Red Sox looking like Series locks
BOSTON — The Boston Red Sox earned 108 victories in the regular season, and it turns out they hadn’t even played their best. Now they have, and as the World Series shifts to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Friday, a sense of inevitability moves with it.
The Red Sox have beaten the Los Angeles Dodgers twice, convincingly. A return flight to Boston for Games 6 and 7 is looking unlikely; this World Series could easily end before then.
“We knew we were going to have a good team — good lineup, good chemistry, good energy — but not that good,” said third baseman Eduardo Nunez, the only Red Sox hitter with a home run so far. ‘‘We can beat you with homers, defense, pitching, base hits, stolen bases. I think we have it all.”
They do, and they have played nearly flawless baseball all month, winning nine of 11 games. So far in the World Series, the Red Sox’s biggest mistake is a bounced first pitch by their grand old man, Carl Yastrzemski, before the opener — and even that turned out fine. The 79-yearold Yaz demanded the ball back from his catcher, the injured Dustin Pedroia, and tossed in a strike.
By the time the Red Sox return to Boston, they should have their fourth commissioner’s trophy in the last 15 seasons. They have won all five of their road games this postseason, and seem poised to clinch the title on Vin Scully Avenue. The Dodgers, who fell in seven games to the Houston Astros last fall, would be the first team to lose consecutive World Series on its home field since the New York Giants in 1936 and ’37, both to the New York Yankees.
Scully, the future Red Sox designated hitter J.D. Martinez smacks a tworun single against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the fifth inning of Game 2 on Wednesday night. Boston’s 4-2 victory gave the Red Sox a 2-0 lead in the World Series. voice of the Dodgers, rooted for those Giants teams as a boy in New York. He fell for them out of pity, he has said, when he saw the score of Game 2 of the 1936 Series, an 18-4 shellacking.
The second game of this World Series only felt that lopsided. The score actually was 4-2, but it was more like a Boston blowout. The Dodgers went hitless in eight of nine innings, clustering their three hits in the fourth. Their last 16 batters went down in order.
“Coming in here, I thought we played these guys pretty straight up,” said manager Dave Roberts, who soon conceded what everyone knew. “We’re not swinging the bats well right now. That’s obvious.”
Right-hander Rick Porcello will start on Friday for the Red Sox, after starting Game 4 in the first two rounds against the Yankees and the Astros. Nathan Eovaldi started and won Game 3 of those series, but Boston manager Alex Cora used him for the eighth inning both nights at Fenway, the final plank in a sturdy bridge to closer Craig Kimbrel.
“It’s been a lot of fun, both starting and coming out of the bullpen,” Eovaldi said. “I’m just ready to take the ball whenever they need it.”