For a good while, Citizens Bank Park got what it wanted. The Phillies struck for three runs in the second inning against Shohei Ohtani making his postseason pitching debut, and Cy Young candidate Cristopher Sánchez shut down a dangerous lineup for nearly six innings.
Then Teoscar Hernández turned the game around with one swing.
After opening the game with three strikeouts in three at-bats and a bad misplay in that three-run second inning, the Dodgers’ slugger gave his team the lead with a three-run homer in the seventh inning of a 5-3 victory in Game 1 of the NLDS.
Ohtani’s start and Hernández’s homer were two major components of the victory. The third was the Dodgers’ bullpen keeping it together for three innings after an extraordinarily shaky wild-card series. The unit got some help from Tyler Glasnow, scheduled to start Game 4 for the Dodgers, but Alex Vesia got the biggest out of the game with a bases-loaded, two-out flyout in the eighth inning.
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For the ninth inning, the Dodgers turned to 23-year-old rookie Roki Sasaki, making his fourth career relief appearance about two weeks after he returned from the injured list. The flame-throwing right-hander came through, closing out the game for his first career save.
Game 2 begins at 6:08 p.m. ET Monday in Philadelphia.
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