Los Angeles Dodgers win, take dominant 3-0 World Series lead - ESPN

NEW YORK — Walker Buehler pitched five scoreless innings, Freddie Freeman belted a two-run homer and the Los Angeles Dodgers continued to act like the deeper, better, more sound team in this World Series, beating the New York Yankees 4-2 on Monday night to take a commanding three-games-to-none lead. Now, to somehow win it all, the Yankees will have to become the second team ever — after the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 American League Championship Series — to win four consecutive games with their season on the line in a best-of-seven series.

The Dodgers applied the pressure immediately. Shohei Ohtani, playing through a slightly dislocated left shoulder, drew a four-pitch walk to start the game. Two batters later, Freeman, playing through his own set of injuries throughout October, lined a two-run homer into the short porch in right field. It was Freeman's third home run in a stretch of six at-bats, immediately after going 32 consecutive postseason at-bats without so much as an extra-base hit. A sold-out Yankee Stadium fell silent — and Buehler kept it that way.

«The talk (early on) was about Clarke Schmidt,» Freeman said in his postgame, on-field interview on FOX. «A lot of us have not faced him, so there was a lot of emphasis on gameplanning.… And obviously, when you come into a road park, you want to strike early and quiet down the crowd. And we were able to do that in the first inning.»

Buehler allowed just two hits and two walks while striking out five, generating six swings and misses on his fastball — his most since 2021. The 2024 season had been a struggle for Buehler. He returned from a second Tommy John surgery without his overpowering fastball, struggled through a 5.38 ERA in 16 regular-season starts, dealt with