LOS ANGELES — October is no longer the shortest month on the Dodgers’ calendar.
Exorcising some of their postseason demons – oh, there are more – the Dodgers fought their way out of the Division Series round for the first time since 2021 on Friday night, tightrope-walking their way to a 2-0 victory over the San Diego Padres in a winner-take-all Game 5.
Solo home runs from Kiké Hernandez in the second inning and Teoscar Hernandez in the seventh (both off of Yu Darvish) were the only runs of the game.
By winning back-to-back elimination games – Game 4 in San Diego, Game 5 in L.A. – the Dodgers advance to the National League Championship Series for the sixth time in the past nine years under Manager Dave Roberts. The Dodgers are now 6-2 in winner-take-all games with Roberts as manager.
The best-of-seven NLCS will start Sunday night at Dodger Stadium with Game 1 against the New York Mets. Game time is 5:15 p.m.
The Padres strutted and taunted their way through a Game 2 victory at Dodger Stadium. By the time the series returned to L.A. for Game 5, the Dodgers had stolen their mojo.
The Padres did not score a run in the final 24 innings of the series, batting .136 (11 for 81) over that time while facing 10 of the 13 pitchers on the Dodgers’ NLDS roster. It is the longest scoreless streak by a Dodgers staff in their postseason history. The final 19 Padres were retired in order.
Emboldened by the shutout success of their ‘bullpen game’ in Game 4, the Dodgers played a shell game before announcing their starting pitcher for Game 5. It could be another bullpen game, Roberts said. It could be Yamamoto with an opener, he said.
In the end, the Dodgers decided against asking Yamamoto to do something he had never done before (entering a game in progress) – nor did they want to send the vote of no-confidence it would have been to a pitcher they have signed for another 11 years.
So Yamamoto took the mound for Game 5 with an expectation that he would be wearing a very short leash.
Yamamoto never strayed. He retired the first five Padres he faced and the last seven in five scoreless innings. The Padres hit six balls with exit velocities of 100 mph or higher – only one of them was a hit. Manny Machado hit 725 feet worth of fly balls in his two at-bats against Yamamoto. Both ended in Mookie Betts’ glove on the warning track in right field.
Yamamoto ran into trouble just once. Kyle Higashioka and Luis Arraez had back-to-back singles in the third inning – the only hits Yamamoto allowed. That brought up Fernando Tatis Jr. He hit a 101.8 mph ground ball right at third baseman Max Muncy who started an inning-ending double play.
Yamamoto left the mound after the fifth inning with the 1-0 lead Hernandez gave the Dodgers in the second inning when he ambushed a first-pitch fastball from Darvish. The home run was Hernandez’s 14th in 75 postseason games.
With that, the Dodgers had won the race to get a lead against the opposing team’s starting pitcher. The lead never changed hands after the third inning in any game in this series.
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The Dodgers’ bullpen reprised their Game 4 masterpiece to make sure that stayed true through Game 5. Evan Phillips followed Yamamoto faced five batters and retired them all, three on strikeouts, rolling through the top half of the Padres’ lineup.
Alex Vesia struck out Jackson Merrill to end the seventh inning and went out to start the eighth inning. But he stopped his warmups with an apparent injury and left the mound with a trainer.
Teoscar Hernandez had doubled the Dodgers’ lead by then, sending a hanging slider into the left-field pavilion. Darvish retired 14 consecutive Dodgers between the two solo home runs.
Michael Kopech stepped in when Vesia went down and retired the side in the eighth, finishing off Jake Cronenworth with a 102-mph fastball. Blake Treinen finished it off in the ninth.
More to come on this story.