NEW YORK – Walker Buehler threw five scoreless innings, Freddie Freeman hit a two-run homer and the Los Angeles Dodgers continued to act like the deeper, better and healthier team in this World Series, beating the New York Yankees 4-2 . Monday night to take a commanding three-games-to-none lead. To somehow win it all, the Yankees will have to become the second team ever – after the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 American League Championship Series – to win four straight games with their season on the line in a best-of -seven series.

The Dodgers immediately applied the pressure. Shohei Ohtani, playing through a mildly dislocated left shoulder, drew a walk to start the game. Two batters later, Freeman, who was playing through his own series of injuries in October, hit a two-run home run into the short porch in right field. It was Freeman’s third home run in a series of six at-bats, coming immediately after 32 consecutive postseason at-bats without an extra base hit. A sold-out Yankee Stadium fell silent – ​​and Buehler kept it that way.

“The conversation (initially) was about Clarke Schmidt,” Freeman said in his on-field postgame interview on Fox. “A lot of us have never faced him, so there was a lot of emphasis on game planning. … And when you come into a road park, you obviously want to strike early and quiet the crowd. And we were able to do that in the first inning.”

Buehler allowed just two hits and two walks while striking out five, generating six swings and misses on his fastball – his most since 2021. The 2024 season had been a struggle for Buehler. He returned from a second Tommy John surgery without his jaw-dropping fastball, struggled through a 5.38 ERA in 16 regular-season starts, suffered a hip injury midway through and had to continually reinvent himself along the way. But Buehler found an effective curveball when he threw four scoreless innings against the New York Mets in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series and eventually regained his lively fastball in the World Series, a phase in which he dominated.

The Yankees got a chance to score in the fourth, when Anthony Volpe hit a two-out single to left field, but Giancarlo Stanton was thrown out while trying to score from second base. Teoscar Hernandez made a perfect one-hop throw to catch Stanton, who is among the slowest players in the sport. Just before that, Mookie Betts made an extended catch in right field to save Jazz Chisholm Jr. to rob. Two innings later, Tommy Edman, who had made a perfect read to score on Betts’ third-inning single, stretched to record a force out on second base.

The Dodgers – plagued by injuries to their starting pitchers during the regular season – now have five shutouts in these playoffs, tying Cleveland for the most in a single postseason in 2016. The Yankees were last eliminated from the World Series during Game 6 in 2003, when the then-Florida Marlins captured a title behind Josh Beckett’s complete-game masterpiece. The Dodgers, who haven’t won a full-season title since 1988, are one win away from doing the same.

The Yankees let out one last gasp at the very end, when Alex Verdugo blasted a two-run homer off Michael Kopech with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to cut the deficit in half. But Kopech came back and retired Gleyber Torres on a slow groundout. The Dodgers — plagued by injuries to their starting pitchers throughout the regular season, navigating ill-timed injuries to Freeman and Ohtani in October — are now one win away from their first championship in four years and their first full-season title since 1988.

“I’ve been able to work on my swing, and that’s the key,” Freeman said. “I was just able to find my cue and I saw the ball pretty well.”