DALLAS — Leo Carlsson‘s short-handed goal midway through the third period proved to be the winner as the Ducks rallied to beat the Dallas Stars 7-5 on Thursday night.
Carlsson scored on a slap shot 10:38 into the third period to give the Ducks a 6-4 lead. Troy Terry had an assist on the goal.
Wyatt Johnston had two goals, Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin and Mikko Rantanen also scored for Dallas, which lost for the third time in four games. Miro Heiskanen had four assists and Jake Oettinger made 18 saves.
Dallas had its seven-game points streak halted.
Up next for the Ducks: at the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday.
Denis Bouanga scored in his sixth consecutive match Sunday night, connecting in the 86th minute to send LAFC past Atlanta United 1-0 for its fifth consecutive victory.
Late in a frustrating evening for LAFC stars Son Heung-min and Bouanga, the French star pounced when a long cross into the box deflected to him off the head of Atlanta’s Enea Mihaj. In his 100th MLS match, Bouanga hammered home his 99th goal for LAFC.
LAFC has been turbocharged by Son’s arrival, losing just once in all competitions since July 25 while streaking up the standings and becoming the Western Conference’s highest-scoring team.
Bouanga and Son have scored LAFC’s last 18 goals, an MLS record, while combining to score 19 total goals in their nine matches together.
Son’s four-match goal-scoring streak was ended by 14th-place Atlanta’s cautious game plan, which included a five-man back line with 10 men frequently behind the ball. Atlanta attempted just three shots and nearly disappointed a packed stadium eager to watch exciting soccer, with a particularly huge turnout of Son fans during Korea’s Chuseok mid-autumn holiday.
LAFC is fourth in the Western Conference after this victory, but with two games in hand on first-place San Diego and third-place Minnesota.
LAFC nearly broke through in the 57th minute, but Atlanta goalkeeper Jayden Hibbert saved Mark Delgado’s point-blank shot with his trailing hand. Son then got a corner to an unmarked Ryan Hollingshead in the 64th minute, but the LAFC defender barely missed the net.
Atlanta got a rare chance in the 70th minute, but Bartosz Slisz hit the post.
Son and Bouanga are both headed off for international duty this week, and they’ll be absent when LAFC hosts Toronto on Wednesday. LAFC must make up postponed matches after earning a spot in the FIFA Club World Cup.
Great Britain’s Joe Clarke wins his fourth consecutive kayak cross world title and GB’s first gold medal at the Canoe Slalom World Championships in Sydney.
DENVER — Brenton Doyle had a tying two-run single and scored the go-ahead run on Ezequiel Tovar‘s sacrifice fly in a four-run sixth inning as the Colorado Rockies beat the Angels 7-6 on Friday night.
Tyler Freeman had three hits including a double and Hunter Goodman had an RBI triple for Colorado, which snapped a five-game losing streak and improved to 3-14 in September.
Goodman’s first-inning triple brought Freeman across to start the scoring, and Blaine Crim brought in another on a sacrifice fly.
Christian Moore and Denzer Guzman both went deep in the second inning to bring the Angels ahead 3-2, but Freeman’s second hit of the game brought the tying run across for Colorado.
The Rockies bullpen combined for four innings of one-hit ball in relief of starter Bradley Blalock (2-5), who allowed eight hits and six earned runs while striking out four. Victor Vodnik earned his ninth save of the year.
Mitch Farris (1-2) took the loss in his fourth career start, allowing eight hits and seven runs with five strikeouts.
Key moment: After the Angels had a three-run fifth inning, the Rockies immediately answered with four runs, including two sacrifice flies.
Key stat: Hunter Goodwin’s 61 extra-base hits are the most in a single season by a Rockies primary catcher in franchise history. He is the third Rockies player since 2022 to have 60 or more extra-base hits in a season, joining Tovar (75, 2024) and C.J. Cron (60, 2022).
Up next: Angels RHP Kyle Hendricks (7-10, 5.01) faces Rockies RHP Germán Márquez (3-14, 6.73) in the second game of the three-game series.
MILWAUKEE — All-Star Freddy Peralta gave up two hits, struck out 10 and won his NL-leading 17th game, Christian Yelich hit his 29th homer and drove in three runs and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Angels 9-2 on Tuesday night.
The Angels’ defeat ensured their 10th consecutive losing season, a franchise record. Their playoff drought is at 11 years.
Peralta (17-6) extended his career-high in wins and tied the New York Yankees Max Fried for tops in the majors in victories. Peralta also tied the franchise record set by Zach Davies in 2017.
Peralta gave up one run and two hits over six innings and walked two. The only hiccups were Carter Kieboom’s bloop single and Denzer Guzman’s first career home run.
Peralta had plenty of support in his 31st start of the season.
Yelich did the heavy lifting, but Sal Frelick hit a sacrifice fly, Caleb Durbin, Andrew Vaughn and Jackson Chourio each drove in a run and William Contreras singled home two more.
Christian Moore added a solo shot off Grant Anderson in the seventh.
Angels starter Caden Dana (0-2) allowed five runs on eight hits in 3 2/3 innings.
Kieboom made his Angels debut at first base, returning to the majors for the first time since Oct. 1, 2023, while with Washington.
The Angels selected Kieboom’s contract before the game and placed shortstop Zach Neto (left hand strain) on the 10-day injured list.
Key moment
Yelich hit his 29th home run of the season, a two-run shot in the fourth. He had an RBI double in the first.
Key stat
Peralta struck out the side in the first, second and sixth and tallied at least 10 strikeouts for the 15th time in his career and first this season.
Up next
José Soriano (10-10, 4.13 ERA) starts for the Angels against Brandon Woodruff (6-2, 3.32) and the Brewers.
Dodger Stadium was eerily quiet for much of Monday night. And not just because whole sections of the upper deck sat largely empty.
In a 9-5 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers didn’t just drop their fourth straight game, but turned in a performance that elicited as many boos as anything else at Chavez Ravine, stumbling to a season-worst losing streak on a night they did little right in any facet of the game.
There was bad defense early. In the first inning, center fielder Hyeseong Kim lost a fly ball in the twilight sky, leading to two runs that would have been unearned had it not been ruled a double. In the second, third baseman Max Muncy spiked a throw to first on a slow-rolling grounder that led to another preventable score, even though his miscue was also ruled a base hit.
The pitching wasn’t great either. Left-handed opener Jack Dreyer followed Muncy’s bad throw with an even wilder pitch to the backstop in the next at-bat, advancing the runner to set up an eventual sacrifice fly. Landon Knack took over in the third and promptly gave up a pair of two-run home runs, one to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. on a down-and-in slider and another to Gabriel Moreno on an inside fastball.
Even the few bright spots offensively weren’t close to being enough.
Mookie Betts hit two home runs in his continued search to break out of a slow start. Shohei Ohtani retook sole possession of the major league lead in long balls by whacking his 17th of the season. But all three blasts came with no one on base. And they represented the Dodgers’ only hits of the night against Arizona right-hander Brandon Pfaadt, who was otherwise unbothered in a six-inning effort that included no strikeouts (or even a single swing-and-miss from a Dodgers hitter) but plenty of fine plays from an athletic defense behind him.
“It’s hard to start games behind before you take an at-bat,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve given up runs in the first inning. We got to put up that zero and kind of get a chance to get the game going.”
While shaky defense and inconsistent production at the plate have been bugaboos for the Dodgers (29-19), it is the team’s increasingly pitching struggles that have stood out most during this four-game skid — the club’s longest since losing five in a row in late May last season.
With the loss to the Diamondbacks (26-22), the Dodgers own a team earned-run average of 4.28, which ranks 22nd in the majors and is their highest at this point in a campaign since 2010.
The main root of the problem is easy to identify. Starters Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki remain on the injured list, forcing the club into plans such as Monday with a rookie in Dreyer opening for a depth arm in Knack. The bullpen has been shorthanded, too, with Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Kirby Yates all injured, as well.
“You go through certain situations like this, it’s just tough to find a way to get back healthy and get our guys back out there,” Betts said. “But we’re battling with what we got.”
Arizona’s Gabriel Moreno, right, celebrates with teammate Josh Naylor after hitting a two-run home run in the third inning Monday.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
The good news is that several of those sidelined options are on the mend. Glasnow and Snell are both progressing in their throwing programs, with Glasnow “a tick ahead of Blake,” according to Roberts. Sasaki is expected to begin his throwing program during the team’s upcoming road trip. And Ohtani, who has been throwing regular bullpen sessions all season, is beginning to build up his pitch count as the club targets his return to the mound sometime around the All-Star break.
But in the meantime, the Dodgers have still expected more from their currently healthy group.
“It’s not the staff we thought we’d have this season, but I feel that what we still do [have], and have done in the past with injuries, we’re not doing,” Roberts said. “In the sense of getting ahead of hitters, and keeping them in the ballpark.”
And to do that, Roberts cited one place to start.
“On first glance, we need to be better at getting ahead in counts,” he said. “It doesn’t take a deep dive to see we start 1-and-0 quite often. When you do that, it makes pitching tough.”
Indeed, the Dodgers entered the night 24th in the majors with a 59.8% first-strike rate, a problem Roberts believes has led to too many long innings, and too large a workload for the staff.
“The 30-pitch innings just don’t play. It’s not sustainable,” he said. “And that starts with getting strike one. That ultimately goes to our entire pitching staff.”
The Dodgers were better in that area Monday, starting 27 of 49 at-bats with a strike. But it didn’t help. Dreyer needed 38 pitches to get through his two innings. Knack threw 106 to get through the next five (including 16 in one at-bat to Moreno in the fifth).
And when long reliever Matt Sauer took over in the eighth and gave up a two-run home run to Geraldo Perdomo, much of a season-low (and atypically quiet) crowd of 41,372 began streaming for the exits, not sticking around for one of the Dodgers’ flattest showings this year.
