By Beth Harris

LOS ANGELES – After spending the primary seven years of his big league profession within the East, Jack Flaherty got here home. He joined a winning Los Angeles Dodgers team and helped create a chunk of playoff history.

Flaherty combined a three-hitter and the Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers tied the postseason record of 33 consecutive scoreless innings by defeating the New York Mets 9-0 within the opening game of the NL Championship Series on Sunday night.

“As I was warming up, I saw some family members out there that I've gone to games with before, so you can just relax a little bit,” he said. “I felt like I tried too much in the last few big games. Just allow me to be myself and just go out and pitch and trust my stuff and trust the guys behind me.”

Los Angeles is eliminated a wild Kodai Senga built a six-run lead within the second inning heading into the fourth, tying the scoreless record set by Baltimore Orioles pitchers in the primary 4 games of the 1966 World Series against the Dodgers.

Supported by shouts of “MVP!” MVP!” Shohei Ohtani was 2 for 4 with a walk while scoring two runs and driving in one other.

Mookie Betts added a three-run double within the eighth, marking the biggest shutout margin of victory within the Dodgers' postseason history and in addition the Mets' most lopsided postseason shutout loss.

“Our energy started with Jack,” Betts said. “Jack really gave us everything today.”

Game 2 of the best-of-seven series is Monday afternoon.

Flaherty allowed two hits over seven innings within the Dodgers' first scoreless postseason start of greater than seven innings since Clayton Kershaw's eight innings within the 2020 NL Wild Card Series.

“It was just a pitching clinic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought he did a great job of filling the strike zone with his complete mix. Once we got a lead, he did a great job of just going after the guys and attacking. For us to get seven innings in a long series was huge.”

Flaherty left to a standing ovation from the sellout crowd of 53,503. The 28-year-old right-hander from nearby Burbank returned home from Detroit on the July 30 trade deadline and was an integral a part of a rotation hit hard by injuries.

“He has an aura,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “He’s super competitive, super focused.”

Flaherty got a hug from Roberts after which the pitcher hugged his mother, who was sitting behind home plate. Some of his friends from their Little League days within the San Fernando Valley were also in attendance.

“This game is a lot of fun and I've been lucky enough to play it since I was a little kid,” Flaherty said. “No matter how much pressure there is, I just tell the boys that it will be fun. We have to remember that sometimes.”

Flaherty retired his first nine batters, extending the Dodgers' streak of consecutive retired batters to twenty-eight, before striking out Francisco Lindor to steer off the fourth. New York's only hits against him were two singles by Jesse Winker and Jose Iglesias within the fifth. Flaherty struck out six.

“He was getting ahead with his fastball, and then the slider, the breaking ball and the slow curve threw us off balance, but he was getting ahead and making throws,” rookie Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He tried to force us to pursue him, which is what we did the first time by order. Then it was just his turn.”

Daniel Hudson and Ben Casparius each pitched one inning.

Lindor was 0 for 3 with a walk and a strikeout and Pete Alonso was hitless with a walk and a strikeout in three at-bats.

The Dodgers battled near elimination against San Diego and won the NL Division Series in five games, with shutouts in the ultimate two games.

They opened their quest for a record twenty fifth. NL pennant by chasing Senga after 1 1/3 innings of just his third start overall in a yr decimated by injuries. The Japanese right-hander walked 4 of his first eight batters in the primary inning, including three in a row in a 14-pitch span.

“He didn’t have it,” Mendoza said. “He didn’t have life on his fastball and had a lot of balls out of his hands, non-competitive pitches, especially the split. You could tell the balls were out of their hands the way they handled those throws.”

Senga walked the bases with one out in the primary game when only seven of his 23 pitches were thrown for strikes. Max Muncy hit a single up the center, hitting Betts and a limping Freddie Freeman, whose left foot touched the plate to guard his sprained right ankle. He stumbled into the arms of Betts, who was supporting the much taller and taller Freeman.

Ohtani chased Senga with an RBI single within the second and the Dodgers scored three runs within the fourth off reliever David Peterson, while Tommy Edman and Freeman had RBI singles.

NEXT

New York's Sean Manaea starts Game 2 after winning Game 3 of the NL Division Series against Philadelphia. It's the primary time the Dodgers have faced a lefty this postseason. The Dodgers haven’t said who will start a bullpen game for them.

Originally published: October 13, 2024 at 9:31 p.m

VILLENEUVE-D'ASCQ, France — Coach Cheryl Reeve is not any stranger to dynasties. From 2011 to 2017, her Minnesota Lynx team won 4 WNBA championships. And on the 2016 Rio Olympics, where Reeve was an assistant, 4 of her players played key roles for the gold medal team.

So it's probably a reasonably comforting – and in some ways familiar – feeling for Reeve to take a look at her bench now in France and see 4 players starting for the Las Vegas Aces, the two-time defending WNBA champions.

On Sunday night, it was a core of probably the most dominant WNBA team in recent history – just imagine – that led the US team to an 87-68 victory over Germany in the ultimate group game.

The game was fairly even for the primary quarter-hour (Germany even led after the primary quarter), but midway through the second quarter – only a minute after Team USA took the lead for the primary time on an Alyssa Thomas layup – Reeve sent A'ja Wilson back to the court, where she joined Aces defenders Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young. With the core of the Aces on the court, Team USA finished the primary half on a 17-7 run.

Also midway through the third quarter, a substitution of Plum-Young (when Wilson was already on the court) provided immediate offensive energy for Team USA, and the team – which had allowed Germany to chop its result in 10 – ended the third quarter on a 20-7 run.

It was a very successful night for Young, who scored probably the most points on her team, making 7 of 13 shots, including 5 of 8 three-pointers. In the primary two games, Young had played a complete of just over 20 minutes and attempted only one shot – a three-pointer against Japan within the opening game. Her three-point success is particularly necessary for Team USA considering the group has struggled with long-range shooting throughout the tournament. Without Young's performance against Germany, Team USA hit just 23.6 percent of three-pointers in group play.

Geno Auriemma, head coach of the 2016 team that featured 4 Lynx players, knows the advantages of the chemistry between Team USA and his Aces straight away.

“When you have a group of players that have played and won together and have great chemistry, that's invaluable to a coach and to a team that doesn't have a lot of practice time to prepare,” he said. “As individuals, Sylvia Fowles, Seimone Augustus, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen were just incredible.”

Team USA finished the group stage with a rating of 3-0. With Australia ending the host nation's hopes of a winning streak, the USA enters the knockout rounds because the No. 1 seed. Team USA's quarterfinal match will happen on Wednesday because it continues its quest for an eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal because the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Required reading

PHOENIX – Bad. Terrible. Awful.

Manager Bob Melvin had some kind words on Tuesday night after the Giants lost 8-5 to the Diamondbacks, extending their season losing streak to 6 games.

“It was a terrible game from us today, especially in the beginning. When you're on losing streaks, at least you fight. We did that for the most part. It was a terrible game,” Melvin said. “We made it exciting at the end, but we didn't play well. We got Harry several outs. We had a starter on the ropes in every inning and couldn't make anything of it. It's a bad game in a bad stretch for us.”

The clubhouse remained closed to reporters for quarter-hour, and when the doors opened, the room was hushed.

For the second time in only over two months of baseball, Melvin felt the necessity to handle his club. There was also a team meeting after they were defeated in Philadelphia, and the message this time was to bounce back the following day and never let something like that occur again.

“Tomorrow,” said Melvin. “We'd better.”

Chase Field have to be beginning to feel like a house of horrors for the Giants. They watched their season collapse here last September, the yr before that a teammate on the dugout kicked one other within the butt with a bat out of frustration, they usually haven't won a game on this constructing since September 2022.

Less than every week after reaching their high of two games over .500, the Giants fell to 29-33 and finished fourth within the National League West, a half-game behind Arizona.

“It's just not good. It was a terrible game,” starting pitcher Kyle Harrison said of the message to the team. “We have to find a way to win these games and stay in it.”

Just a day after Melvin called his team's opening loss “a game of inches” and noted that they played higher than their losing streak suggested, the manager quickly modified his tone.

On the opposite hand, he watched his club load the bases once, get caught in a double play twice, have runners out on third base 3 times, and customarily stumble defensively through the primary half of the sport, with 4 batted balls all bouncing off the gloves of the Giants defenders as Arizona built a 3-0 lead within the third inning.

“For a while it looked like we were walking around in quicksand,” Melvin said. “It is what it is. But it doesn't feel very good when you play like that.”

Casey Schmitt was bombarded with three hard-hit balls to shortstop and was unable to catch any of them, and Arizona scored its first two runs when Kevin Newman hit one other pitch off the highest of Matt Chapman's outstretched glove into the left field corner.

Schmitt wasn't charged with an error until the following inning, nonetheless, when he was caught on a hopper off Randal Grichuk's bat. The first two plays were a bit of harder, forcing him to walk to each side, but he could have had two errors on his list after he let a more routine hopper from Ketel Marte slip through the center to center field, allowing the fourth run of the inning to cross the plate.

“I definitely should have hit both of them,” Schmitt said of the balls Marte and Grichuk hit. “That's just unacceptable on my part. … I may have just lost sight of it a little bit. There were two (other) balls just out of my reach, just off the tip of my glove, but I'll take another look at it and go from there and get better.”

Since throwing seven scoreless innings at Coors Field a month ago, Harrison has allowed a minimum of three earned runs in each of his last five starts, increasing his ERA to 4.18 from 3.20 after his May 7 start against Colorado. He has retired just five batters, but traded his strikeout skills for more efficiency, pitching past the fifth inning for the primary time since his showpiece six starts ago.

Harrison called the launch “a good step forward for me.”

“I've been working a lot on my mechanics and just trying to get back to the version of myself that I'm used to,” he said. “Velo was there. Felt good. Changeup was there. Slider was there. So definitely a good thing to build on.”

That start in Colorado was also the last time a Giants pitcher aside from Logan Webb went six innings, and the nine outs forced by Jackson and Taylor Rogers increased the bullpen's workload – the key league leader – to 144⅔ innings for the reason that starting of May.

“We needed six innings today because we were a little limited in the bullpen,” Melvin said. “He had to get a few extra outs. He didn't pitch badly. He didn't walk anyone. He allowed a couple of hits. Harry pitched pretty well.”

Regarding the impact of the weak defense behind him, Harrison said: “It takes its toll.”

“But you have to get a handle on the defense behind you, and that's all I was thinking at the time.”

Jackson allowed a leadoff single by Blaze Alexander, and Newman's sacrifice bunt that moved him to second base ended up being considered one of only two he made, while allowing six of the eight batters he faced to succeed in base and 4 to attain.

“It just wasn't a good day for him,” Melvin said of Jackson, who has limited opponents to a .200 batting average since getting back from the injured list on April 22. “He's found his way. It feels like he's found his way a little bit with some good games, but today was not a good game. A couple of walks and it got out of control in the seventh inning.”

Back within the leadoff spot, Heliot Ramos reached base in each of his first three attempts, and Chapman added two hits—extending his on-base streak to 22 games—however the Giants rued their missed opportunities, leaving nine men on base and scoring 2 of 10 runs with runners in scoring position.

“The at-bat qualities were good until we really needed a good at-bat,” Melvin said. “We let them work and got into situations where we were in the driver's seat and could take the responsibility off them.”

Chapman got here to the plate with runners on the corners on his last two attempts and was unable to get through in essentially the most critical situations. He was eliminated on a groundout in the underside of the fifth inning and had to observe as 22-year-old rookie Justin Martinez hit a 101 mph third strike for the ultimate out of the seventh inning.

A strikeout by Schmitt and a flyout by Luis Matos wasted a bases-loaded opportunity within the second inning, and Patrick Bailey got into two double plays that squandered potential comebacks in the primary and third innings before hitting a bloop single to left field within the fifth to bring home Schmitt for the Giants' second run.

“We have a guy on the ropes every inning, but we can't score a few runs?” Melvin wondered. “It's just a bad game.”

Remarkable

As the Giants search for a starting pitcher, the team explained why a young arm was not an option. Inflammation in Land RouppDue to a forearm injury, the 25-year-old right-hander has not been in a position to pitch since May 16. This was his last appearance at Triple-A Sacramento, where he had a 2.79 ERA and 16 strikeouts in three starts.

During his rehabilitation at nearby Papago Park, Roupp threw distances of as much as 90 feet on flat ground on Tuesday and can return to a mound in the midst of next week, in response to the club.

Next

RHP Jordan Hicks (4-2, 2.70) against LHP Jordan Montgomery (3-3, 5.48) within the series finale, with first pitch scheduled for Wednesday at 12:40 p.m.