Dodgers beat Giants 7-2, force decisive Game 5 in NLDS - MLB

LOS ANGELES — Facing a second elimination game in less than a week, the Los Angeles Dodgers kept the same calm and cool approach.

It was their 52,935 fans who went bonkers, celebrating a 7-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night to force a decisive Game 5 in their NL Division Series.

Mookie Betts homered and drove in three runs, and Will Smith also went deep to keep the season alive for the defending World Series champions. The Dodgers beat St. Louis in the NL wild-card game last Wednesday.

“Everybody was kind of chill, relaxed and wanted to play,” Betts said. “It’s not like we’re all of a sudden going to start hitting it harder or throwing it further or throwing it faster or whatever. It’s the same game we have been playing. It’s just a win-or-go-home situation.”

Next, the 106-win Dodgers head back to San Francisco to play the 107-win Giants one more time Thursday night, with the winner advancing to face Atlanta in the NL Championship Series. The Braves eliminated Milwaukee earlier Tuesday.

“They know us, we know them really well,” Smith said. “It’s going to come down to who wants it a little more.”

San Francisco won the NL West by one game over the Dodgers in an historic race that went down to the final day of the regular season. Now, these storied rivals are set for a winner-take-all showdown.

“This is what baseball wants,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’re going to be the only show in town. If you have a pulse or you’re a sports fan, you better be watching Dodgers-Giants.”

The Dodgers managed just five hits during a 1-0 loss in Game 3 – the second time they were shut out in this series – to reach the brink of elimination. Los Angeles had that many by the second inning Tuesday and pounded out 12 in all to back a brief but effective outing from Buehler on three days’ rest.

“Tonight’s a great example of kind of 26 guys coming together and figuring out a way to survive,” Buehler said.

Buehler went to Roberts as early as the Dodgers’ 9-2 victory in Game 2 and said he wanted the ball in Game 4 to start on short rest for the first time in his career. The right-hander allowed one run and three hits in 4 1/3 innings. He struck out four and walked two on 71 pitches.

“I actually felt great,” Buehler said. “Probably the best I have in the second half of the year. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow, but for tonight I felt pretty good.”

After giving up a leadoff single to Evan Longoria and walking pinch-hitter Steven Duggar, Buehler exited to a standing ovation from blue towel-waving fans.

The Dodgers chased starter Anthony DeSclafani in the second. He gave up two runs and five hits and struck out two.

The Giants ran through six pitchers by the fifth, leaving them with just three relievers. By the seventh, only backup catcher Curt Casali was available off the bench and he pinch-hit in the eighth.

The Giants have been outscored 16-9 in the series. They had seven hits Tuesday.

“This time of year you’re going to face great pitching night-in and night-out,” All-Star catcher Buster Posey said. “You’re hoping that when you do get some traffic out there, you can get a big hit because sometimes those opportunities are limited. Hopefully that’s something we will be able to do on Thursday.”

The biting, steady wind that prevailed throughout Game 3 was gone, leaving just a slight breeze to ruffle the center-field flags.

Smith hit a two-run homer to center in the eighth, extending the lead to 7-2.

Betts homered in the fourth, and his bases-loaded sacrifice fly scored Cody Bellinger in the fifth for a 5-1 lead.

“I told him after the homer that’s the best swing he’s taken all year,” Roberts said.

The Giants’ runs came in the top of the fifth on Darin Ruf‘s RBI groundout off winner Joe Kelly, and Kris Bryant‘s RBI groundout in the eighth. Posey, a career .257 hitter in the postseason, went 0 for 4.

Buehler was safe at first leading off the fourth when his shot went off reliever Jarlin Garcia‘s leg for an error. Betts followed with a two-run homer to the right-field pavilion, extending the lead to 4-0.

The Dodgers got on the board in the first with NL batting champion Trea Turner‘s RBI double to right-center that rolled to the wall, scoring Corey Seager, who singled.

Chris Taylor‘s sacrifice fly made it 2-0 in the second.

San Francisco had runners at the corners in the second on consecutive one-out singles by Bryant and LaMonte Wade Jr. But Buehler got out of the jam, retiring Longoria on a swinging strike and Mike Yastrzemski on a liner to second.

Last postseason, the Dodgers went 3-0 in elimination games, rallying from a 3-1 deficit to beat Atlanta in the NLCS.

LIGHTNING FAST

Dodgers reliever Brusdar Graterol pitched the sixth, when six of his seven pitches clocked 101 mph or better. He retired three of four batters, with only Bryant reaching on an infield single to first. Graterol retired Posey, pinch-hitter Wilmer Flores and Longoria on groundouts.

DELAY

The game was delayed briefly to start the eighth when a fan ended up on the warning track in the right-field corner. Multiple security guards pounced on the intruder, who was handcuffed and escorted off.

UP NEXT

Giants: RHP Logan Webb starts Game 5 on Thursday. He dominated the Dodgers in the series opener, striking out 10 over 7 2/3 innings to beat Buehler 4-0.

Dodgers: LHP Julio Urias starts the winner-take-all game. The majors’ lone 20-game winner this season led MLB with an .870 winning percentage and then pitched Los Angeles to a 9-2 victory in Game 2.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first thing that Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman thinks about when he wakes up each morning is how the club, stuck in what seems like an interminable rebuild, will play on that particular day.

Not where they will play four or five years down the road.

Yet given the modest expectations for a team that lost nearly 100 games a year ago, it makes sense many Royals fans are just as interested – quite possibly more so – in the plans for a downtown ballpark than whether infielder Bobby Witt Jr. can double down on his brilliant rookie season or pitcher Brady Singer can truly become a staff ace.

That’s why Sherman’s second thought probably moves to the downtown ballpark, too.

“This is a huge decision, and I look at it as maybe the most important decision we’ll make as long as we have the privilege of stewarding this team,” Sherman said before the Royals held a final workout Wednesday ahead of opening day. “I’m probably as anxious as you to get moving on that, but it’s a complicated process.”

The Royals have called Kauffman Stadium home since the sister to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, opened 50 years ago next month.

And while most stadiums are replaced because they have become outdated, the unique, space-aged look of Kauffman Stadium – built during an era in which teams trended toward impersonal, multisport concrete donuts for their homes – remains beloved by Royals fans and visitors alike.

The problem is that despite numerous renovations over the years, the very concrete holding the ballpark together has begun to crumble in places. The cost simply to repair and maintain the ballpark has become prohibitive.

So with the decision essentially made for them to build an entirely new stadium, the Royals revealed plans to build an entire development in the same mold of The Battery Atlanta, where the Braves built Truist Park, and the Ballpark Village in St. Louis, where the new Busch Stadium is merely the centerpiece of a whole entertainment district.

No site has been secured, but several of the most promising are in downtown Kansas City, where the Power & Light District along with T-Mobile Center have spearheaded a successful era of urban renewal.

Sherman has said that private funds would cover the majority of the stadium cost and the entire village, each carrying a price tag of about $1 billion.

But if any public funding will be used, as it was to build and maintain Kauffman Stadium, then it would need to be voted upon, and the earliest that it could show up on a ballot would be August.

“You look at Atlanta, they took some raw ground – they started with 85 acres – and that has been a complete home run,” said Sherman, who purchased the Royals in August 2019, shortly before the pandemic wreaked havoc on team finances.

“This is one of the reasons we want to do this: That’s helped the Braves become more competitive,” Sherman said of the vast potential for increased revenue for one of the smallest-market teams in baseball. “They have locked up and extended the core of their future, and the Braves are in a great position from a baseball standpoint.”

So perhaps the first two thoughts Sherman has each day – about performance and the future – are one and the same.

When it comes to the team itself, the Royals were largely quiet throughout the winter, though that was by design.

Rather than spending heavily on free agents that might help them win a few more games, they decided to stay the course with a promising young roster in the hopes that the development of those players would yield better results.

In fact, Sherman said, the club has been discussing extensions for some of the Royals’ foundational pieces – presumably Witt, who was fourth in voting for AL rookie of the year, and Singer, who was 10-5 with a 3.23 ERA last season.

“We’re having conversations about that as we speak,” Sherman said. “We have a number of young players that we’re trying to evaluate and we’re talking to their representatives about what might work.”

Just because the Royals’ roster largely looks the same, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The Royals fired longtime general manager Dayton Moore in September and moved J.J. Picollo to the role, then fired manager Mike Matheny in October and replaced him with longtime Indians and Rays coach Matt Quatraro.

Sherman said the new voices created a palpable energy in spring training that he hopes carries into the regular season.

“When we acquired the team, we had three primary objectives,” Sherman said. “One was to win more games; we’re working on that. The second was to secure the future; that’s what (the stadium) is. And the third was to do good in the community.

“But the first priority,” he said, “is really the on-field product. That’s what really lifts everything else up.”