The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Boston Red Sox 9–6 on Sunday to win their third consecutive game, and Shohei Ohtani became the fourth player in Major League Baseball history to hit 30 home runs in a single season.

In the fifth inning at Dodger Stadium, he fired a massive 473-foot solo drive to center field off a 2-1 cutter from Red Sox right-hander Kutter Crawford, giving his club a 6-2 lead. In 2022, while playing for the Los Angeles Angels, the two-way standout became the first Japanese player to hit 30 home runs in a major league game in a row.

“The angle was good. Ohtani stated about his blast, “I was following the ball roughly (after hitting it) but couldn’t visually see where it went.” “I’ll strive to hit one even better.”

After hitting his first home run as an MLB All-Star on Tuesday, it was Ohtani’s first of the second half of the season.

The 30-year-old is one home run shy of 250 in his career and leads the National League in home runs, two more than Atlanta Braves player Marcell Ozuna.

Masataka Yoshida also went 1-for-3 with one RBI for the Red Sox, but his club lost three games in a row. Ohtani did the same.

Shota Imanaga pitched seven innings of one-run ball on two hits in the Cubs’ 2-1 walk-off victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks after ten innings. He did not obtain his tenth win, but he did record his highest number of strikeouts in his debut MLB season—ten.

In the sixth, Imanaga gave up his first hit of the game with two outs, then in the seventh, Eugenio Suarez blasted a solo home run. Seiya Suzuki, a Cubs cleanup hitter and Imanaga’s countryman, knotted the score with an RBI single in the ninth inning. The home club won the game in the tenth inning thanks to a bases-loaded walk.