World Series team has ever recovered from.
The Red Sox have won 14 of their last 16 World Series games, dating to a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004.
Not bad for a team that went 86 years without a championship before then.
And Price had battled a curse of his own.
Price had been 0-9 in his first 10 postseason
son starts and his team had never won a playoff game he started before this year. Boston has now won his last three starts, including the ALCS Game 5 clincher against the defending champion Astros in which he pitched six shutout innings.
So what changed for Price, who said he found something while warming up in the bullpen late in Game 4 at Houston?
“I have,” he said. “I take a lot of pride in being able to evolve from pitch to pitch or day to day or game to game. Being able to make adjustments on the fly, it's paid off.”
On a frigid night at Fenway Park, Price held the highest-scoring team in the NL hitless through three innings and retired the last seven batters he faced. He struggled only in the fourth, loading the bases with nobody out on two singles and a walk, to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead — their first of the Series.
But the 108-win Red Sox pulled ahead, and once again they waited until there were two outs to do it.
In an uncanny stretch of clutch hitting that has been their hallmark throughout the season, the Red Sox scored all four of their runs in Game 2 with two outs, including a three-run rally in the fifth that only started after Hyun-jin Ryu set down Ian Kinsler and Jackie Bradley Jr.