LOS ANGELES — If the Yankees absorbed a gut-punch on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1, this Dodgers right hook was aimed further north.
There were not many Aaron Boone decisions to dissect.
Unlike a night prior, there was little hope intact until the ninth inning, and thus just a little was ripped away when a first and final rally fell short.
This was something more direct and more flattening, a blow to the head that will lead to questions whether the Yankees can rise back to their feet in The Bronx.
They return home in a two-game World Series hole after bombing in Hollywood, where the Dodgers mostly manhandled the Yankees, 4-2, in a Game 2 that was not much of a game until the last frame.
“No one said it’s going to be easy,” Boone said amid a postseason that seemed pretty easy in the first two rounds. “It’s a long series, and we need to make it a long series now. We won’t flinch. We’ve just got to keep at it.”
Perhaps they can build on a ninth-inning rally in which they stacked three hits together and scored a run after tallying one hit and one run in the first eight innings.
Perhaps they can take advantage of the sudden unknown that is Shohei Ohtani, who suffered what the Dodgers are calling a left shoulder subluxation while unsuccessfully trying to steal second in the seventh and remained on the dirt.
But the Dodgers have not been winning on Ohtani’s back; they have been winning at Dodger Stadium by pounding homers and quieting the American League’s best offense.
Perhaps that will change in The Bronx.
“It absolutely is a must-win,” Anthony Rizzo said of Monday’s Game 3, before calling on Juan Soto’s experience with the Nationals and his own experience with the Cubs. “I was just talking to Juan, and he’s been a part of an insane, roller-coaster World Series, and so have I.
“I don’t think there’ll be any lay-down from our side.”
The Yankees did not give up Saturday, but there was little tangible fight after Carlos Rodon allowed four runs in 3 ¹/₃ innings.
He tallied as many strikeouts (three) as home runs surrendered (to Tommy Edman, Teoscar Hernandez and Freeman), putting the Yankees in a ditch that felt deeper than the final score reflected.
The only true Yankees rally arrived against Blake Treinen in the ninth, when Soto singled — his second hit and the club’s second hit — took second on a wild pitch and scored on a Giancarlo Stanton single. Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled, and Rizzo was drilled to load the bases.
With one out and the tying run on second, Anthony Volpe struck out. The Dodgers turned to lefty Alex Vesia, so Boone countered with righty-hitting Jose Trevino rather than Austin Wells.
Trevino flew out on the first pitch he saw, extinguishing the Yankees’ hope nearly as soon as it sprouted.
“I have 100 percent confidence that we can come back,” Chisholm said. “If there’s any other team in the league that can do it, it’s us.”
The Yankees’ only trace of a pulse for eight innings came in the third, when Soto authored another one of those impossibly great at-bats — fighting off a 2-2 slider so he could finally see a fastball, which he sent to the skies for a home run into the right-field seats to tie game at 1-1 — before they flatlined.
After Soto’s blast, Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired the next 11 batters before being pulled when Yankees hitters were a combined 1-for-20 against him.
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The only pitcher to receive a bigger contract than Gerrit Cole pitched like he was worth every bit of his $325 million.
The Yankees looked overmatched for most of the night. Aaron Judge went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts to sink to 6-for-40 (.150) this postseason.
Wells went 0-for-3 with a strikeout and a couple of harmless groundouts and is 4-for-41 (.096) in October.
“Guys are going to step up. Guys are going to do what they need to do,” Judge said. “I got to step up as well. Especially what Gleyber [Torres] and Juan are doing at the top of the lineup, I got to back them up.”
The Yankees’ season might depend on Judge stepping up.
And it might depend on the arms of Clarke Schmidt in Game 3 and Luis Gil in Game 4, who will be looking to turn a Hollywood tragedy into a comeback story.
“We got to go out and win a ballgame,” Schmidt said.
“It’s a tough start,” Soto added, “but it ain’t over yet.”
