When was time to ride, the Dodgers hopped on the back of the Wild Horse

Yasiel+Puig+St+Louis+Cardinals+v+Los+Angeles+mIE09La-jGnl

[Box Score]

[Los Angeles Times – Dodgers Now]

We told you it would be so; we told you that the Dodgers would beat Adam Wainwright in the Cardinals in game three of the NLCS. And that’s exactly what happened.

The Dodgers snapped an ugly scoreless streak by gathering a single by Adrian Gonzalez, and a huge triple from Yasiel Puig with two outs. Puig pimped it as if the ball was out. The Dodgers took a 2-0 lead and threw some big first punches against the Cardinals ace with their number three guy on the hill.

original

[gif]

It was obvious from the opening bell that Hyun-Jin Ryu had as good of stuff as he’s had in a long time. He was throwing 95 MPH early in the game and spotting up. He went seven shutout innings and the Cardinals didn’t really mount a threat all night long. St. Louis had four hits on the evening and don’t look now, but the Cardinals are now the team with one run in the last 18 innings.

Hanley Ramirez played with broken ribs, and he did it effectively. He had two hits including a late RBI single for an insurance run to stretch the lead to 3-0. Bigger than that was his piece of hitting that advanced Mark Ellis to third base with no one out in the inning that the Dodgers bottom of the fourth.

After Ryu exited the game, the Dodgers turned it over to their shutdown version of the pen. Brian Wilson allowed a lead off single to Jon Jay, but blew away two hitters after that to strand Jay and get out of the inning unharmed. Kenley Jansen took over in the ninth attempting to earn his first postseason save, and while he didn’t strike anyone out he was clearly overpowering in a 1-2-3 frame, giving the Dodgers their first LCS win in a number of years. Rough night in center for Jon Jay, by the way.

It’s a brand new series, and it’s good for baseball. If the Dodgers lost the game tonight, it was likely to end tomorrow night. Now the Dodgers get a crack at Lance Lynn and a chance to even this thing up. I can’t wait to watch game four tomorrow evening and see if the Dodgers have the same kind of John Wayne in them that they did tonight in the face of all odds. I thought I had the pulse of this team right, and the victory over Adam Wainwright is confirmation that it is so. This is going to be a long and bloody series.

Whose hungry for a Dodger Dog?