NEW YORK – Shohei Ohtani hit his second postseason home run and gave the Los Angeles Dodgers three late insurance runs in the 8-0 victory, giving the Dodgers a 2-1 lead in the National League Championship Series.

Ohtani, who entered the game 0-for-19 with no runners on base, extended his bases-empty drought by going hitless with a walk in his first four at-bats of the game.

With two on in the eighth inning, Ohtani hit a towering home run just inside the right field foul pole for his second home run of the postseason. Ohtani is now 7-for-9 with runners on base in October, including two home runs.

Kiké Hernández sparked the f-bomb-filled mantra that the Dodgers said led them to a comeback in the NLDS against the Padres, and it was Hernández whose home run in Game 5 of that series opened up a Dodgers advantage they weren’t willing to relinquish .

“I kept telling myself, they brought you here for a reason,” Hernández said that night. “They brought you here to play in October. I wanted to come back and make a run with this team because I really want to have a parade.”

Hernández’s final moment, and his 15th career postseason homer, came in the sixth. The Dodgers clung to a two-run lead with a tricky part of the Mets lineup on the schedule. After Tommy Edman lined a two-out shot to right and advanced on a balk, Hernández took advantage of an error. Reed Garrett left a two-stroke splitter on and over the plate. Hernández didn’t miss, cutting enough through the cold New York night for a two-run shot that doubled the Dodgers’ advantage and allowed the club to continue rolling out its lever arms with some breathing room.

Quiet bats reduce the Mets’ margin for error

The Mets were shut out for the second time in three games in this series, controlled by the inconsistent Walker Buehler and the go-to arm of the Los Angeles bullpen.

New York had early chances against Buehler. The second inning in particular loomed large. After the Dodgers scored a pair of unearned runs, the Mets loaded the bases with one out. But Francisco Alvarez, deep in an October slump, struck out and Francisco Lindor struck out with a swinging 3-2 curveball.

Francisco Lindor and the Mets offense squandered an early opportunity against Walker Buehler and never got going again. (Elsa/Getty Images)

Alvarez is 1-for-9 in the series, which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider the context of those at-bats. In the last two games alone he has been hitless in at bats with:

• Runners on second and third and one out
• The bases loaded and two outs
• Runners on first and second and two outs
• The bases got loaded with one out

That offensive lull made the Mets’ defensive mistakes in that second inning all the more noticeable. Los Angeles scored on a walk and three balls in play that traveled a combined 11 yards, helped by an Alvarez error and Luis Severino’s inability to cleanly come up with a pair of comebackers.

Buehler finds a swing-and-miss at the right time

It’s not hard to decipher the difference between the second innings of each of Buehler’s two postseason starts. In the second inning of Game 3 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres, Buehler reached six different two-strike counts: he recorded only one out. He finished the night without strikeouts in a start for the second time in his career. The Padres, the best contact team in the Majors, put the ball in play. The Dodgers defense botched the inning behind him, resulting in six runs.

Buehler found something else Wednesday night. Relying on a heavy diet of sweepers and curveballs, he pulled out more swing-and-miss than ever before since returning from a second Tommy John surgery on May 6. That turned out to be enough, especially on a night when he didn’t have his typical command. Buehler threw just 51 strikes on his 90 pitches in four scoreless innings, but managed 18 whiffs — his most this season — and six strikeouts.

None were more important than the second inning. As the Mets loaded the bases on a pair of walks and an infield single that Edman couldn’t handle, Buehler settled. He froze Francisco Alvarez looking with a fastball that struck the outer half of the plate, then ended a seven-pitch battle against Mets superstar Francisco Lindor with a curveball that the shortstop could only swing through to end the threat.

The two scoreless innings that followed left a resting Dodgers bullpen with a two-run lead, ideal conditions for Los Angeles.

(Photo by Shohei Ohtani: Luke Hales/Getty Images)