Edman's Eighth-Inning Triple Blows It Open, LAD Win 9-5
Tommy Edman tripled to center in the eighth inning, scoring Freeman, Betts, and T. Hernández to turn a 6-3 lead into a 9-3 cushion and put this game away for good. Los Angeles walked out of Philadelphia with a 9-5 final, powered by three Dodgers home runs and a lineup that refused to let Aaron Nola settle.
Philadelphia looked like it had the early edge. Alec Bohm's 411-foot two-run shot to left in the first — Schwarber scoring ahead of him — gave the Phillies a 2-0 lead and put Eric Lauer on the defensive immediately. But Dalton Rushing answered in the third with a 438-foot solo blast to center, and the Dodgers were back in it. The real turn came in the fifth. Rushing doubled to right, scoring Edman and T. Hernández to flip the lead 3-2. Philadelphia punched right back — Bryan De La Cruz homered to center (404 feet) to knot it at three — and that swing was the single biggest momentum moment of the night. Philadelphia's win probability jumped from 27% to 50% on that De La Cruz homer. It was the closest the Phillies would get.
Max Muncy ended the tie in the sixth, launching a 415-foot shot to center with Freeman aboard to make it 5-3. Nola finished his night having allowed 7 hits and 5 earned runs over 5.1 innings, and the Dodgers' lineup had simply worn him down. Lauer, meanwhile, gave LAD 5.1 innings of his own — 4 hits, 3 earned runs, 5 strikeouts — and Jack Dreyer followed with a clean inning of relief (1.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER). The story of the night was really the eighth. A Tucker sacrifice fly made it 6-3, and then Edman's triple to center cleared the bases — Freeman, Betts, and T. Hernández all scoring — to push the lead to 9-3 and end any realistic Phillies comeback conversation.
Philadelphia made it cosmetically closer with a Bohm RBI single in the eighth and a Realmuto single scoring Marsh in the ninth, but the final was 9-5 and it wasn't that close. Edman went 3-for-4 with 3 RBI. Rushing was 2-for-4 with a homer, a double, and 3 RBI. Freeman went 3-for-4 and scored twice. Bohm's 3-RBI night was the lone bright spot for a Phillies offense that looks, at least tonight, like it ran out of answers the moment Los Angeles took the lead for good.