LOS ANGELES – This was not the place to come to cool off.
The hottest team in baseball, the Boston Red Sox, won 21 of 25 games during the month of July (including the opener of this series on Friday night) and kept the heat on into August, beating the Dodgers 3-2 Saturday night.
The Dodgers will lose a series for the first time since before the All-Star break when they were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto made just one mistake – but he made it twice.
Ceddanne Rafaela took Yamamoto deep in the first and third innings – Rafaela’s second and third home runs in the first two games of this series. In both cases, Rafaela hit splitters that stayed up – above the waist in the first inning, waist-high for the second homer.
After Rafaela’s third-inning homer, though, Yamamoto retired the next 13 Red Sox batters in order.
Teoscar Hernandez only needed one swing to match Rafaela’s two.
Freddie Freeman led off the second inning with a single on his way to his seventh multi-hit game in the past nine. Two batters later, Hernandez lined a two-run home run over the wall in right field.
Hernandez had his own multi-hit game, adding two singles to his home run. But it was a painful night for him. During his fourth-inning at-bat, Hernandez fouled a ball off the top of his left foot. He struggled to put weight on his foot for some time – then stepped in and lined a single to left field, hobbling down to first base.
While Yamamoto slipped into cruise control after Rafaela’s second home run, Red Sox starter Peyton Tolle had more traffic to navigate. The Dodgers had nine hits and two walks in his six innings but stranded six baserunners by going 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position against Tolle.
The Dodgers helped him skate through with a pair of baserunning mistakes.
In the first inning, Shohei Ohtani led off with a single. When Andy Pages sent a fly ball to the warning track in right field, Ohtani tagged up and tried to advance to second. He was out on a bad baserunning decision – not his first recently. Ohtani was also thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple and a single into a double during last week’s series in Phladelphia and New York.
Andy Pages’ baserunning mistake was more physical than mental. He sent a line drive to the wall in right-center and slid into second ahead of the throw from Wilyer Abreu. But the Red Sox challenged the call and replays showed Pages coming off the bag as shortstop Andruw Monasterio held the tag on him.
The game went into the eighth inning tied, 2-2, and the Red Sox finally got their own action on the bases against Yamamoto.
Monasterio led off with a ground-rule double then went to third when Jarren Duran dropped a bunt up the first-base line and beat it out for a single. Connor Wong bounced into a double play and the go-ahead run scored quietly.
Aroldis Chapman closed it out for the Red Sox in the ninth.