Ohtani's 473-foot drive leads 6-homer onslaught for Dodgers in 9-6 win over Red Sox

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shohei Ohtani hit a 473-foot home run and the Los Angeles Dodgers went deep six times in a 9-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Sunday.

Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, Gavin Lux, Austin Barnes and Jason Heyward also connected as Los Angeles swept the three-game series.

“Going into the break, we weren't playing good baseball. And then to come out fresh against a really good ballclub and to play the way we did — the offense came to life,” Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said.

It was the 25th time the Dodgers launched at least six homers in a game and first since 2022 against Kansas City. Five came off Boston starter Kutter Crawford (6-8).

“I think just winning, coming back from behind to win a lot of these games, difficult situation, it really creates a lot of momentum for the team. So hoping to continue that moving forward," Ohtani said through an interpreter.

Jarren Duran, the MVP of last Tuesday's All-Star Game, homered and drove in four runs for the Red Sox (53-45), who fell a game behind the Royals (55-45) for the final AL wild card.

“The one thing they do is they hit a ball in the air, obviously. They get pitches in the zone, they hit it in the air and they hit a few homers,” Boston manager Alex Cora said.

James Paxton (8-2) allowed three runs on four hits and struck out seven in five innings. Boston rallied for three runs in the ninth, but Daniel Hudson came in for his sixth save.

Barnes' solo shot gave the Dodgers a 5-2 lead in the fifth, and Ohtani drove a cutter from Crawford 473 feet over the bleachers to become the first NL player with 30 homers this season. Aaron Judge leads the majors with 35.

According to fans in the area, the ball sailed between the pavilion roof and an advertisement sign in right-center field, but it cleared the concourse and landed on the walkway in the ballpark plaza.

“I was looking but I really couldn’t see where it went,” said Ohtani, who has homered at least 30 times in four straight seasons. “Everybody was like kind of semi-impressed.”

Crawford allowed six runs and seven hits in five-plus innings. He became the first Boston starter since Nathan Eovaldi in 2022 to allow five homers in a game.

“They've got a good lineup. It’s pretty deep. They force you to make pitches and execute. And when you don’t execute they do some damage," Crawford said. “I left a few pitches over the middle of the plate and they didn’t miss.”

Boston took a 2-0 lead three pitches into the game. Romy Gonzalez led off with a double on the first pitch before Duran drove Paxton's fastball into the bleachers in left-center.

Duran went 6 for 12 with two home runs and seven RBIs in the series.

The Dodgers tied it in the bottom half on Freeman's solo shot to right-center and Lux's RBI double.

Hernández, the winner of last Monday's Home Run Derby, gave Los Angeles the lead when he connected on a drive that just got over the short wall near the right-field corner.

Lux had a solo shot in the fourth and Heyward, activated off the injured list before the game, hit a two-run drive off former Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen in the eighth.

“I thought we swung the bat pretty well in Detroit and then it’s carried over here,” Barnes said. “Obviously, we pitched well the first two days and those were good wins. And we put some offensive days together. Yeah, it’s nice to score runs. It’s easier to pitch that way, for sure.”

TRAINER'S ROOM

Red Sox: OF Rob Refsnyder was scratched from the lineup due to left shoulder soreness after trying to make a diving catch on Saturday.

Dodgers: SS Miguel Rojas left in the fourth inning due to right forearm tightness. He is expected to be out of the lineup on Monday.

UP NEXT

Red Sox: RHP Tanner Houck (8-6), fourth in the majors with a 2.54 ERA, will start Monday's series opener at Colorado.

Dodgers: RHP River Ryan is expected to be called up for his big league debut Monday against San Francisco.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Boston Red Sox center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela catches out a fly ball hit by Los Angeles Dodgers' Miguel Rojas during the first inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, left, is greeted by manager Dave Roberts, right, after his solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, right, celebrates his solo home run with third base coach Dino Abel during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, left, celebrates his solo home run with third base coach Dino Abel, right, during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting a solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Zack Kelly throws during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher James Paxton throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Boston Red Sox' Romy Gonzalez celebrates after hitting a double during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Boston Red Sox designated hitter Masataka Yoshida, right, reacts after being hit by a pitch from Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda during the eighth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting a solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani watches his solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani watches his solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani celebrates while running the bases after hitting a solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky.

Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness.

It was an uneventful close to a drama that began with the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and quickly escalated into a dragged-out cliffhanger of a mission stricken by thruster failures and helium leaks. For months, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ return was in question as engineers struggled to understand the capsule’s problems.

Boeing insisted after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the two home, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. Their SpaceX ride won’t launch until the end of this month, which means they’ll be up there until February — more than eight months after blasting off on what should have been a quick trip.

Wilmore and Williams should have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after launching in it. But their ride to the space station was marred by the cascade of thruster trouble and helium loss, and NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.

So with fresh software updates, the fully automated capsule left with their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment.

“She’s on her way home,” Williams radioed as the white and blue-trimmed capsule undocked from the space station 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China and disappeared into the black void.

Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out. “A good landing, pretty awesome,” said Boeing's Mission Control.

Cameras on the space station and a pair of NASA planes caught the capsule as a white streak coming in for the touchdown, which drew cheer.

There were some snags during reentry, including more thruster issues, but Starliner made a “bull’s-eye landing,” said NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.

Even with the safe return, “I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board,” Stich said at a news conference early Saturday. “All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it.”

Boeing did not participate in the Houston news briefing. But two of the company's top space and defense officials, Ted Colbert and Kay Sears, told employees in a note that they backed NASA's ruling.

"While this may not have been how we originally envisioned the test flight concluding, we support NASA’s decision for Starliner and are proud of how our team and spacecraft performed," the executives wrote.

Starliner’s crew demo capped a journey filled with delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first test flight with no one aboard in 2019 that it had to repeat it. The 2022 do-over uncovered even more flaws and the repair bill topped $1 billion.

SpaceX’s crew ferry flight later this month will be its 10th for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the half-year expedition with only two astronauts since two seats are reserved for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg.

As veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams anticipated hurdles on the test flight. They’ve kept busy in space, helping with repairs and experiments. The two are now full-time station crew members along with the seven others on board.

Even before the pair launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Starliner’s propulsion system was leaking helium. The leak was small and thought to be isolated, but four more cropped up after liftoff. Then five thrusters failed. Although four of the thrusters were recovered, it gave NASA pause as to whether more malfunctions might hamper the capsule’s descent from orbit.

Boeing conducted numerous thruster tests in space and on the ground over the summer, and was convinced its spacecraft could safely bring the astronauts back. But NASA could not get comfortable with the thruster situation and went with SpaceX.

Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking; one failed to ignite. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters was ditched just before reentry.

Starliner will be transported in a couple weeks back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the analyses will unfold.

NASA officials stressed that the space agency remains committed to having two competing U.S. companies transporting astronauts. The goal is for SpaceX and Boeing to take turns launching crews — one a year per company — until the space station is abandoned in 2030 right before its fiery reentry. That doesn’t give Boeing much time to catch up, but the company intends to push forward with Starliner, according to NASA.

Stich said post-landing it’s too early to know when the next Starliner flight with astronauts might occur.

“It will take a little time to determine the path forward," he said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, left, and Scott Tingle look inside NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft after the empty capsule landed at White Sands Missile Range's Space Harbor, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in New Mexico. (Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via AP)

In this photo provided by NASA, Boeing and NASA teams work around NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft after it landed uncrewed, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, at White Sands, New Mexico, after undocking from the International Space Station. (Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via AP)

In this photo provided by NASA, Boeing and NASA teams work around NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft after it landed uncrewed, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, at White Sands, New Mexico, after undocking from the International Space Station. (Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via AP)

The empty Boeing Starliner capsule sits at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (Boeing via AP)

In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule jettisons its heat shield, bottom, before touching down at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)

In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule floats down towards White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)

In this image from video provided by NASA, the empty Boeing Starliner capsule touches down at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, after undocking from the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)

In this image from video provided by NASA, the unmanned Boeing Starliner capsule undocks as it pulls away from the International Space Station on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (NASA via AP)

In this image from video provided by NASA, the unmanned Boeing Starliner capsule fires its thrusters as it pulls away from the International Space Station on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (NASA via AP)

In this photo provided by NASA, astronauts Butch Wilmore, left, and Suni Williams inspect safety hardware aboard the International Space Station on Aug. 9, 2024. (NASA via AP)