In this series, Bates knew there would be moments of adversity. And in this ballpark, where 45,000 crazed Philadelphia Phillies fans have created one of the best home-field advantages in all of baseball, the Dodgers needed to be ready to react and respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intensity and the fans were going to be there early in the game,\u201d he told them, as infielder Miguel Rojas later recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf something happens early, if Schwarber hits one 800 feet and the roof blows off this place, don\u2019t worry about it,\u201d he added, according to third baseman Max Muncy<\/a>, \u201cBecause when they\u2019re dead silent in the seventh or eighth innings and we\u2019re winning, that\u2019s all that\u2019s gonna matter.\u201d<\/p>\n In the nine innings that followed, that\u2019s exactly how the script played out.<\/p>\n The Phillies landed an early punch, ambushing Shohei Ohtani<\/a> with a three-run second inning that had Citizens Bank Park shaking on the scale of a small earthquake.<\/p>\n Then the Dodgers answered back, rallying to a resilient 5-3 win<\/a> that gave them an all-important leg up in this best-of-five series.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a message that, when you hear it, it sounds silly,\u201d Muncy said of Bates\u2019 pregame reminder. \u201cBut, there\u2019s a lot of truth to it. When you come into places like this, it\u2019s very hostile, it\u2019s very loud.\u201d<\/p>\n It certainly was in the second inning, when J.T. Realmuto hit a two-run triple that opened the scoring and knocked the defending champions to the mat.<\/p>\n But as they\u2019ve shown so often over the last two Octobers, even when they\u2019re down they never seem to be out.<\/p>\n \u201cGet through the loud crowd and that sort of thing,\u201d Bates said, modestly downplaying his hitters\u2019 meeting speech. \u201cJust make sure you stick to your plan, stick to the course. And we did a good job doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dodgers 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 after the second.<\/p>\n Their lineup, meanwhile, chipped away at the deficit, chasing Phillies ace and Cy Young Award candidate Cristopher S\u00e1nchez from the game on Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>\u2019s two-out double in the sixth.<\/p>\n In the seventh, the actual knockout blow arrived on a game-deciding swing from Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>. With two outs in the inning, and the Phillies on the verge of an escape, he blasted a go-ahead three-run home run.<\/p>\n Just like that, South Philadelphia fell silent.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you can hear a pin drop in the stadium, that\u2019s the ultimate feeling in baseball,\u201d Muncy said. \u201cI felt like the people in the upper deck could hear us cheering in the dugout.\u201d<\/p>\n Early on in Saturday\u2019s game, the Phillies\u2019 daunting home stadium was providing the opposite environment.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez was carving Dodgers hitters up with wicked sinkers and fall-off-the-table changeups. On the other side, Ohtani ran into trouble in the bottom of the second.<\/p>\n The inning started with a walk to Alec Bohm, when Ohtani missed with 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.<\/p>\n As Ohtani tried to settle down, a chorus of taunting chants \u2014 Sho-Hei! Sho-Hei! \u2014 came raining down around him.<\/p>\n Then, pandemonium was unleashed on one Realmuto swing. <\/p>\n After missing with a first-pitch slider to Realmuto, Ohtani left a 100.2 mph heater in the 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 Hern\u00e1ndez in the gap.<\/p>\n A fly ball two batters later \u2014 which served as a sacrifice fly thanks to Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s inability to cut the ball off on Realmuto\u2019s triple earlier \u2014 made it 3-0.<\/p>\n In the moment (and with the way S\u00e1nchez was pitching), it felt like an almost insurmountable lead.<\/p>\n In the dugout, however, the Dodgers thought back to Bates\u2019 pregame message.<\/p>\n They were staggered, but didn\u2019t submit. They were rattled, but not wrecked.<\/p>\n \u201cGotta give credit to Aaron Bates on that one. He made sure all the hitters knew about it,\u201d Muncy said. \u201cYou just got to find a way to weather that storm and understand what the end goal is.\u201d<\/p>\n Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani delivers during the third inning against the Phillies on Saturday.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The turnaround began with Ohtani, who despite striking out four times as a batter followed Realmuto\u2019s triple by retiring the next 10 he faced. His only other trouble came in the fifth, when the bottom two hitters in the Phillies\u2019 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.<\/p>\n On the night, Ohtani and the Dodgers\u2019 relievers limited the Phillies\u2019 big three of Turner, Schwarber and Bryce Harper to just one hit in 11 at-bats.<\/p>\n \u201cI use the word compartmentalize a lot, but this epitomizes compartmentalizing,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said of Ohtani. \u201cTo go out there and give us six innings, keep us in the ball game, I just don\u2019t know any human that can manage that, those emotions. How do you not take [the hitting struggles] to the mound?\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, the Dodgers\u2019 offense found life too.<\/p>\n With two outs in the sixth, and S\u00e1nchez 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.<\/p>\n That brought up Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez, who continued his habit of October heroics<\/a> by jumping on a slider from S\u00e1nchez that caught a little too much plate. Hern\u00e1ndez roped a line drive down the left-field line. Freeman and Edman scored, with the latter running through a stop sign before sliding safely across the plate.<\/p>\n Just like that, S\u00e1nchez was knocked out of the game. What had been a raucous crowd earlier suddenly grew tense.<\/p>\n Then, in the seventh, Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez made the comeback complete.<\/p>\n Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the seventh inning for the Dodgers against the Phillies on Saturday.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n After Andy Pages led with a single and Will Smith<\/a> (who entered the game in the fifth inning 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 and watched him get Ohtani to strike out for the fourth consecutive time (something he had done in a game only once before in his career).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759640531_493_hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/YV3zyWedknY\/hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/2beT7_4KbtA\/hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0It wasn\u2019t an impassioned speech. But it proved to be a prescient point. In the hours before Game…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":279341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2531,2442,37574,107547,1910,3688,62559,6539,20414,94560,44316,5613,4712,62,5957,67,132,68,79783],"class_list":{"0":"post-279340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-base","9":"tag-dodgers","10":"tag-fastball","11":"tag-fly-ball","12":"tag-game","13":"tag-inning","14":"tag-j-t-realmuto","15":"tag-kike-hernandez","16":"tag-phillies","17":"tag-sanchez","18":"tag-saturday-night","19":"tag-second","20":"tag-shohei-ohtani","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-teoscar-hernandez","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-walk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115321236987707502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}