Yankees’ miscues lead to key 5th-inning rally for Dodgers

NEW YORK — These Dodgers feast on free outs. Their offense is built to make you pay. Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.

Give them three free outs in one of the most consequential innings of the entire baseball season? That’s a recipe for disaster.

“You cannot,” a champagne-drenched Mookie Betts would later say from the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, “give us extra outs.”

The Yankees did — and they paid dearly for it in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night. The Dodgers staged a furious five-run, fifth-inning rally, taking advantage of three defensive miscues committed by New York. When the dust settled, the game was tied, Yankee Stadium was stunned and the Dodgers were on their way to a 7-6 title-clinching victory.

“In this game, when you’re given extra outs, you’ve got to capitalize,” said World Series MVP Freddie Freeman, who tied a Fall Classic record with 12 RBIs. “That’s what we were able to do in that inning.”

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole entered the frame with a 5-0 lead, having not allowed a hit. Yankee Stadium was rocking. Ten batters and 38 pitches later, it had quieted significantly.

“Just, we didn’t take care of the ball well enough in that inning,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “Against a great team like that, they took advantage.”

Dodgers center fielder Kiké Hernández opened the frame with a clean single. Then came the mistakes.

It started in the unlikeliest of places: with Aaron Judge in center field. In his career, Judge had played 1,958 innings in center between the regular season and postseason. He’d never committed an error. Until the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series.

Tommy Edman sprayed an 0-2 fastball to center, a relatively routine line drive for Judge, who only needed to take a few steps in. He dropped it — closing his glove just a fraction of a second too early.

“You can’t give a good team like that extra outs,” Judge said. “So it starts with me there — a line drive coming in. I misplayed that. If that doesn’t happen, I think it’s a different story tonight.”

The Dodgers were in business, and the Yankees would only make things worse for themselves. The next batter was Will Smith, who sent a grounder toward Anthony Volpe at short. Ranging to his right, Volpe’s clearest play was at third base. But he bounced his throw in the dirt, and third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. couldn’t pick it.

After a raucous first four innings, for the first time, doubt crept in at Yankee Stadium.

Only here’s the thing: Cole could’ve easily silenced that doubt. He struck out Gavin Lux. He struck out Shohei Ohtani. He was on the brink of getting out of the inning when Betts hit a chopper toward first base …

… and then he didn’t cover the bag.

Perhaps Anthony Rizzo could’ve charged the ball and taken it himself. But Cole was late, and Betts beat out an infield single.

“Mookie hits a squibber, so Rizz couldn’t really run through it,” Boone said. “He kind of had to stay there and make sure he secured the catch because of the spin on the ball. And I think Gerrit just — all that he went through in that inning, kind of spent and kind of almost working his way out of it — just didn’t react quick enough to get over.”

“I took a bad angle to the ball,” Cole said. “I wasn’t sure how hard he hit it. By the time the ball got by me, I was not in a position to cover first. Neither of us were.”

The Dodgers were on the board, and that was enough. The floodgates opened.

Freeman followed with a two-out, two-strike, two-run single, tying the RBI record set by the Yankees’ Bobby Richardson in the 1960 World Series. Teoscar Hernández also knocked in a pair with a two-strike double of his own, tying the game at 5.

Cole would escape the inning by getting Kiké Hernández to bounce to short after the Dodgers had batted around. But the damage was done: Five unearned runs and a quieted Yankee Stadium.

In doing so, the Dodgers became the first team in a World Series-clinching win to come back from down five or more runs.

“Once you get it back to even, 5-5, anything can happen,” Freeman said.

The game was still in for its share of twists and turns. The Yankees took another lead on a sacrifice fly in the sixth. The Dodgers took it back with two sac flies in the eighth. Game 3 starter Walker Buehler came on for his first save as a big leaguer.

The Dodgers thus also became the first team in MLB postseason history to fall behind by five-plus runs, erase that deficit, fall behind again and yet still win the game.

But, in no uncertain terms, the game swung in the fateful fifth inning.

“Those extra outs, man, that’s why we won the game,” Betts said. “And then, honestly, a lot of character and a lot of grit behind it.”