Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez homered and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 11-7 on Thursday night to avoid a three-game sweep.
Freeman hit a three-run shot in the first for his eighth home run of the season. Betts added a three-run shot of his own during a six-run fifth inning as Los Angeles beat Pittsburgh for just the sixth time in their last 16 meetings despite a relatively quiet night from Shohei Ohtani, who went 1 for 6 with a run scored.
Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez homered and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 11-7 on Thursday night to avoid a three-game sweep.
Freeman hit a three-run shot in the first for his eighth home run of the season. Betts added a three-run shot of his own during a six-run fifth inning as Los Angeles beat Pittsburgh for just the sixth time in their last 16 meetings despite a relatively quiet night from Shohei Ohtani, who went 1 for 6 with a run scored.
Buehler labored through three innings, his shortest outing of the season in his return from Tommy John surgery that forced him to miss all of 2023. The right-hander gave up four runs (three earned) and seven hits. He needed 78 pitches to get nine outs, though it would have helped if his teammates had done a better job catching the ball.
Pittsburgh took the first two games of the series behind the electric young arms of rookie pitchers Skenes and Jared Jones.
Falter wasn’t nearly as sharp. Los Angeles batted around in the first inning, highlighted by Freeman’s shot to the seats about the 21-foot-high Clemente Wall in right. While Falter settled down and made it to the fifth, he was pulled after giving up Hernandez’s leadoff homer in the fifth that put the Dodgers ahead to stay.
