Dodgers Advance To NLCS With Shutout Win Over San Diego Padres

The Los Angeles Dodgers' season came down to a huge Game 5 against the San Diego Padres with a shot at advancing to the National League Championship Series. Yoshinobu Yamamoto battled former Dodger-turned-Padres ace Yu Darvish in a game that would leave everything on the field for a shot at being four more wins away from advancing to the World Series.

Shohei Ohtani's historic year with the Boys in Blue would not be the same without the addition of Yamamoto, who signed a twelve-year deal to join Ohtani on the Dodgers, alongside batters Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hernandez and a bullpen that included Tyler Glasnow, Gavin Stone, James Paxton, Walker Buehler, and Jack Flaherty.

The stacked team had expectations from fans and naysayers around the world who wanted to see what the Dodgers could do with a roster like this year's.

Betts came into this game with a 3-44 at-bat record in the last twenty games. Freeman has been dealing with discomfort in his ankle. Dave Roberts has had to make player changes due to people being injured or in a funk. But, with players like Teoscar, Enrique, Gavin Lux, and Ohtani who have delivered heart-pounding home runs to add themselves onto the board and get the win for their team.

Speaking of Enrique, here is the huge 428-foot home run that he hit to get the first score of the game for the Dodgers who needed to break out of the quicksand and take advantage of the momentum of San Diego.

Yamamoto did what was needed on defense. He kept a lot of dangerous batters off the bases. He struck out Fernando Tatis Jr, and with only two hits allowed, he was able to keep the game scoreless for five consecutive innings. The Dodgers looked forward to a day like this, and with Yamamoto being suited up for the biggest game of his first year with the Boys in Blue, he left everything out there and showed Dodgers fans that this was just the beginning of a special career.

Later on down the stretch, Evan Phillips and Alex Vesia would step in to keep the defense high and the Padres offense drastically low. Phillips would strike out Tatis Jr. and Machado before Vesia got a big strikeout against the rookie Jackson Merrill who has been on fire in this division series.

Put up or shut up was the motto heading into the final innings and the pitching was going to do whatever they could to keep themselves alive.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, when the Dodgers needed to put the nail in the coffin, it wasn't one Hernandez but the other. Teoscar expressed himself with a huge home run to add onto the board and deplete the morale of San Diego who looked like their momentum left the stadium and took a one-way ride back home.

The best way to describe the feeling of seeing this home run was like having the weight lifted off their shoulders as Teoscar let the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd shake the entire stadium as he pounded his chest and embraced his teammates who knew they were six outs away from putting an end to this heated and tense rivalry.

In the end, Michael Kopech would step in for injured Vesia where he would light up the Padres batters in the eighth and ninth innings. Kopech struck out the side in the eighth to bring all the fans out of their seats, and in the ninth inning, the Dodgers would shut the lid and put every doubter in the rear-view mirror as they defeated the San Diego Padres once and for all to advance to the National League Championship Series.

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