RED SOX:
BOSTON (AP) — Back in raucous Fenway Park for postseason baseball a year after a last-place finish, the Boston Red Sox are getting the bounces, knocking big hits in bunches and even benfiting from a little small ball.
Hardly a perfect team, even by their own estimation, Alex Cora and the wild-card Red Sox are four wins from a return to the World Series anyway.
Kiké Hernández delivered Boston’s second straight walk-off win, scoring pinch-runner Danny Santana with a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning to send the Red Sox to the AL Championship Series with a 6-5 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday night.
After winning Game 3 of their best-of-five AL Division Series on Sunday with Christian Vázquez’s two-run homer in the 13th, Boston took Game 4 for its first set of back-to-back walk-off postseason wins since 2004 ALCS Games 4 and 5, both from David Ortiz against the Yankees.
“We always said we had a good baseball team that had some holes, and we still have some holes, but at the end, for how bad it looked sometimes, we’re still here. We’re still in the dance,” Cora said.
The wild-card Red Sox will await the winner of the other ALDS matchup between the Houston Astros and Chicago White Sox. Houston leads 2-1 going into Game 4 in Chicago on Tuesday, a makeup of Monday’s rainout.
“Since day one, you guys believed in this group,” Cora told his players before setting off a bubbly clubhouse celebration.
Boston improved to 15-3 in potential clinching postseason games since 2004 and have won each of their last eight. It’s their first under second-year chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, who came over from the Rays before the 2020 season and promptly oversaw the unpopular trade of Mookie Betts.
With Cora rehired last offseason following a one-year suspension for his role in the Astros’ cheating scandal, the retooled Red Sox are four games from the World Series a year after finishing last in the AL East.
The 2018 champs have needed a little luck. Vázquez’s homer Sunday came half an inning after Tampa Bay missed out on the go-ahead run on a bizarre ground-rule double that bounced off right fielder Hunter Renfroe and over the outfield fence.
That all followed a Game 2 rout in which Boston slugged a franchise postseason-record five homers in a 14-6 drubbing. The Red Sox hit .341 as a team with nine homers and a .915 OPS in the series.
For the Rays, it’s an abrupt end to aspirations of back-to-back trips to the World Series after winning 100 games during the regular season and rolling to the AL East title.
“There’s no doubt there’s disappointment,” Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said. “We had high aspirations to get deep into this thing. We ran into a Red Sox team that they just beat us — no other way around it. They got the big hits.”
The Red Sox are the second team to clinch a postseason series with consecutive walk-off wins. The other was the Minnesota Twins in the 1991 World Series, according to STATS.
Vázquez led off the ninth with a single to left field and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Christian Arroyo. Travis Shaw hit a bouncing ground ball to third that went for an infield single when Yandy Díaz bounced his difficult throw to first baseman Ji-Man Choi. Vázquez got to third and Santana entered to run for him.
“Old school baseball right there,” Cora said. “We won the ALDS playing good fundamental baseball.”
Hernández, who was 9 for 20 in the series, scored Santana with a fly ball to left.
“I had the chance to win the game last night and I didn’t do it,” Hernández said. “I was thinking, walking to the plate, I was like, ‘I’m about to finish this game.’”
Rays postseason star Randy Arozarena ripped a tying single with no outs in the eighth inning off Ryan Brasier and advanced to second on the throw. Garrett Whitlock relieved and got through the eighth without further damage, then pitched a scoreless ninth for the victory.
“Once AC said you’ve got to keep going, that’s all I was focused on,” Whitlock said.
Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez allowed two runs and three hits with six strikeouts over five innings, plus one batter. It was redemption after he lasted just 1 2/3 innings and gave up two runs in Boston’s 5-1 loss in Game 1.
Devers finished with three hits. Wander Franco had a two-run homer for Tampa.
The Red Sox led 5-0 after three but Tampa pulled within 5-3 on Austin Meadows’ RBI single in the fifth and Franco’s two-run homer in the sixth off Tanner Houck.
After being solid on the mound throughout 2021 and in a Game 1 win, Tampa’s pitching struggled over the last three games, with the Red Sox outscoring the Rays 26-15.
Right-hander Collin McHugh was the opener Monday and pitched two scoreless innings, allowing one hit before handing the ball off to Game 1 starter Shane McClanahan.
The rookie was pitching on three days’ rest and coming off a strong performance in which he earned the win after pitching five scoreless innings.
Boston had his number this time.
McClanahan quickly gave up a single Vázquez and walked Kyle Schwarber. He seemed on his way to getting out of trouble after he got Hernández to fly out for the second out of the inning.
But Devers jumped all over a first-pitch fastball and launched a line drive into the first row of the center field bleachers.
Xander Bogaerts singled. That was followed by Verdugo’s double off the Green Monster that scored Bogaerts. J.D. Martinez kept it going with a single off the Monster that brought Verdugo.
McClanahan’s line for the night: five hits, five runs, a walk and home run.
“Down 5-0 nothing in the third inning, that was pretty devastating,” Cash said. “We claw back in it and we came up short tonight.”
TRAINER’S ROOM
Red Sox: Manager Alex Cora said reliever Hansel Robles, who gave up a solo home run to Franco and game-tying double in Game 3, remained under the weather ahead of Monday’s game.
UP NEXT
Boston will hit the road for the ALCS opener Friday night.
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GIANTS:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Evan Longoria powered a home run off Max Scherzer through fierce wind. Chris Taylor and pinch-hitter Gavin Lux fell short, putting the defending World Series champions on the brink of elimination.
Longoria’s shot in the fifth inning held up, giving the Giants a 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on a cold, blustery Monday night with conditions more akin to San Francisco. The Giants took a 2-1 lead in the NL Division Series.
“I don’t remember a lot of nights at Dodger Stadium where the wind was blowing like that,” said San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler, who grew up in Los Angeles. “Super strange.”
The gusty winds whipped the flags in center field and even caused Scherzer to stumble delivering an early pitch.
“The wind was really pushing me towards home plate,” said Scherzer, who lost a postseason game he started for the first time since Oct. 12, 2017, against the Chicago Cubs.
Los Angeles nearly tied it with two outs in the ninth, when Lux launched a long drive to left-center with an exit velocity of 107 mph and an estimated batting average of .890, according to Statcast. But the wind knocked it down and the ball was caught on the warning track, leaving Lux in disbelief.
Taylor flied out to deep right-center with a runner on in the sixth.
“I think any other night the CT ball, the Gavin Lux ball, would have been home runs, yeah,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
It was the Giants’ second shutout in the best-of-five playoff after winning the opener 4-0.
Game 4 is Tuesday at Dodger Stadium and Game 5 would be in San Francisco on Thursday, if necessary.
The Dodgers routed their longtime rivals 9-2 to win Game 2, but mustered just five hits back at home. NL batting champion Trea Turner and Mookie Betts each went 0 for 4, and Corey Seager was 0 for 4 with a walk.
“I thought we took some good at-bats and we just didn’t get rewarded,” Roberts said.
Longoria broke out of an 0-for-23 slump in a big way with his leadoff shot on an 0-2 pitch to left-center. It was his first postseason homer since the 2013 ALDS with Tampa Bay.
“Just this environment … this is crazy,” Longoria said. “What a wild night, too — the wind. I mean, I think that the sound in here was kind of dampened by the wind.”
“You get to the postseason, you can always lose by one pitch. That comes into play. Tonight I lost it on one pitch,” Scherzer said.
The Giants’ other two hits were singles by Buster Posey and Kris Bryant. Their final 15 batters were retired, including in the ninth when Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen struck out the side.
San Francisco starter Alex Wood allowed two hits over 4 2/3 innings against his former team. The left-hander struck out four and walked two.
Tyler Rogers got the win with 1 2/3 innings of relief. Rookie right-hander Camilo Doval pitched two perfect innings for the save.
Napkins, peanut bags and plastic bags blew on the warning track and through the stands. A dusty haze obliterated the usual picturesque view of the San Gabriel Mountains and kept a pregame flyover from being seen except on the videoboard. A fan’s white cap came flying out of the stands and landed on the field in the second inning.
The fierce wind blew steadily from left field to right throughout the game, ruffling the pants of the pitchers on the mound.
“It’s just part of the game, Mother Nature, and you have to respect that,” said Albert Pujols, who had two of the Dodgers’ three hits.
Scherzer retired 10 batters between Posey’s single in the first and Bryant’s two-out single in the fourth.
Scherzer gave up one run and three hits in seven innings. The three-time Cy Young Award winner struck out 10 — his fifth career double-digit postseason strikeout total — and walked one on 110 pitches.
The tension was palpable into the later innings.
Pinch-hitter Steven Souza Jr. and Will Smith had one-out singles in the seventh, the Dodgers’ first back-to-back hits of the game, off submariner Rogers. Pinch-hitter Austin Barnes struck out swinging.
With the sellout crowd of 53,299 on its feet chanting, “Let’s go, Dodgers!”, Betts hit a screaming liner into the glove of leaping shortstop Brandon Crawford to end the threat.
“Just catch the ball, that’s all I’m thinking,” Crawford said. “It had a little bit of topspin on it and it was right over my head so I was able to jump and hope it was in my glove.”
The Dodgers had three hits — all singles — through six innings.
Their first hit came off the bat of the 41-year-old Pujols, whose bloop single to right led off the third in his 75th career postseason game. Along with Pujols, the Dodgers started 37-year-old Scherzer and 36-year-old Justin Turner at third.
It was Pujols’ first start and hit in the playoffs since the 2014 ALDS with the Los Angeles Angels. The three-time NL MVP hit .294 against left-handed pitching during the regular season.
Pujols singled again leading off the fifth for his first multi-hit postseason game since his three-homer performance in Game 3 of the 2011 World Series for St. Louis.
MISSING MOM
Giants left fielder LaMonte Wade Jr.’s mother missed the first three games of the NLDS because she’s in a competition of her own — a table tennis tournament.
“Shows where her priorities are, but, no, she’s having fun with it. I get videos from my dad,” Wade said. “They will definitely be watching.”
TRAINER’S ROOM
Giants: 2B Tommy LaStella exited in the sixth because of left Achilles tightness.
THE OL’ PERFESSOR
The only other time the Giants won a postseason game 1-0 on a home run it came on a drive by Casey Stengel in the 1923 World Series against the New York Yankees. Stengel, of course, later became a Hall of Fame manager for the Yankees.
UP NEXT
Giants: RHP Anthony DeSclafani will start Game 4.
Dodgers: Roberts said in regards to a starter that “everything’s on the table.”
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