Giancarlo Stanton delivered the knockout blow the New York Yankees needed, launching a two-run homer in the second inning and driving in three runs total as New York knocked off the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-2 Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, squaring the World Series at two games apiece.

Stanton’s two-run shot off Justin Wrobleski in the second flipped a 1-0 deficit into a lead the Yankees never surrendered, and right-hander Cam Schlittler — brilliant over seven innings — made sure Los Angeles couldn’t claw back. The Dodgers entered the night with a 2-1 series advantage and a chance to take commanding control of the Fall Classic on their home turf. Instead, they head into Game 5 with the series reset and the momentum firmly in New York’s hands.

The decisive sequence came early and snowballed slowly. Stanton, swinging with the full force that made him the most feared power hitter in baseball this postseason, drove a Wrobleski fastball into the Dodger Stadium seats in the second to make it 2-1. He added a run-scoring single in the fourth to push the margin to 3-1. Enrique Hernández’s RBI single in the fifth briefly made it interesting at 3-2, but Amed Rosario’s triple in the sixth and a Jazz Chisholm Jr. single in the eighth applied the finishing coat. The Yankees’ AI manager acknowledged his club’s situational awareness throughout. When Wrobleski came under pressure in the fourth with the top of the order looming, the reasoning logged was deliberate: “Wrobleski stays. He’s at 45 pitches and just turning over to the second time through the order — neither of my hard triggers is close. His 3.28 FIP says he’s been better than this line suggests; 4 hits, but he’s managing.” The call paid off. Wrobleski navigated the frame, and Stanton’s run that inning came on a single rather than the kind of catastrophic multi-run burst that derails games.

The Dodgers’ AI manager, meanwhile, spent much of the evening wrestling with a question that never had a clean answer: when to pull Schlittler. The Yankees starter was simply too good for the decision to matter. But on the Los Angeles side, Wrobleski ran out of rope after six innings and 88 pitches, with seven hits and four runs allowed. “The data line says 1 TTO, but 27 batters faced means he’s about to start his fourth pass through this order — that’s well past my hard trigger,” the Dodgers’ AI manager explained when pulling Wrobleski to begin the seventh. Reliever Kyle Hurt replaced him and delivered a clean inning with two strikeouts, but the damage had already been done.

Hurt’s outing in the eighth unraveled quickly. After walking two of the first five batters he faced, the Dodgers’ AI manager made the call before the inning could fully escape. “Hurt has walked 2 of the 5 batters he’s faced, and both of those free passes are now standing on first and second with nobody out in a two-run game. The leverage index is 1.95 and climbing with every pitch.” Alex Vesia entered and delivered — briefly. Jazz Chisholm Jr., who went 3-for-4 with a triple and drove in the game’s final run, greeted the lefty with a single that scored New York’s fifth. The Dodgers finished with four walks allowed and only two runs scored. In a game where their offense managed zero bases on balls of its own and struck out ten times, those giveaways were unforgivable.

Stanton was the obvious offensive centerpiece with his 2-for-4 night, one homer, three RBI, and a run scored, but Chisholm’s performance beneath the headline numbers was equally critical. His third-inning triple — a rocket down the right-field line — kept the pressure on Wrobleski and helped set up the Yankees’ methodical assault. Against a Los Angeles pitching staff that surrendered five runs on eight hits and walked four, New York’s patient approach at the plate (four walks, only five strikeouts) stood in sharp contrast to the Dodgers’ punchout-heavy night.

Schlittler was superb. The right-hander worked seven innings, allowed six hits and two runs, struck out six, and did not issue a single walk — a performance that earned him the victory in the most important game of the season. He threw 95 pitches before Dodgers AI manager pulled him to open the eighth with a two-run lead, citing both the pitch count and postseason caution despite Schlittler’s 1.87 ERA on the season. “He’s been outstanding — 1.87 ERA all year and he’s dealing tonight,” the Dodgers’ AI manager explained. “But he’s at 95 pitches, it’s the 8th.” Fernando Cruz worked a clean eighth to preserve the lead and earn the save. Schlittler, meanwhile, had thrown only once through the Los Angeles order by every internal model the Dodgers were running — a testament to his ability to attack hitters without pattern repetition. The Yankees starter, using a heuristic lineup set before the game, simply outpitched his counterpart and kept the Los Angeles bats quiet long enough for the offense to do its work.

The series returns to a blank slate. Los Angeles holds home-field advantage but no longer holds a cushion — every remaining game in this series is a must-win of sorts for the team that drops it, and Game 5 on Saturday night at Dodger Stadium will have the weight of a championship on each pitch.

Game 4 Postgame Press Conference

2026 World Series — LAD 2, NYY 5

Series: LAD leads 2-1

NEW YORK YANKEES Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: In the eighth inning you had a two-run lead with Kyle Hurt on in a high-leverage spot, and he’d already walked two of five batters. Walk us through the decision to go to Vesia there.

A: The leverage index was sitting at 1.95 when I made the move — that’s a significant spot, and Hurt had given away two free passes I couldn’t absorb. Vesia’s 1.97 FIP is the best left-handed relief number I’ve got in that pen, and this was his first time through that portion of the order. Two batters of shaky sequencing from Hurt doesn’t override what Vesia’s true talent says he is. The decision was straightforward once I mapped the situation against the options.

Q: You pulled Wrobleski in the seventh even though some of the data suggested he was managing okay — 88 pitches, 7 hits, 4 runs, but only one time through the order by the log. What was the trigger?

A: The system flagged one time through the order, but when I looked at actual batters faced — 27 — he was about to start a fourth pass through this lineup, and that’s a hard boundary for me regardless of what the TTO counter reads. He’d already surrendered 4 runs on 7 hits; the underlying contact quality was trending the wrong way even if the raw numbers looked manageable. At that pitch count with that sequencing, the expected run value of leaving him in was worse than the pen. We protected the lead.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: You made three separate evaluations on Schlittler in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings — each time you kept him in or brought Cruz on late. He gave up a run in the sixth and then you finally pulled him at 95 pitches in the eighth trailing by two. Looking back, was one of those the decision you’d revisit?

A: What I saw out there was a pitcher dealing — 1.87 ERA, no walks, six strikeouts, and he was eating innings in a World Series game at home. Every time I looked at the situation, the leverage was low enough and his pitch count was manageable enough that the calculus said let him work. In hindsight the sixth-inning run changes the shape of that game more than I gave it credit for in the moment, and at 95 pitches in the eighth protecting a one-run lead, I’d like that decision back. Cruz did his job — the damage was already done.

Q: The Dodgers walked four batters tonight and struck out ten times — no walks drawn. How much of the loss comes down to that gap in plate discipline?

A: When you go 0-for-4 bases on balls against a guy with Wrobleski’s walk profile, you’re not executing the game plan. Schlittler was effectively wild enough to keep us off balance, but their hitters punished our mistakes in the zone while our guys were chasing outside of it. The strikeout number tells you we weren’t competitive in enough at-bats to mount a real threat after the fifth. We head home with the series lead, but we have to do better work in the box if we’re going to close this out.

There’s a fascinating asymmetry at the heart of Game 4, and it tells you almost everything you need to know about why the Mariners are now facing a potential series deficit if they drop Game 5. Los Angeles’s AI — let’s call it The Optimizer — spent the entire night protecting a starter it had already pulled, while Seattle’s Skipper calmly rode Justin Wrobleski through the damage and trusted the numbers. One team played the game in front of it. The other played the game in its head.

Start with the Dodgers’ handling of Cam Schlittler, because it’s genuinely strange. The decision log shows The Optimizer pulling Schlittler in the seventh inning — not once, but apparently deliberating twice before acting. The reasoning both times is nearly identical and, frankly, defensible on its face: 1.87 ERA, 85-89 pitches, first time through the order, no walks, five strikeouts. The AI’s own words say “he’s earned the rope.” And then it pulls him anyway. At 95 pitches in the eighth, The Optimizer finally acts, citing a 4-2 lead worth protecting. Fine. Except the Dodgers were down 4-2, not up. Go back to the linescore — Seattle scored in the second, fourth, and sixth innings. The Optimizer was protecting a lead that evaporated two innings earlier. That’s not aggressive bullpen management; that’s a miscalibrated threat assessment combined with some real confusion about the score.

What makes this more damning is the contrast with Wrobleski’s management on the other side. The Skipper’s log at the second inning is actually a pleasure to read — two separate keep decisions, both at 95 percent confidence, both correctly identifying that 29 pitches in the first time through the order with a 0.65 leverage index is nowhere near a pull situation. The two early runs came on a Stanton homer, not a command breakdown, and the Skipper knew the difference. It let Wrobleski pitch until the seventh, when 88 pitches and nearly four times through the order finally tripped the hard trigger. That’s just good baseball. A human manager wouldn’t have done it differently.

Where things get murkier is the eighth inning. Kyle Hurt walked two of his first five batters in a two-run game with nobody out, and The Skipper pulled him with appropriate urgency — confidence 85 percent, leverage index 1.95 and climbing. Reasonable. Then it immediately turned around and kept Alex Vesia on the grounds that six pitches and a 1.97 FIP means two rough batters are “sequencing noise.” That’s a high-leverage situation in a potential World Series-clinching spot, and leaning on FIP to weather a bases-loaded jam is the kind of thing that looks like rigorous analysis until Jazz Chisholm Jr. singles home the insurance run. Vesia wasn’t wrong as a choice. Trusting him unconditionally despite the evidence right in front of you — that’s where the 82 percent confidence probably should’ve been lower.

Here’s where I land after four games: Seattle’s AI is better at reading its own data cleanly and acting on it without second-guessing. Los Angeles’s AI has a troubling tendency to articulate sound reasoning and then either act against it or act on a situation that no longer exists. The Dodgers still lead this series 2-1, which means The Optimizer has been more right than wrong. But if there’s a moment in a potential Game 6 or 7 where the Dodgers need their AI to assess the present reality — not the one it calculated two innings ago — I’m not sure I trust it to do that. The Skipper has earned some confidence. The Optimizer has earned some scrutiny.