Dodgers take 2-1 series lead on Rays
ARLINGTON, Texas – Walker Buehler was dominant for Los Angeles. Just like Orel Hershiser during the Dodgers’ last title run.
Buehler struck out 10 in six innings in a pulsating performance, and Los Angeles beat the Tampa Bay Rays 6-2 on Friday night for a 2-1 World Series lead.
Justin Turner homered in the first inning against a surprisingly hittable Charlie Morton, who was chased in the fifth.
Austin Barnes, the Dodgers’ No. 9 hitter, added a sixth-inning homer against John Curtiss and became just the second player to drive in runs with both a homer and a sacrifice bunt in the same Series game.
Los Angeles overwhelmed Tampa Bay in all phases, leaving the Rays’ scuffling offense with a .206 average and 11 runs in the Series.
Julio Urías, a hard-throwing Mexican left-hander in a Dodgers lineage dating to Fernando Valenzuela, starts Game 4 on Saturday night for the Dodgers, while the Rays string together several relievers that include Ryan Yarbrough.
Thirty-eight of 59 previous teams that won Game 3 for a 2-1lead went on to take the title.
Justin Turner and Austin Barnes homered for the Dodgers, who have outhomered the Rays 7-4 in the Series and opponents 25-16 in the postseason. Barnes also drove in a run with a squeeze, the second player with RBIs on a bunt and home run in a Series game behind Héctor López of New York Yankees in Game 5 of 1961.
Steely-eyed like the Hershiser who won MVP honors of the 1988 Series, Buehler has supplanted Clayton Kershaw as the Dodgers’ ace. He allowed three of Tampa Bay’s four hits and walked one.
The 26-year-old right-hander has allowed one run in 13 Series innings that include seven scoreless in Game 3 against Boston two years ago. He improved to 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in four postseason starts that include the win over Atlanta in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series last weekend.
He started 15 of 21 batters with strikes and threw strikes on 67 of 93 pitches. Buehler didn’t allow a hit until Manuel Margot’s one-out double in the fifth. Willy Adames then drove in Margot with another double.
The Rays’ only other hit off him was Austin Meadows’ single in the sixth.
Tampa Bay batters were kept off balance by his mix of 59 four-seam fastballs, 14 knuckle-curves, 12 sliders and eight cut fastballs. He became the first pitcher in the Series with 10 or more strikeouts in six or fewer innings, part of analytic changes in modern baseball that have led to shorter starter outings in an era of vastly increased whiffs.
Blake Treinen and Brusdar Graterol followed with a scoreless inning apiece. Kenley Jansen gave up Randy Arozarena’s eighth homer of the postseason in the ninth before closing it out.
Morton, a right-hander who turns 37 on Nov. 12, had entered unbeaten in seven straight postseason decisions, one shy of Orlando Hernandez’s record, including wins in five consecutive postseason starts. But he took the loss, allowing five runs and seven hits in 41⁄ in
3 nings – more than the four runs total he gave up in his previous five postseason starts combined.
No Rays starter has finished the fifth inning in their last five Series starts since Matt Garza in Game 3 against Philadelphia in 2008. Tampa Bay repeated its pattern of a dozen years ago, losing the opener, winning the next game and dropping the third,
Turner put the Dodgers ahead on Morton’s 14th pitch, turning on a high 94.8 mph fastball with a 1-2 count and driving the ball 397 feet over the leftfield wall. Turner’s home run was the
Dodgers’ team record 24th this postseason and the 11th of Turner’s postseason career over 69 games, tying the team record set by Duke Snider over 36 games with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1954 to 1959.
Los Angeles extended the lead to 3-0 in the third when Morton hit Seager on a toe with a pitch, Turner doubled and Max Muncy drove a cutter into center for a two-run single.
After singles by Cody Bellinger and Joc Pederson, Barnes drove in a run with the safety squeeze to first baseman JiMan Choi, the first RBI bunt in the Series since the Rays’ Jason Barlett in Game 2 in 2008 and the first since for the Dodgers since Billy Cox in Game 3 of 1953.
Mookie Betts followed with a twoout RBI single that made it 5-0, and Barnes homered off John Curtiss in the sixth.