Dodgers get walk-off win in 13th inning to even NLCS with Brewers

LOS ANGELES – They scored two lousy runs over their last 23 innings, treat runners in scoring position like they’re mortal enemies and struck out 31 times over the past two games.

Yet somehow, these Los Angeles Dodgers are not only very much alive in this National League Championship Series, they will roar into a Game 5 on the strength of a bizarre and potentially galvanizing walk-off victory.

Cody Bellinger belted an RBI single off Junior Guerra with two outs in the bottom of the 13th inning, scoring the embattled Manny Machado with the winning run as the Dodgers outlasted the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-1, in Game 4 of the NLCS.

They drew even with the Brewers at two games apiece, thanks to eight stellar innings of shutout relief from their bullpen, which had no men left by game’s end. Julio Urias, the 22-year-old who has only pitched five innings since May 2017 due to a shoulder injury, was the last man standing – and the winning pitcher.

Machado, who sparked a bench-clearing incident earlier, started the rally with a broken-bat single, got a good read on a wild pitch to advance to second and steamed home on Bellinger’s hit.

The Dodgers’ giddy walk-off celebration belied the grim struggle of their past two games.

A Game 3 shutout made Tuesday night’s Game 4 a virtual must-win. While the sellout crowd responded to Enrique Hernandez’s plea for more energy, it did little to boost a Dodgers offense whose grim hitting display practically rendered moot the gallant work of their relief pitchers against a difficult Milwaukee Brewers team.

Turns out they had just enough to prevail in this 5 hour, 15-minute epic to ensure this series goes back to Milwaukee.

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The game

Prime-time reruns aren’t supposed to air until the spring, but the Dodgers looked almost identical to the dead team walking that was blanked in Game 3.

They had just one hit in nine at-bats with runners in scoring position Tuesday, dropping their postseason total in those situations to 8 for 53 (.151).

This time, a Brian Dozier RBI single cashed in their only first-inning run of this series. After that, it was all zeroes against five Brewers relievers until extra innings.

The Dodgers bullpen was stellar in its own right. Starter Rich Hill gave them five competent innings – the lone blemish a Domingo Santana pinch-hit double in the fifth. Pedro Baez, Kenta Maeda, Caleb Ferguson, Ryan Madson and Kenley Jansen then stepped in to blank the Brewers over five innings – Jansen handling the ninth and 10th until the late heroics sent the locals home happy.

State of the Brewers    

It’s a best-of-three, and two of those games will be back at Miller Park, where the Brewers went 51-30 during the regular season. They will enter Game 5 faced with the quandary of deploying All-Star Hader for a third consecutive day, which they’ve never done. He threw 28 pitches in Games 2 and 3, just the ninth time in his career he’s worked consecutive days.

Milwaukee will turn to lefty Wade Miley – who shut out the Dodgers on two hits over 5 2/3 innings in Game 2 – in Game 5. Miley will be making his first career start on three days’ rest

State of the Dodgers

They are playing what can only be described as desultory baseball. The Dodgers were punched out looking on strikes five times in the first five.

Machado, who made waves in a pregame interview with Fox Sports in saying that overt hustle is “not his cup of tea,” had a particularly ugly Game 4, capped in the 10th inning when he appeared to intentionally kick Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar as he ran by the bag.

The benches briefly cleared – the scant few men remaining in the Dodgers bullpen jogged in – but first base coach George Lombard steered Machado away from Aguilar before the altercation escalated.

He was not much better earlier.

With Brewers starter Gio Gonzalez badly missing – he’d throw 15 balls and just 10 strikes in the first inning and had just hit David Freese with a pitch – Machado swung at a 1-0 pitch and fouled out.

In the fifth, he requested time from home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt after Brewers reliever Corbin Burnes started his motion; Wendeldstedt did not grant time and Burnes piped a 95-mph pitch down the middle for a called third strike. He struck out against Hader in the eighth, but then again, Hader strikes out almost everybody.

As for the squad at large, the Dodgers have scored two runs in innings 1-6 of this series – a run every 12 innings, if you will. This time, it was Brewers rookie Freddy Peralta – who made his major league debut May 18 and hadn’t pitched since Sept. 24 – looking like Walter Johnson in the early innings. He relieved Gonzalez – who sprained an ankle on a comebacker – in the second inning and tossed three hitless innings, striking out six.

But pitching and defense still go a long way. Bellinger, who has played just five games in right field each of the past two seasons, was shifted there in the 10th inning. He made a phenomenal run and sliding catch on Lorenzo Cain’s bullet of a fly ball to lead off the top of the 10th inning – saving two and possibly three bases.

What you missed on TV

Enrique Hernandez changing his walk-up song to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” and the chants of “Kike’!” “Kike!” from the towel-waving crowd. Apparently a cheeky social media post was all Hernandez needed to earn back the good graces of Dodgers fans after he criticized their low energy level following a Game 3 loss.

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