The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St Louis Cardinals 3-0 in Game 3 of the NLCS, cutting the Cardinals' series lead to 2-1.
Hyun-Jin Ryu got the start for the Dodgers and had himself a great night, allowing three hits over seven shutout innings, walking one and striking out four. The Cardinals didn't have an extra base hit all evening, and they had just one legitimate scoring opportunity all evening. In the top of the fifth inning, David Freese and Matt Adams led off the inning with singles. Daniel Descalso came in to pinch run for an injured Freese, and Jon Jay promptly flew out to Carl Crawford in left for the first out of the inning. But Descalso had wandered too far from second, and Crawford fired the ball in to Mark Ellis to double him up. St Louis wouldn't put another runner in scoring position over the rest of the game. All things considered, Jay had a rough game, adding a couple of defensive misplays to his fly out double play.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers did most of their damage with their bats in the bottom of the fourth. Ellis led off with a double against Adam Wainwright, and moved up to third on a fly out by Hanley Ramirez. That brought up Adrian Gonzalez, who doubled in Ellis to make it 1-0. Yasiel Puig followed up Gonzalez's double with a triple, complete with an absurd amount of theatrics to score Gonzalez and make it 2-0. Los Angeles would add their third run in the eighth after Crawford scored on an infield single hit by Ramirez.
To his credit, Wainwright didn't have a bad night aside from his issues in the fourth. The Cardinals ace allowed two runs on six hits in his seven innings of work, striking out five without a walk. Outside of the fourth, the Dodgers managed just a first inning single by Ramirez, a fifth inning triple by AJ Ellis, and a seventh inning Puig single off of Wainwright. But in the game of baseball, one bad inning can be all it takes – and that's what happened at Dodger Stadium on Monday night.
Game 4 will be at 8 PM on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly confirmed after the game that Ricky Nolasco will indeed be getting the start, while the Cardinals counter with Lance Lynn. If the Dodgers can even up the series, you've gotta feel good about their chances needing to win two out of three games with both Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke taking the hill.
