Clayton Kershaw guides Dodgers to win, Cubs advance in Major League Baseball

The Cubs, trying to end a 107-year World Series title drought, had homers from Kyle Schwarber, Starlin Castro, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Jorge Soler and Dexter Fowler.

If Grandal can’t go, A.J. Ellis would start.

The New York Mets won the last game against the Dodgers, putting them at 2-1.

But perhaps Mattingly felt like Kershaw had beaten his postseason hex and better not to tempt fate by pitching one more inning. “So my plan is just to pitch as good as possible and hopefully it works out”.

The seventh inning – an inning Kershaw completed just once in his first nine postseason starts – got off to a foreboding start when Cespedes hit a chopper in front of the mound. I mean, this kid is tremendous.

“We’re going back home, where we get a chance to play”, said a relieved Don Mattingly.

As we saw on Tuesday night, in Game 4, on the road, in an elimination game, on short rest, Clayton Kershaw is capable of being Clayton Kershaw. And I didn’t end up scoring, but I think that maybe got the guys going a little bit.

Dodgers went on to win 3-1 and send the series back to California.

“There’s no curse or anything”, he said. Matz allowed only two hits and struck out eight against Los Angeles in July.

Kershaw took care of the rest for the three-time NL West champions, giving up his second homer of the series to Murphy in the fourth and only two other singles. Granderson came up with the bases loaded and cleared them in the bottom of the second and the team left the inning with a 4-3 lead and never gave it back.

For the Dodgers, it’s a tale of a great pitcher finally getting it done when it counts. “I just really wanted to push it”.

“This is where you want to get”. After Tuesday’s Game 4 win, Kershaw had accumulated 64 2/3 innings, struck out 77 batters and walked just 23.

If the Dodgers’ postseason is over at the time of the decision, any suspension that is upheld would be served at the start of the 2016 regular season. Still, he looked sharp early and snapped off several effective curveballs. “If he throws that fastball down at the knees we’ll have to make him do that over and over again”. He was erased on a fielder’s choice, but Howie Kendrick then singled to put runners on first and third. Their bats need to score a few runs, more than two or three, if they want to finish the series with a win at Dodger Stadium Thursday.

So it comes down to this – a one game season. “We’re going to go out and play real, real hard”.

All quotes from either Major League Baseball Network or SportsNet LA postgame coverage of Game 4.

“We didn’t have any doubt in our minds that we still had a chance in this series with Clayton on the mound”, said center fielder Enrique Hernandez. The right-hander is 3-2 with a 3.48 ERA in eight postseason starts.

Mets: A starter during the regular season, 42-year-old Bartolo Colon replaced Matz and tossed two shutout innings after throwing 26 pitches in relief Monday night. Brian Anderson was rocked for six runs and seven hits over three innings, taking the loss for the Dodgers.