PHILADELPHIA — Two innings into Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, the Dodgers had been punched in the mouth.
The Phillies had scored three runs off Shohei Ohtani in the bottom of the second. Citizens Bank Park was shaking on the scale of a small earthquake. And the Dodgers’ offense was doing nothing against Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez.
In the opening contest of a heavyweight series, the defending champions were down.
But, in their typically resilient fashion, far from out.
In a come-from-behind, statement-sending 5-3 win, the Dodgers did again what carried them a championship last October.
They shrugged off the early adversity, with Ohtani allowing no further damage over a six-inning start; finishing his postseason pitching debut with nine strikeouts and four monumental scoreless frames.
Their lineup chipped away at the deficit, knocking Phillies ace and Cy Young Award candidate Cristopher Sánchez out of the game on Kiké Hernández’s two-out, two-run double in the sixth.
Then, they landed the actual knockout blow, with Teoscar Hernández flipping the game — and the feel of this best-of-five series — with a two-out, three-run, stadium-silencing home run in the seventh.
Game 2 will be back here in South Philadelphia on Monday night. And the Dodgers will go into it with, given the way Saturday started, an unexpected 1-0 series lead.
It could not have started worse for the Dodgers.
Sánchez was carving them up with wicked sinkers and fall-off-the-table changeups. Ohtani, meanwhile, ran into early trouble in the bottom of the second.
The inning started with a walk to Alec Bohm, when Ohtani missed on a full-count fastball. That was followed by a single from Brandon Marsh, who got a down-the-middle fastball in a 2-and-2 count and shot a base hit to center.
As Ohtani tried to settle down, a chorus of taunting chants — Sho-Hei! Sho-Hei! — came raining down.
A crowd of 45,777 at Citizens Bank Park was ready to explode.
Then, J.T. Realmuto gave them the chance.
After missing with a first-pitch slider to Realmuto, Ohtani left a 100.2 mph heater in the dead heart of the zone. The location rendered the velocity irrelevant. Realmuto barreled it up, sent a line drive screaming into right-center, then chugged all the way to third after the ball got past Teoscar Hernández in the gap.
A fly ball two batters later — which worked for a sacrifice fly thanks to Hernández’s inability to cut the ball off — made it 3-0.
In the moment (and with the way Sánchez was pitching early), the lead felt almost insurmountable.
The Dodgers, however, didn’t wilt.
The turnaround began with Ohtani, who followed Realmuto’s triple by retiring the next 10 he faced. His only other trouble came in the fifth, when the bottom two hitters in the Phillies order reached base with one out. But even then, Ohtani buckled down, getting Trea Turner to line out and Kyle Schwarber to swing through a curveball that ended the inning.
Eventually, the Dodgers’ offense found life too.
With two outs in the sixth, and Sánchez having given up only two hits all night, Freddie Freeman sparked a rally with a five-pitch walk. Tommy Edman took a sinker the other way to put two aboard.
That brought up Kiké Hernández, who had already begun reprising his role of October hero with four hits in the team’s wild-card series sweep of the Cincinnati Reds.
On cue, Hernández came up clutch again, jumping on a slider from Sánchez that caught a little too much plate and roping it down the left-field line for a two-run double — the latter run coming when Edman ran through a stop sign at third base.
Just like that, Sánchez was knocked out of the game. What had been a raucous crowd earlier in the night suddenly grew tense.
That dread only grew in the next-half inning, when Ohtani completed his start with a 1-2-3 bottom of the sixth.
Then, in the seventh, the Dodgers made the comeback complete — getting the biggest swing of the night from another postseason savior, Teoscar Hernández.
After Andy Pages led off the inning with a single and Will Smith (who entered the game in the fifth inning for his first appearance of this postseason after missing the wild card round with a fractured hand) was hit by a pitch from David Robertson, the Phillies summoned top left-handed reliever Matt Strahm to face Ohtani.
As he did in his prior three at-bats, Ohtani struck out, taking a fastball down the middle, punching out in four-consecutive at-bats in a game for only the second time in his MLB career.
But by getting Strahm on the mound, the Dodgers had favorable right-on-left matchups behind him. Mookie Betts couldn’t take advantage, popping out to third for the second out of the inning. Hernández, on the other hand, didn’t miss.
On an elevated fastball in a 1-and-0 count, Hernández launched a towering fly ball to the right-center field gap. The Phillies outfield went back on it. But the ball kept carrying into the stands. The ballpark went silent. Hernández practically glided around the bases.
The drama didn’t end there.
Projected Game 4 starter Tyler Glasnow came on in relief in the seventh, when he retired the side on a double-play grounder, then returned for the eighth, when he loaded the bases on a single and two walks. That threat was extinguished by left-hander Alex Vesia, who induced a harmless fly ball from pinch-hitter Edmundo Sosa to quiet a stirring crowd once again.
The ninth inning then belonged to Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old converted rookie starter who has ascended to closing duties less than two weeks after returning from a months-long shoulder injury. He picked up the save in straightforward fashion, retiring the side in order for his first career save.
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