After losing two close games to the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, The Dodgers come back to Los Angeles where home cooking made all the difference allowing the Dodgers into the series with a shut-out win on Monday night. Hyun-jin Ryu tossed seven scoreless innings in his second career playoff start to lift the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. Ryu, the 26-year-old native of South Korea, worked around a one-out walk to Carlos Beltran in the first inning and proceeded to retire 11 consecutive batters before David Freese led off the fifth inning with a single. Ryu allowed another hit before working out of a jam in the fifth and went two more scoreless innings before giving way to the Dodgers bullpen after the seventh.
Ryu gave up three hits and a walk while striking out four. The Dodgers got on the board with a pair of runs in a fourth inning highlighted by Yasiel Puig’s RBI triple over the head of Beltran. Puig cruised into third without a play despite celebrating all the way to first base under the assumption that he hit the ball well enough for it to travel over the right-field wall. Puig finished 2-for-3 at the plate, ending his 0-for-10 skid to begin the series. Los Angeles added an insurance run in the eighth inning when Carl Crawford narrowly avoided Yadier Molina’s tag at the plate after Hanley Ramirez blooped a broken-bat single into shallow center field. Game four will be played Tuesday night at Dodger stadium at 4:30 PST.
