By STEVE MEGARGEE
MILWAUKEE — Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a three-hitter for the first postseason complete game in eight years as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-1 on Tuesday night to take a commanding lead in the National League Championship Series.
Teoscar Hernández and Max Muncy each hit a solo homer as the Dodgers left Milwaukee with a 2-0 advantage in the best-of-seven series, which shifts to Los Angeles for Game 3 on Thursday. Muncy’s 412-foot drive to center field was the 14th homer of his postseason career, breaking the Dodgers record he had shared with Corey Seager and Justin Turner.
Yamamoto allowed a home run to Jackson Chourio on the first of his 111 pitches but shut down the Brewers the rest of the way. The right-hander’s complete game was his first in the majors and the first in the postseason since Justin Verlander did it for Houston against the New York Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS.
The last Dodgers pitcher to throw complete game in the postseason was Jose Lima against the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 3 of the 2004 NL Division Series.
This is the first time since 1970 that both LCS road teams started 2-0. The Seattle Mariners own a 2-0 lead in the ALCS heading into Game 3 on Wednesday in Seattle.
Twenty-four of the previous 27 teams that took the first two games on the road in a best-of-seven series with a 2-3-2 format have gone on to win. The three teams to come back after losing Games 1 and 2 at home all came in World Series: the 1985 Kansas City Royals against the St. Louis Cardinals, the 1986 New York Mets against the Boston Red Sox, and the 1996 New York Yankees against the Atlanta Braves.
The Brewers pulled out all the stops Tuesday as they tried to avoid that 2-0 deficit. Former Milwaukee slugger Eric Thames got on the field to exhort fans just before the game and popped open his jersey to reveal his bare chest.
The 21-year-old Chourio then delighted a sellout crowd by sending Yamamoto’s first pitch over the wall in right-center field for his fourth career postseason homer, tying Orlando Arcia and Prince Fielder for the Brewers record.
That seemed like a foreboding start for Yamamoto, who lasted just two-thirds of an inning in an 8-1 loss the previous time he pitched in Milwaukee. But he bounced back and silenced the Brewers the rest of the way.
The Brewers have five hits in the series. Los Angeles left-hander Blake Snell limited them to one hit and no walks over eight innings in the Dodgers’ 2-1 Game 1 victory.
Los Angeles became the first team to have consecutive postseason starts of at least eight innings in the same series since San Francisco’s Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum did it in Games 4 and 5 of the 2010 World Series against Texas.
After Chourio’s homer, Los Angeles wasted no time coming back against Brewers ace Freddy Peralta.
Hernández, whose baserunning mistake contributed to the Brewers’ unusual 8-6-2 double play in Game 1, sent a 3-2 curve over the left-field wall for his fourth homer of this postseason. Two outs later, Kiké Hernández singled and scored on Andy Pages’ double.
Pages had been 1 for 27 in the postseason before delivering his shot into the right-field corner.
Muncy extended the lead to 3-1 with his two-out homer in the sixth, which came on Peralta’s 97th and final pitch of the night. The Dodgers added two more runs on RBI singles by Shohei Ohtani in the seventh and Tommy Edman in the eighth.
