Dodgers Bring Lumber – Make History
After the Dodgers scored 4 runs in the 9th to almost get that come from behind victory in Game 2. The Dodgers unloaded on Kyle Wright and the Braves for 11 runs in the 1st inning. After last night’s game, Dave Roberts said that “I definitely think that’s some momentum we can take into tomorrow.” Boy did they. The Dodgers unloaded on Kyle Wright and the Braves for 11 runs
After the Dodgers scored 4 runs in the 9th to almost get that come from behind victory in Game 2. The Dodgers unloaded on Kyle Wright and the Braves for 11 runs in the 1st inning. After last night’s game, Dave Roberts said that “I definitely think that’s some momentum we can take into tomorrow.” Boy did they. The Dodgers unloaded on Kyle Wright and the Braves for 11 runs in the 1st inning. Those 11 runs set a MLB record for runs scored in any inning of a postseason game.
I have been against the philosophy of getting deep into counts just to drive the pitch count up. I prefer the Corey Seager philosophy… be aggressive and go at the first pitch. Mookie does just that and hits a ground ball down the 3rd base line that Johan Comargo made a dazzling play and throw to first that the umpire, Dan Iassogna, called Betts out. The Dodgers asked for a replay, and the play was overturned , with Mookie credited with an infield single. Next pitch was a Corey Seager run scoring double when Austin Riley slipped in left field allowing Mookie to score from first. JT followed with a pop out, unable to move Seager to third. Then Max hit a hard ground ball but right to Ozzie Albies for out #2. It started to look like a game many of us have seen all to often in post season play, an inability to get a runner home in scoring position.
Will Smith changed the script, and lined a double into CF scoring Seager and the Dodgers were up 2-0. After hustling last night in the 9th to beat Albies’ throw to 1B after misplaying it twice, Smith continued his hustle to get to 2B just ahead of Pache’s throw. Belli followed that with a walk, and then Joc steps up and unloads for a 3-run HR and many of us are starting to breathe a little easier.
But the Boys in Blue were not done. On the very next pitch 3B Edwin Rios crushes a ball over the CF wall for a 6-0 lead. CT3 follows with a walk on a 3-2 pitch and Kyle Wright is gone, and former Dodger, LHRP Grant Dayton, comes into the game. The first batter he faces was leadoff hitter Mookie Betts, and he walks him on five pitches. Next batter is Corey Seager, and as he so often does he does not waste time looking for that perfect pitch, and lines the first pitch into CF to score CT3 for a 7-0 game.
JT follows the single with a little trickery of his own by sticking his foot out to get hit. It was not noticed by the plate umpire, crew chief Jim Reynolds, who originally believed it was a wild pitch. Braves manager Brian Snitker questioned the call, and it was ruled a HBP. Snitker still was not happy that JT got to go to 1B when he not only did not attempt to get out of the way, but purposely stuck his foot out to get hit. That proved to be a big bonus for LAD as the next batter, Max Muncy, absolutely tattoos a 3-2 pitch for a Grand Slam. Dodgers 11-0 after half an inning.
The bottom of the 1st started like so many of Julio Urias’ starts with a pair of walks to Acuna and Freeman. Urias got Ozuna on strikes and got d’Arnaud and Albies to end the inning. Unfortunately, Urias expended 28 pitches in the inning with an 11-0 lead.
The Dodgers scored in the 2nd on a Cody Bellinger. And scored another 3 in the 3rd on a Corey Seager solo HR (2nd in NLCS and 3rd in Postseason). Seager’s blast was 442. The Dodgers parlayed a JT single, Max Muncy double, Will Smith RBI ground out, and a Cody Bellinger single to score the other two, taking a 15-0 lead.
Christian Pache got a long HR to lead off the 3rd, and that would end the scoring until the Braves got two in the 9th.
Huascar Ynoa came in to relieve Dayton with two outs in the 3rd, and shut down the Dodger bats for 4.0 innings. He pitched well. It might have been interesting if the game was not so out of reach when Ynoa was pitching. After throwing 92 pitches in Game 3, I doubt that Ynoa will pitch again in the series. But if he does, I would bet the Dodgers may have learned something about him.
With 101 pitches, Urias became the first Dodger hurler to exceed 100 pitches in 2020. CK threw 99 twice, but did not exceed 100. Urias was done after 5.0 IP, got the win, and is now 3-0 in the playoffs. Kenley Jansen came in to relieve Julio. KJ was certainly not dominant, but he did throw strikes and got out of the inning on10 pitches and no base runners. That is what he is supposed to do. He is no longer the KJ of 2017. Unless it is another 15-0 game, KJ will not pitch in Game 4, and probably will not pitch in a meaningful spot for the remainder of the playoffs.
Baez followed with a perfect inning and 2 K’s. Wood followed with a shutout inning of his own, allowing a single and getting 2K’s. Contrary to what some may believe, Wood has not been hit hard in the NLCS. He gave up an infield single and then a fly ball double down the right field line by RHH Dansby Swanson, with the OF playing Swanson to pull. To his credit, Mookie took the blame for that ball dropping in. He was quoted as saying…”I need to…do my job”. Mookie said he would catch that fly almost any other night, but he was just to unfamiliar with the wall, and he did not look to see where he was at, but admitted he had room and should have caught it. I do not think anyone is going to hold Mookie to blame, but his point was that Wood made a good pitch and should have got the batter out to end the inning.
I personally was glad to see Adam Kolarek pitch the 9th against 6 RHH. He was hit hard but he got through it against some good RH bats. Kolarek was brilliant during the season, with a 0.95 ERA and 0.789 WHIP in 19.0 IP. He also allowed only one HR all season long until Albies hit it out against him in the 9th of Game 2. Should he have pitched to 6 RHH? Why not in a 15-1 game? What did it hurt? The Dodgers count on him, and he is going to need to face RHH in the series. I just would not let it be Ozzie Albies.
For all of those who doubted why Joc Pederson was on an October roster, hopefully he has proven why he belongs. When it comes to October, Joc comes alive. He got the key 3-run HR in the 1st inning and ended up with 4 hits. I wonder if Eric would allow him to be in the lineup against RHP Bryse Wilson. Or the other player Eric did not want to see in the playoffs, Kike’ Hernandez, who walked and singled against a RHP. He was responsible for the sole run in Game 1. Kike’ is another who seems to wake up in October.
Along with Joc, Corey Seager was again a hitting star with 3 hits. For the NLCS, Seager is 6-12 with 2 doubles, 2 HRs, 5 runs scored, and 7 RBI’s. It looks like Corey has come out to play this October. He has also made several very good defensive plays. I know I do not get a vote, but there is only one SS I want for LAD, and that is Corey Seager.
Max looks like he is coming to life. Even Belli is having a productive post season…comparatively speaking.
The Dodgers were 5-13 WRISP, and 11 2-out RBI’s. The Dodger hitters slugged 5 HRs and allowed only 1.
- Offensive stars – Joc, Corey, and Max.
- Pitching star – Julio Urias
Game 4 – Clayton Kershaw vs Bryse Wilson; 5:08 PM PT, Globe Life Field, Arlington, Texas.
Houston beat Tampa Bay to extend the ALCS to at least 5 games. Pitchers TBD.
More from Dodger Talk
Kim and Sasaki: Dodger Mistakes?
I have heard a few Dodger fans say that maybe the Dodgers made a mistake in signing Roki Sasaki and Hyeseong Kim. Of course, Kim was sent to OKC at the end of Spring Training to work on his hitting. It’s early, but last night he was 2-4 with two walks and 4 RBI, as he hit a…
This is Serious!
Mookie Betts has been sick for nearly two weeks. He is still throwing up. Two weeks ago, he weighed 175 pounds. Now, he weighs 157 pounds. “ My body’s just kind of eating itself, ” he said. “I t’s hard to not fuel it. And so every time — literally, every time — I fuel my body, I…
Clayton Kershaw, Sandy Koufax… and Pete Rose
Yesterday, it was mentioned that Clayton Kershaw has never had Tommy John Surgery after seventeen years in the league. It was my opinion that this occurred because Clayton made a conscious decision not to throw with maximum effort on each pitch. There was a time early in his…
How Many Innings Will the Dodgers' Starters Pitch?
There are 1,458 innings in a 162-game baseball schedule. Of course, games will inevitably go into extra innings, so let’s call a season 1,500 innings (give or take). I have stated before that I would not be surprised if no Dodger starter pitched more than 125 innings. For…
Discussion (155)
Disagree, not disagreeable
Even if they lose tonight, I’m not giving up. I have seen enough baseball to know the Dodgers are capable of winning three in a row against the Braves. Will they have to play well? Yes. Are they capable of playing well? Yes.
I am super-disappointed Clayton pitched so poorly in the sixth, It was really bad. No command. No poise at a key moment — but you could see it coming, as he was behind hitters all game and just trying to grit it out and hope they hit some balls at people… but we know the October baseball gods NEVER smile on Clayton. I feel really bad for him.
As I am typing, Dodgers have two on and no outs — they are not done fighting. I’m telling you, as conditioned as I am to expect them to lose, it’s baseball, and you never know what’s gonna happen next. Go Dodgers.
Everybody feels bad, so I certainly don’t want to write too much about this now. And the series is not over, at least officially. But I will say that there is something wrong here. Oh, we’re good, we win a lot of games. But there is something wrong, when we again flame out like this. Many things, perhaps. The easiest target is Roberts, simply because you can’t completely rebuild the team. Is it not fair to say that Roberts does not get the most out of the team? I can’t measure that game by game, but we are less than the sum of our parts, we were last year, too. Some of that has to fall on Roberts. I have seen some managers whose teams were better than they looked. It came from knowing the right reliever to put in, knowing what players can be improved and which can’t, and how to best employ them. Roberts’ teams the last two years have greatly underachieved in the playoffs. And isn’t winning titles the goal here? Maybe not for the ownership, but that would be very sad.
Are there worse managers than Roberts? Definitely. I think he is better than Russell, Hoffman, Tracy and Mattingly. So? Would we possibly end up with a worse manager than Roberts? Very possibly, but it’s worth the risk, because we aren’t winning titles with him, that should be obvious. Nothing is going to change here, this is not luck. So you change managers, spend money to hire the best one you can find, and that is a start. There are personnel changes which also need to be made, but there are constraints on that. I just don’t want for us to have to go into next season with the same manager saying the same things, because they and he are not good enough to win titles here. And if some people don’t agree, that’s fine, but without drastically overhauling the entire roster, what is there to make you think that somehow we are going to win a title next season, going on in the same way? I will say that any major franchise in baseball, the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, would fire the manager after this season. You don’t get points for being immensely loyal to them, or valuing continuity over taking a risk to gain improvement. The ownership owes more to the fans than this.
Total team meltdown!
This f*d up season needs to be over. Good riddance to it. Sixty game bullsh*t season with a bunch of crappy rookie umps . Can’t even play the playoffs at the friendly beautiful Dodger stadium.
A change in managers may be possible and what manager knows these kid’s better than the minor league manager that manage them
The now traditional October choke job by the Dodgers. Nothing else to be said. Great team April through September.
Why would they have Buehler pitch in the 9th? Wouldn’t you want him fresh for tomorrow in case we need to hold the game?
Well I think the bullpen will look different but otherwise it will be the same team minus Joc and Kike.
Like I said yesterday, managers of any organization are hired for and expected to get their “team” to perform at their best. So if you’re organization isn’t meeting it’s goals you can change your team if you think you have the wrong people or change the person managing them. That’s how life works.
Now, if the goal is to make the playoffs every year, we have the right guy. If the goal is to win it all, we better try something different. I think 8 years of this is a large enough sample size, don’t you?
Oh, and by the way, no one is a bigger Dodger fan then I am and I’m hoping we can still pull this off. I sure hope so but I’ve seen this movie before.
We’re seeing what a real MVP looks like in this series!
8 to tie, 9 to take the lead!
Well we’ve had the better team for 2 innings this series!
I didn’t click on the ‘POST COMMENT’ box pointing examples of how I see this as the manager designing this loss but it’s how I fell. There is something wrong when it’s the other team playing ‘Dodger baseball’. I could be wrong but it is really appearing this way this moment.
That was painful! See u tomorrow!
Kershaw will get the loss, and his post season legacy will again be maligned, but this was a team gag. I don’t blame Roberts. These players, most of them anyway, have proven over and over they are not prime time athletes.
We are now facing elimination games for three straight days. Character is about to be revealed.
Managing people isn’t just about making decisions. It’s about getting the most out of your people. It’s about motivating them to perform at their best when it’s needed. It’s about getting them to be successful in challenging situations. In business, sports, war or life in general.
How sad that they are beating us so easily, the bullpen a disaster in all defeats, if tomorrow the bullpen does not improve it will be a season that went down the drain, a sadness.
May, Buehler, Gonsolin and Urías can do it, but we need the bullpen and the offense to work.
it’s a point of reference Badger. Sorry if it offended you.
We need more Joe Kelly!
Won’t say too much for now, but it seems like we ran into the hottest team in the league for the 5th straight post season. We typically play well with our back are against the wall. First trip to San Diego against a red hot Padres team, and we came way winning the series and securing first place in the division. Our offense was really flat entering the toughest stretch of the schedule starting with a home series against Houston and ending against Oakland. By the end of it, our offense was awake again. If we can pull this off, we’ll have definitely earned it. Going to take a team effort and some unsung heroes. Maybe we should start by bunting again. In two of our losses a combined 7 hits. Yeesh.
I don’t have a clue how this is going to turn out. Just given our starting pitching for the rest of this series, I have confidence that we can prevail. And facing some of their pitchers for a second time might also work in our favor.
Also, if we are going to break this 32 year old drought it probably won’t come easy.
Disappointing more than anything. I expected more and got much less. But tonight I have more serious things on my mind, My son’s mother is in serious condition in Oklahoma. Most likely kidney failure. Nothing to do with Covid. She has had the condition for years and my son gave her a kidney a few years ago. So I am still waiting for him to let me know how she is. Baseball right now is more of a release than anything else. And no matter how it turns out, I am going to enjoy it while I can, If the Cheetos can win a elimination game, so can the Dodgers.,