The Red Sox ride four home runs plus David Price’s pitching to a 5-1 win over Los Angeles to wrap up the World Series
Because two can play home run derby, the Boston Red Sox are 2018 World Series champions.
The Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 Sunday night thanks to the pitching of David Price plus four long balls. The victory gives them the World Series title 4 games to 1.
Entering the Series, it had been the Dodgers — National League leaders in home runs – who had the reputation for muscle. They got one bomb Sunday night – on the first pitch their leadoff hitter saw – but that wasn’t enough to beat Steve Pearce, much less the entire Red Sox team.
Pearce, acquired from Toronto in a late-June deal, homered off Dodger starter Clayton Kershaw with Andrew Benintendi on base in the top of the first, then homered again off Pedro Baez to pad Boston’s lead in the eighth.
That gave Pearce three home runs and a double plus seven RBIs just since the eighth inning of the fourth game Saturday night. It also gave him the World Series MVP trophy.
Mookie Betts (in the sixth inning) and J.D. Martinez (in the seventh) also homered, both off Kershaw.
That was more than enough for Price, who changed the narrative about his inability to perform on the post-season stage. He pitched seven full innings (plus one batter in the eighth), allowing just three hits, walking just two and striking out five.
Price’s only shaky moments occurred before the late-afternoon sky had begun to dim. Following Pearce’s two-run bomb, Dodger leadoff hitter David Freese stroked Price’s first pitch into the left field bleachers to cut the visitors’ advantage in half. Price then walked Justin Turner, but coaxed a double play ball out of Kike Hernandez and never gave the Dodgers another breath.
The only other LA threat of any substance occurred in the third, and it was a freak of nature. Freese lifted a routine fly ball to right, but J.D. Martinez lost it in the twilight and the ball fell near the wall as Freese raced to third with a one-out triple. But as was their series-long habit, the Dodgers failed to produce anything that didn’t come in on a home run. Turner grounded to Xander Bogaerts at shortstop and Hernandez lifted a fly to Martinez that didn’t get lost in the sky.
For the entire 54 innings of Series play, the Dodgers crossed the plate just seven times on something other than a home run.
Turner and Hernandez were the first two of 14 consecutive Dodger batters retired by Price before he walked Chris Taylor to open the eighth and was removed by Red Sox manager Alex Cora. Joe Kelly struck out the side, and Chris Sale did the same thing in the ninth to end the game and the 2018 season.
Boston finished the regular season with an MLB-high 108 wins, and became the 13th team since the start of the divisional era in 1969 to both compile the best regular season record and win the World Series. That list includes the 2007 (96-066) and 2013 (97-65) Red Sox.
The Dodgers became just the fourth team in the past half-century to lose consecutive World Series.