Dodgers’ Ethier yells at Mattingly in dugout

Been there, done that, say the Cubs. A pending free agent, Murphy has a 1.250 OPS in what looks likely to be the only postseason of his seven-year Mets career. The hard-throwing righty, already long past the suggested hard 180 innings cap that created a flap in early September, dominated the Cubs’ lineup to earn the win. Enjoy the moment and remember that the Cubs are making organizational history as they continue their venture into the 2015 Major League Baseball playoffs. The Dodgers had driven up deGrom’s pitch count, yes, but they had also stranded two runners on base in each of the first two innings.

The New York Mets will be hosting the Chicago Cubs this weekend in a National League Championship Series that no one saw coming back in April.

Mets lead series, 1-0.

“Cutter wasn’t as sharp as normally is”, Cubs catcher David Ross said.

“He’s maybe yelling at me because I’m trying to settle him down, but it was nothing between us”, Mattingly said. “He only throws 99”.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon said Harvey leaned heavily on his secondary pitches on a cold, windy night that had the sell-out Citi Field crowd dressed in winter jackets and numerous players in balaclavas to keep warm. “We knew that coming in”. If our pitchers have settled in now and understand what it means to pitch in the post season we’ll be just fine. They were just cold when Chicago was hot.

“Listen, honestly, our guys were fine tonight”.

The Blue Jays are hoping for good news on slugger Edwin Encarnacion, who exited Game 1 in the eighth inning to get X-rays on the middle finger of his left hand. Starlin Castro followed with a line drive double over centerfielder Juan Lagares’ head that scored Rizzo to make it 1-1.

“Hopefully Jake can pick me up tomorrow”.

Kyle Schwarber hit a homer of his own to bring the Cubs within two, but they got no closer.

Man of the moment: Mets infielder Daniel Murphy continued his torrid postseason stretch with a first-inning homer, his fourth since the start of the NLDS and, most astonishingly, his third against left-handed pitching.

Not the safest way to celebrate, fortunately no one got hurt. “We did live and die on one game a few weeks ago [against Pittsburgh in the wild-card game]”.

“We did lose our first game in St. Louis and bounced back”.

After everything that has gone on in this series, Chase Utley was the first batter to greet Familia in a pinch hit role, but he was able to retire Utley for the first out.

Chicago could have gone ahead in the fifth, but Castro was thrown out at the plate by Yoenis Cespedes when he tried to score from second on Javier Baez’s single.

DeGrom began the game chaotically, allowing four straight hits that gave the Dodgers a 2-1 lead. In between, third baseman Kris Bryant dropped the ball taking it from his glove on a potential inning-ending double play.

The Mets needed a bridge reliever to get them to the latter two innings, and Mets manager Terry Collins made a decision to go with starter Noah Syndergaard to take on the seventh inning. Granderson added a seventh-inning sacrifice fly.