Andy Pages hits two home runs in NLCS Game 5

NEW YORK — In a lineup stacked with superstars, it was a rookie hitting in the nine-hole who gave the Dodgers a glimmer of hope in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series.

Andy Pages became the first Dodgers rookie with a multihomer game in the postseason with a pair of shots in back-to-back innings of a wild game against the Mets at Citi Field, when L.A. needed every run it could get. Pages’ solo homer off Mets starter David Peterson in the fourth made it an 8-2 Dodgers deficit, and a three-run homer in the fifth off Reed Garrett made it a 10-5 game.

Born in Havana, Cuba, and a Dodger since he signed with them after defecting in 2018, Pages started this season as L.A.’s No. 3-ranked prospect by MLB Pipeline, and No. 94 on the overall Top 100 list. Now he has a spot in the postseason record books. At 23 years and 315 days old, he’s the youngest player in Dodgers history with a multihomer postseason game. Steve Garvey had the previous mark at 25 years, 291 days old.

Speaking of Dodgers history, Pages is the second Dodgers center fielder to hit multiple homers in a postseason game, and it’s elite company. Hall of Famer Duke Snider did so twice against the Yankees, in Game 6 of the 1952 World Series and in Game 5 of the 1955 World Series.

It made Pages the fourth player with a multihomer postseason game out of the No. 9 spot in the batting order, and not surprisingly, the others were all in the American League. The most recent was the Blue Jays’ Danny Jansen in Game 2 of the 2020 AL Wild Card Series, and before that, Cleveland’s Roberto Perez in Game 1 of the 2016 World Series and the Angels’ Adam Kennedy in Game 5 of the 2002 ALCS — when Kennedy homered three times.