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The Los Angeles Dodgers will try for a commanding 3-0 lead in their National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs, with the scene moving to Wrigley Field for Game 3 Tuesday night in Chicago.
The Cubs scored first in each of the first two games in Los Angeles, with a two-run home run by Albert Almora Jr. in Game 1, and an Addison Russell solo shot in Game 2. But those are the only runs of the series for Chicago.
The Dodgers rallied for five late runs to win on Saturday, then with a 1-1 tie in the ninth inning on Sunday that saw Justin Turner hit the second walk-off home run in the history of the franchise to give the Dodgers a commanding two games to none advantage.
Yu Darvish gets the start for the Dodgers in Game 3 and used cliches to combat thoughts of a potential Cubs offensive resurgence.
“They’ve got really good lineups from top to bottom, and they play as a team so there is nobody in that lineup that I can get easy on,” Darvish said. “So it’s going to be a battle, and I just want to take one pitch at a time, one guy at a time.”
Kyle Hendricks, who allowed one run total in two starts against the Dodgers in last year’s NLCS, starts in Game 3 for Chicago.
NLCS Game 3 time, TV and streaming info
- Teams: Cubs (92-70) at Dodgers (104-58)
- Series: Los Angeles leads, 2-0
- Time: 9 p.m. ET
- First pitch: 9:01 p.m.
- Location: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles
- TV: TBS
- Streaming: TBS.com and the Watch TBS app
- Announcers: Brian Anderson, Ron Darling, Sam Ryan
Dodgers vs. Cubs news & notes
Corey Seager, off the Dodgers roster for the NLCS with a back sprain, did not travel with the team to Chicago:
Manager Dave Roberts on Sunday said Seager felt “normalish” and that his back showed continued improvement on Monday.
But Seager still hasn’t been cleared for baseball activities. No running or hitting yet, so the odds of him being ready enough to activated during the NLCS — if he were to be activated in this series, it would have to be replacing another injured position player — are low.
“I don’t see it happening right now. He hasn’t done anything baseball specific,” Roberts said. “We’ve got to get him in a place where physically he feels like he can play in a major league game and endure those conditions as far as weather, to be able to come back after a game and to play the next day. So right now I wouldn’t say that we’re close to that point yet.”
The Cubs bullpen is a weak spot, says Grant Brisbee:
It’s so close. Duensing most certainly is an example of the Cubs polishing an underappreciated reliever. Strop and Edwards, Jr. were acquired in two of the more lopsided trades in the last few years, and both of them certainly helped the team win a championship last year. It’s not like the Cubs are screwing up. There are a lot of teams that would be right to be jealous of this bullpen.
It’s just a bullpen without an unending procession of those guys. They can polish someone like Duensing, but they haven’t quite turned him into one of those guys. They stole the power arms of Strop and Edwards, but they haven’t turned them into those guys. Even when they tried to trade for one of those guys, Wade Davis, he was just one pitcher. One lonely pitcher.