Super-utilityman Enrique Hernandez will return to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that will see two relievers, Nick Robertson and Justin Hagenman, depart for the Boston Red Sox.

As part of the deal reached on Tuesday, the Red Sox have agreed to pay $2.5 million of the roughly $3.5 million remaining on Hernandez’s current contract.

“Obviously he helped us win a championship and had his best years here in a Dodger uniform,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Hernandez. “I know the fans are excited. He’s got a great relationship with the fans, does a lot of stuff in the community, and I think for us it’s more of — he hasn’t had the best of seasons, but the bet is being back home, the familiarity, kinda can tap back into being the player that we know he can be and that we’ve seen.”

Hernandez first played for the Dodgers from 2015 until 2020. He is fondly remembered by fans for his tying home run in Game 7 of the 2020 National League Championship Series, helping the Dodgers to win their first World Series title in over 30 years.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers were slammed 15-0 by the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, thereby earning the Giants their sixth straight victory. While the Giants’ largest win over the Dodgers since a 19-3 win on September 14, 2013, this is the Dodgers’ largest shutout defeat since 1898 against Pittsburgh, when the team was still based in Brooklyn.

In what has been a disastrous season so far for the Dodgers, this is the team’s second double-digit shutout defeat this year. The first came in a 13-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs on April 21.

LaMonte Wade Jr. proved to be the Giants’ stand-out player on the night, smashing a three-run homer, while J.D. Davis impressed with a pinch-hit grand slam of his own.

“The offense was rolling, just putting balls in play against a really good pitcher,” Davis said of the Giants’ performance. “A lot of guys coming back in the dugout were complimenting him on how great of stuff he was and how we needed to make the adjustments.”

Following their emphatic win, the Giants are now just one game behind their West Coast rivals in the NL West. The Arizona Diamondbacks remain on top with 43-28, while the Dodgers and the Giants trail at 39-32 and 38-32 respectively.

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Left-hander Noah Syndergaard has agreed to a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, sources confirmed on Thursday. This deal sees him join a rotation including All-Stars Julio Urías, Clayton Kershaw, and Tony Gonsolin.

Now aged 30, Syndergaard is looking to hit top form as he enters the latter stages of his career. With a history of getting the most out of talented pitchers, the Dodgers are expected to be a good fit for Syndergaard.

Syndergaard comes to the Dodgers after spending last season with the Angels on a one-year, $21 million deal before being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies on deadline day. During his time with both teams, Syndergaard threw 134⅔ innings, posting a 3.94 ERA in the process.

While Syndergaard is yet to regain his peak form, last season served as a respectable comeback for a player who was ruled out for the entirety of 2020 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

The Dodgers will hope that Syndergaard can serve as a suitable replacement for fellow left-hander Tyler Anderson, who departed for the Angels on a $39 million one-year deal. Anderson thrived at the Dodgers last season, posting a 2.57 ERA in 178⅔ innings.

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It will be the Los Angeles Dodgers who live to tell the story of the clash between the two winningest teams in the 2021 MLB season. The Dodgers beat the San Francisco Giants in a thriller on Thursday night and punched the ticket for their fifth NL Championship Series appearance in six years.

After five scoreless innings, the Dodgers finally broke the tie at the top of the sixth when shortstop Corey Seager doubled to the left and All-Star Mookie Betts scored.  But the Giants didn’t take long to respond, with first baseman Darin Ruf hitting a 452 home run. This was the longest homer of the postseason so far.

The deadlock was broken again thanks to Cody Bellinger’s RBI single at the top of the ninth.

Then it was up to Max Scherzer, a starter in the Game 3 loss, to take it home. Scherzer delivered by pitching a hitless inning, earning a save, and propelling the Dodgers to NLCS.

“To be in that moment, with everything on the line, with the way we’ve been playing this whole series, to get the ball in that situation, man, that was a rush,” said Scherzer after the game.

“We poured everything we could into this series, and it took everything we had to beat these guys,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts added.

The Dodgers now only have the Atlanta Braves standing in the way of their return to the World Series. The Giants, on the other hand, have ended their 107-win season earlier than expected and will have to wait until 2022 to end their NLCS drought.

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Even though the Los Angeles Dodgers had the second-best record in the entire MLB, there was still a very good chance they could’ve missed the playoffs. But Chris Taylor saved his team from that unfortunate fate by hitting a walk-off two-run homer in their wild-card elimination game against the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night.

League rules state that the leaders of each division advance to the playoffs. After that, the top two wild card teams face off in an elimination game. The only flaw with this rule is that some divisions are much stronger than others. So this season, for instance, the only team in the league with a better record than the Dodgers were the San Francisco Giants (by a mere two games)—and they share a division with the Dodgers.

So in a shocking twist of fate, Los Angeles found themselves inches away from the potential end of their season, even though their record was substantially better than most teams in the league.

And what a nailbiter it was. The Cardinals wasted no time putting points on the board, going up 1-0 in the top of the first inning. The score remained that way until the bottom of the fourth, when Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner belted one out of the park for a solo shot, making it 1-1.

Over the next four innings, both teams were on their toes quite a bit, with countless runners finding themselves in scoring position—but none of them actually scoring due to some clutch pitching and fielding.

When the ninth inning came around, the drama was at an all-time high. St. Louis second baseman Tommy Edman was able to put himself in scoring position, but he too didn’t cross the plate due to excellent clutch pitching by the Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen.

The bottom of the ninth was the kind of thing all aspiring athletes dream about. Dodger left fielder Chris Taylor, a fan favorite, found himself at the plate with two outs and one man on. Taylor proceeded to hit the ball out of the park, ending the elimination game in heart-wrenching fashion and helping Los Angeles defeat St. Louis 3-1.

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LA Dodgers will return to World Series for their third appearance in four years. Dodgers secured their spot by beating Atlanta Braves 4-3 in the deciding NLCS Game 7 on Sunday night and capping off an unlikely comeback after being down 1-3 in the series.

It didn’t start well for the Dodgers, as they found themselves trailing 0-2 after Marcell Ozuna and Dansby Swanson hit home runs for Braves in the first two innings. Will Smith’s two-run single equaled the game in the third, but Atlanta immediately took the lead back with Austin Riley’s single.

Still, Brave couldn’t hold on to the lead that would bring the franchise its first World Series appearance since 1999.

Enrique Hernandez hit a pinch-hit homer in the sixth to tie it once again, while 2019’s NL MVP Cody Bellinger completed the comeback in the seventh inning with another lights-out home run.

“We never gave up,” said MVP of the series Corey Seager. “This team never quit. We came out every night and expected to win. Tip your cap to that clubhouse and how we responded, how we came back. We always found the energy, found the big play, found the big spark. Whether it was defensively, offensively, pitching, we grinded through that series. It was a lot of fun to be on top of that one.”

The LA Dodgers will now face the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series in an attempt to win their first title in 33 years. Dodgers got close in 2018 and 2019 but got beaten by Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, respectively.

“The World Series is the World Series, no matter what year you get there—’17 happened, ’18 happened. We fell short; now we are back,” added Enrique Hernandez. “The past is in the past—this one feels super special because it is in front of us, and it is happening.”

Dodgers were the best team in baseball in the regular season, finishing with a 43-17 record. And they managed to translate their claim in the postseason so far, but it won’t count for anything if they can’t deliver in the World Series.

The World Series, which will see Dodgers face Tampa Bay Rays, kicks off on October 20 at Arlington’s Globe Life Field.

The post Dodgers Complete an Unlikely Comeback in NLCS, Secure World Series Appearance appeared first on SportzBonanza.

Cody Bellinger is having arguably the best season of any player in all of Major League Baseball this season. While he hit 64 home runs in his first two MLB seasons, and already had 27 in 2019 heading into yesterday’s home clash with the Arizona Diamondbacks, he still hadn’t produced a walk-off long ball in his young career.

That changed as he launched a walk-off home run on Wednesday night in extra innings to clinch a Dodgers sweep over their division rivals.

The 23-year-old launched a massive walk-off home run to right-center field off of Arizona reliever Yoan López to propel the Dodgers to a three-game sweep over the D-Backs and increase their division lead to an astonishing 14 games.

Bellinger’s home run, the 29th he’s hit on the season, measured 442 feet.

What’s even more astounding is that the home run wasn’t even Bellinger’s first long ball of the night. He actually hit a solo home run in the second inning in his first at-bat of the game to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.

Bellinger, the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year, looks to be the leading candidate for this year’s National League MVP honors. He’s already been named the league’s starting right fielder for next week’s All-Star Game in Cleveland, Ohio.

The second home run he hit on Wednesday night is one that he’ll certainly never forget.

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After signing a 5-year, $60 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last offseason despite a history of injury problems, AJ Pollock is heading to the injured list for the first time with his new team only a month into the season.

Pollock had previously undergone surgery on his right elbow due to a fracture during his time with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and now he’s heading to the injured list due to an infection in the same elbow.

It is not immediately clear how the infection came about or what provoked it.

What is clear is that Pollock is unavailable for LA for the time being and that he’ll need some time and antibiotics for the elbow problem to clear up. In the meantime, the Dodgers will have to look for a replacement for Pollock, who is hitting .223 with 2 home runs early in the year.

The 31-year-old former All Star could be replaced by a number of players for the Dodgers. The most likely candidate to take over for the outfielder during his time on the injured list is Alex Verdugo, a 22-year-old who has hit .278 with 8 home runs in his brief career as a Dodger.

The post Dodgers OF A.J. Pollock Hits IL With Elbow Problem appeared first on SportzBonanza.

Super-utilityman Enrique Hernandez will return to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that will see two relievers, Nick Robertson and Justin Hagenman, depart for the Boston Red Sox.

As part of the deal reached on Tuesday, the Red Sox have agreed to pay $2.5 million of the roughly $3.5 million remaining on Hernandez’s current contract.

“Obviously he helped us win a championship and had his best years here in a Dodger uniform,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Hernandez. “I know the fans are excited. He’s got a great relationship with the fans, does a lot of stuff in the community, and I think for us it’s more of — he hasn’t had the best of seasons, but the bet is being back home, the familiarity, kinda can tap back into being the player that we know he can be and that we’ve seen.”

Hernandez first played for the Dodgers from 2015 until 2020. He is fondly remembered by fans for his tying home run in Game 7 of the 2020 National League Championship Series, helping the Dodgers to win their first World Series title in over 30 years.

The post Enrique Hernandez Returns to Dodgers in Red Sox Trade appeared first on SportzBonanza.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were slammed 15-0 by the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, thereby earning the Giants their sixth straight victory. While the Giants’ largest win over the Dodgers since a 19-3 win on September 14, 2013, this is the Dodgers’ largest shutout defeat since 1898 against Pittsburgh, when the team was still based in Brooklyn.

In what has been a disastrous season so far for the Dodgers, this is the team’s second double-digit shutout defeat this year. The first came in a 13-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs on April 21.

LaMonte Wade Jr. proved to be the Giants’ stand-out player on the night, smashing a three-run homer, while J.D. Davis impressed with a pinch-hit grand slam of his own.

“The offense was rolling, just putting balls in play against a really good pitcher,” Davis said of the Giants’ performance. “A lot of guys coming back in the dugout were complimenting him on how great of stuff he was and how we needed to make the adjustments.”

Following their emphatic win, the Giants are now just one game behind their West Coast rivals in the NL West. The Arizona Diamondbacks remain on top with 43-28, while the Dodgers and the Giants trail at 39-32 and 38-32 respectively.

The post Dodgers Suffer Worst Shutout Loss Since 1898 Vs Giants appeared first on SportzBonanza.

Left-hander Noah Syndergaard has agreed to a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, sources confirmed on Thursday. This deal sees him join a rotation including All-Stars Julio Urías, Clayton Kershaw, and Tony Gonsolin.

Now aged 30, Syndergaard is looking to hit top form as he enters the latter stages of his career. With a history of getting the most out of talented pitchers, the Dodgers are expected to be a good fit for Syndergaard.

Syndergaard comes to the Dodgers after spending last season with the Angels on a one-year, $21 million deal before being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies on deadline day. During his time with both teams, Syndergaard threw 134⅔ innings, posting a 3.94 ERA in the process.

While Syndergaard is yet to regain his peak form, last season served as a respectable comeback for a player who was ruled out for the entirety of 2020 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

The Dodgers will hope that Syndergaard can serve as a suitable replacement for fellow left-hander Tyler Anderson, who departed for the Angels on a $39 million one-year deal. Anderson thrived at the Dodgers last season, posting a 2.57 ERA in 178⅔ innings.

The post Dodgers Reach One-Year Deal With Noah Syndergaard appeared first on SportzBonanza.

It will be the Los Angeles Dodgers who live to tell the story of the clash between the two winningest teams in the 2021 MLB season. The Dodgers beat the San Francisco Giants in a thriller on Thursday night and punched the ticket for their fifth NL Championship Series appearance in six years.

After five scoreless innings, the Dodgers finally broke the tie at the top of the sixth when shortstop Corey Seager doubled to the left and All-Star Mookie Betts scored.  But the Giants didn’t take long to respond, with first baseman Darin Ruf hitting a 452 home run. This was the longest homer of the postseason so far.

The deadlock was broken again thanks to Cody Bellinger’s RBI single at the top of the ninth.

Then it was up to Max Scherzer, a starter in the Game 3 loss, to take it home. Scherzer delivered by pitching a hitless inning, earning a save, and propelling the Dodgers to NLCS.

“To be in that moment, with everything on the line, with the way we’ve been playing this whole series, to get the ball in that situation, man, that was a rush,” said Scherzer after the game.

“We poured everything we could into this series, and it took everything we had to beat these guys,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts added.

The Dodgers now only have the Atlanta Braves standing in the way of their return to the World Series. The Giants, on the other hand, have ended their 107-win season earlier than expected and will have to wait until 2022 to end their NLCS drought.

The post Dodgers Outlast Giants to Clinch NL Championship Series Appearance appeared first on SportzBonanza.

Even though the Los Angeles Dodgers had the second-best record in the entire MLB, there was still a very good chance they could’ve missed the playoffs. But Chris Taylor saved his team from that unfortunate fate by hitting a walk-off two-run homer in their wild-card elimination game against the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night.

League rules state that the leaders of each division advance to the playoffs. After that, the top two wild card teams face off in an elimination game. The only flaw with this rule is that some divisions are much stronger than others. So this season, for instance, the only team in the league with a better record than the Dodgers were the San Francisco Giants (by a mere two games)—and they share a division with the Dodgers.

So in a shocking twist of fate, Los Angeles found themselves inches away from the potential end of their season, even though their record was substantially better than most teams in the league.

And what a nailbiter it was. The Cardinals wasted no time putting points on the board, going up 1-0 in the top of the first inning. The score remained that way until the bottom of the fourth, when Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner belted one out of the park for a solo shot, making it 1-1.

Over the next four innings, both teams were on their toes quite a bit, with countless runners finding themselves in scoring position—but none of them actually scoring due to some clutch pitching and fielding.

When the ninth inning came around, the drama was at an all-time high. St. Louis second baseman Tommy Edman was able to put himself in scoring position, but he too didn’t cross the plate due to excellent clutch pitching by the Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen.

The bottom of the ninth was the kind of thing all aspiring athletes dream about. Dodger left fielder Chris Taylor, a fan favorite, found himself at the plate with two outs and one man on. Taylor proceeded to hit the ball out of the park, ending the elimination game in heart-wrenching fashion and helping Los Angeles defeat St. Louis 3-1.

The post Dodgers Eliminate Cardinals in Dramatic Walk-Off Fashion appeared first on SportzBonanza.

LA Dodgers will return to World Series for their third appearance in four years. Dodgers secured their spot by beating Atlanta Braves 4-3 in the deciding NLCS Game 7 on Sunday night and capping off an unlikely comeback after being down 1-3 in the series.

It didn’t start well for the Dodgers, as they found themselves trailing 0-2 after Marcell Ozuna and Dansby Swanson hit home runs for Braves in the first two innings. Will Smith’s two-run single equaled the game in the third, but Atlanta immediately took the lead back with Austin Riley’s single.

Still, Brave couldn’t hold on to the lead that would bring the franchise its first World Series appearance since 1999.

Enrique Hernandez hit a pinch-hit homer in the sixth to tie it once again, while 2019’s NL MVP Cody Bellinger completed the comeback in the seventh inning with another lights-out home run.

“We never gave up,” said MVP of the series Corey Seager. “This team never quit. We came out every night and expected to win. Tip your cap to that clubhouse and how we responded, how we came back. We always found the energy, found the big play, found the big spark. Whether it was defensively, offensively, pitching, we grinded through that series. It was a lot of fun to be on top of that one.”

The LA Dodgers will now face the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series in an attempt to win their first title in 33 years. Dodgers got close in 2018 and 2019 but got beaten by Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, respectively.

“The World Series is the World Series, no matter what year you get there—’17 happened, ’18 happened. We fell short; now we are back,” added Enrique Hernandez. “The past is in the past—this one feels super special because it is in front of us, and it is happening.”

Dodgers were the best team in baseball in the regular season, finishing with a 43-17 record. And they managed to translate their claim in the postseason so far, but it won’t count for anything if they can’t deliver in the World Series.

The World Series, which will see Dodgers face Tampa Bay Rays, kicks off on October 20 at Arlington’s Globe Life Field.

The post Dodgers Complete an Unlikely Comeback in NLCS, Secure World Series Appearance appeared first on SportzBonanza.

Cody Bellinger is having arguably the best season of any player in all of Major League Baseball this season. While he hit 64 home runs in his first two MLB seasons, and already had 27 in 2019 heading into yesterday’s home clash with the Arizona Diamondbacks, he still hadn’t produced a walk-off long ball in his young career.

That changed as he launched a walk-off home run on Wednesday night in extra innings to clinch a Dodgers sweep over their division rivals.

The 23-year-old launched a massive walk-off home run to right-center field off of Arizona reliever Yoan López to propel the Dodgers to a three-game sweep over the D-Backs and increase their division lead to an astonishing 14 games.

Bellinger’s home run, the 29th he’s hit on the season, measured 442 feet.

What’s even more astounding is that the home run wasn’t even Bellinger’s first long ball of the night. He actually hit a solo home run in the second inning in his first at-bat of the game to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.

Bellinger, the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year, looks to be the leading candidate for this year’s National League MVP honors. He’s already been named the league’s starting right fielder for next week’s All-Star Game in Cleveland, Ohio.

The second home run he hit on Wednesday night is one that he’ll certainly never forget.

The post Cody Bellinger Hits First Career Walk-Off Homer to Propel Dodgers to Victory appeared first on SportzBonanza.

After signing a 5-year, $60 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last offseason despite a history of injury problems, AJ Pollock is heading to the injured list for the first time with his new team only a month into the season.

Pollock had previously undergone surgery on his right elbow due to a fracture during his time with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and now he’s heading to the injured list due to an infection in the same elbow.

It is not immediately clear how the infection came about or what provoked it.

What is clear is that Pollock is unavailable for LA for the time being and that he’ll need some time and antibiotics for the elbow problem to clear up. In the meantime, the Dodgers will have to look for a replacement for Pollock, who is hitting .223 with 2 home runs early in the year.

The 31-year-old former All Star could be replaced by a number of players for the Dodgers. The most likely candidate to take over for the outfielder during his time on the injured list is Alex Verdugo, a 22-year-old who has hit .278 with 8 home runs in his brief career as a Dodger.

The post Dodgers OF A.J. Pollock Hits IL With Elbow Problem appeared first on SportzBonanza.