LOS ANGELES — Between the man at the plate and the man on the mound, there was a lot of hardware to go around.
Shohei Ohtani vs. Max Scherzer. The first matchup between a three-time MVP winner and a three-time Cy Young winner in the World Series since 2009, when Pedro Martinez and Alex Rodriguez faced off.
The first two rounds went to Ohtani.
Ohtani led off the game with a double before taking Scherzer deep for a solo shot in the bottom of the third. Teoscar Hernández had also left the yard one inning earlier, getting the Dodgers on the board first in Game 3 of the World Series vs. the Blue Jays on Monday night at Dodger Stadium.
Hernández seemed to know he got his upon contact, unleashing an epic bat flip that may have fallen just short of the Canadian border. Ohtani simply watched as his sailed into the right-field corner.
Perhaps he was expecting it to go farther.
The last time Ohtani played at home, he delivered one of the all-time greatest individual performances baseball has seen in NLCS Game 4, hitting three homers and tossing six-plus scoreless innings on the mound. One of the homers cleared the Right Field Pavilion roof, making Ohtani just the third left-handed hitter to leave Dodger Stadium altogether.
His solo shot on Monday was more modest at a Statcast-projected 389 feet, but they all count the same. Ohtani has hit seven homers in these playoffs, one shy of Corey Seager’s franchise record set in 2020 for the most in a single postseason.
