Dodgers Relievers Blow Another WS Game

I had to run to the office for a few minutes this AM and I had on MLB.Radio and here’s a couple of very interesting things that were said:

“Yeah, Roberts made some mistakes, but Cash made more… they just worked out better.”

Number of “HARD HIT” Balls (balls with exit velocity over 95 MPH):

Tampa Bay – 7

Los Angeles – 16

WOW!

Finally, they said “One of these organizations is going to lose the World Series because they are way overthinking it!

More often than not a playoff baseball series is decided in key moments. If the Dodgers had won last night, Kershaw could’ve closed it out today for a somewhat redemptive denouement to his career as one of the best Dodger pitchers in history, but with a spotty record in the playoffs. The Greek tragedy goes on, I guess.

I can’t really comment WHY Baez was put in. I’m sure there was some rational reason. I couldn’t help thinking about the nickname he’s been given in this site while I was watching last night – El Gasolino. I think he would’ve been ok if he had used better pitch selection. On that three run homer, he got two quick strikes low and away with his changeup. Even Smoltz commented that Lowe was vulnerable to off speed stuff, but was a great fastball hitter. Baez then went high and away with his fastball when he was up in the count. I have to believe he was setting him up for another low and away change. The problem is he went high fastball away three straight times, and on on that third pitch he just missed and the ball caught a big part of the plate. At that point Lowe had it perfectly timed. He didn’t try to pull and just went with a pitch he specializes in hitting and …. bye.

Even Kenley is defendable somewhat. He looked good last night in spite of that homer. The issue is everyone with a pair of eyes knows Kenley has some nights where he looks like vintage Kenley, but there are nights when he just looks tired out – no velocity and no cut on his cutter. That’s just how it is when you age. At this point management should be able to pinpoint the patterns and know when he’s more likely to be on form. I think the first thing you look at is if he’s effective pitching on back to back nights. Without doing the research, my guess is no. But he was brought out in the 9th anyway.

Ok, so you bring him in and he gives up a flukey broken bat bloop. Fine, that’s not a disaster, but now you have the monster up. Do you walk him a move a guy into scoring position? I understand if you don’t want to do that, so the Dodgers all gather around the mound to discuss how to pitch to Arozarena and go over scenarios – or whatever it is they were talking about. Now they make the decision to pitch to the hottest hitter in the universe in a key moment. Smith sets up on the outside. They’re going to pitch him away, probably not going to give him anything to hit.

Kenley missed! He started with a tepid 91 mph fastball that was center in – right in Arozarena’s sweet spot. He was first pitch taking so he didn’t crush it, but that just gave me a really sinking feeling.

Now the Dodgers are a little on their heels because the top of the Rays rotation is coming up and the Dodgers still don’t have an answer for the hole they have in the 4th starter slot. That Wood is even being contemplated as a starter is not good.

A couple of other observations:

I’ve come to realize that Will Smith is not the cleanest receiver out there. Austin Barnes is a much better pitch framer, and I think Barnes calls a better game, too. Smith is touted for his defense, but when you see him block pitches in the dirt and then watch Zunino – Zunino is clearly a master at that craft.

The Silver Lining for the Dodgers after Saturday night’s devastating loss . . . it wasn’t game 7!

AC, I wanted to print out and hang up your article on my frig after reading it last night. It said everything I felt and agreed with especially the bullpen decisions made. I could hear the frustration in your words and hope today with a night’s sleep some of the angst has melted away and we can put it behind us and move forward and the Dodgers will.

What a disaster. How can half of the defense screw it up all on the play???!!! Taylor – choke in CF where he almost never plays with the game on the line, Muncy choke bad throw, Clank off of Smith’s glove, Jansen walking around, not backing up. What a sh** show! I can’t say I’ve ever seen such a choke job. Jansen sucks. Screw the soft contact, you missed your spots by a foot. You walked two guys in a one run game.

I was pissed when they brought in Baez with runners on which hardly ever works out well. I was pissed when they didn’t let Urias finish the 5th. Was there really a need to bring in Treinen right there, or could we have extended the relief group a little longer by starting a fresh inning in the 6th? 2 outs, both Ks, nobody on, 80 pitches. But, I had ZERO confidence than Jansen could close out a one run game. Why can’t McGee pitch? Where’s Kelly? Graterol couldn’t start the 9th?

Plenty of blame to go around.

Before I wrote this, I went back and read all the comments from last night. So funny, so sad and so true. This game was one of the most exciting 26 outs I’ve ever seen. It’s too bad that we needed 27.

Sorry Mark, I will not make excuses. However three things should of been decided or known before the series started. These are not in game decisions.

1. Jansen cannot go two nights in a row. There was no reason to pitch Jansen on Friday night. His velo was down on Saturday night. Something they should of known before the series started.

2. We need four starters. Who are they? Three are obvious. They are Kershaw, Buehler, and Urias. The fourth is May or Gonsolin. May likes to know when he is going to pitch. Then it is obvious that May is your fourth starter. Then move Gonsolin to the pen and use him there. I believe players do better when they know their roles.

3. Baez does well when he pitches a new inning. He does not do well when he inherits runners. Treinen, Gonzales, and Floro are best at inheriting runners. Things Doc should know about his players. It is the managers job to put players in position to succeed.

What I wrote above is not second guessing. Doc open himself up to a lot of second guessing. Last night. Yes the players must preform and they did not. I quit watching when Jansen came in the 9th inning.

Yes, all that happened and we gave one away. No mention anywhere this morning about Adames pulling Muncy off second base for the third out of the inning. 6 umps out there and not one of them saw it? Inexcusable. And not one reporter that I can find even talking about it. The way we’ve been scoring with 2 outs that inning might have gone on for a while.

That finish is something you should only see in Little League games.

After all that I hope the Dodgers are disgusted and pissed. It’s time to score 15 and send a message.

Let it hang out baby,

Let it hang out now, now na-na now,

Let it hang out baby,

Everything will work out,

Mookie, Mookie, Mookie,

Mookie, Mookie, Mookie, Moo.

Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you! That phrase epitomizes the life of a reliever. Last night the bear ate the Dodgers.

So much to ponder about last night. Notwithstanding the Dodgers’ loss, it was an unbelievably exciting game.

The post game interviews were informative. Doc took the blame for sending Baez back out. He said he pulled Treinen because “his pitches didn’t look sharp.” He admitted Baez didn’t execute his pitches and that Jansen missed his “spot.”

Jansen on the other hand arrogantly said he made the pitches he wanted to make and the Rays only got soft contact off him. Okay. That’s a matter of Interpretation.

Given the way they pitched Arozarena, why not just give him the intentional walk? Save your good pitches for Phillips.

It may not have made a difference in the outcome, but Kike’s bunt was horrible.

Some question not bringing Graterol back out, but frankly none of his pitches looked sharp, albeit there were only 7 of them.

The Dodgers need classic Kershaw tonight. While I’m an Alex Wood fan, turning to him in game 6 down 3-2 would not give me the greatest hope.

Where’s Koufax when you need him?

After that last play of the game my thought was from the famous Jack Buck call on Gibson’s HR in the ’88 WS….

“I don’t believe what I just saw!!”

I had put this game in the win column and was looking forward to Kershaw closing out the series with a win today. How sweet would that have been? The final redemption for the Dodgers and especially Clayton Kershaw. But, it was not to be. Hopefully, they can regroup and crush the Rays.

Note that the Rays BP gave up 5 runs yesterday. Their top three starters can’t even go 5 innings which I think is awful for a team playing in the World Series. The combination of lack of innings from your starting pitching and overuse of the BP may be starting to catch up with the Rays. We’ll see.

The Dodgers battled back over and over again until the ninth inning. They failed offensively in the top of the inning and failed defensively in the bottom of the inning. You win as a team as they were doing the first eight innings and you lose as a team as they did in the ninth. One of the more crushing defeats in Dodger playoff history. They came back several times after failures of Doc and the bullpen. But, in the end the Rays who prevailed. Yes, Dodger fans…

“It’s time for Dodger playoff baseball….again”

Here’s the smartest thing written about last night’s game (by Bear):

It was gut-wrenching to watch. I am not going to make excuses for anyone, not going to blame anyone either. This is baseball. Stuff like this happens every year. Last night it happened to the Dodgers. Shake it off and go from there. >/i>

I fail to understand the compulsion to always have to blame someone… anyone. There’s plenty of blame to go around and I blame the DODGERS! The players, the team, but this is the strange game of baseball. In the 9th, Kenley turns a bat into a toothpick and give up a bloop hit. I don’t blame them for walking Arozarena, but walks are bad. I keep hearing Kenley missed his spots – he always misses his spots, but with more movement (in the old days), it wasn’t as critical.

We could blame Roberts, for putting in the wrong pitchers. We could blame Taylor for bobbling the hit to CF. We could blame Will Smith for not catching the ball. We could blame the Dodgers for not hitting with RISP. We can blame Betts and Bellinger for being 0-9 in the game. We can blame Blake Treinen for giving up two runs, when he did.

The Dodgers pitchers held the Rays to 10 hits. The Rays pitchers gave the Dodgers’ 15 hits!

Bitch all you want about the Dodgers pitching or bullpen, but right HERE, right NOW in the 2020 World Series, the Dodgers ERA is 4.54 and the Rays ERA is 6.43! Ponder that! The Dodgers WHIP is 1.15 while the Rays is 1.66. Yet, the series is tied 2-2.

The Dodgers are hitting .282 as a team (.895 OPS) while the Rays are hitting .229 (.737 OPS). The Dodgers have outscored the Rays 25-19 and yet the series is 2-2.

Last night was a gut-wrenching, puke-your-guts-out loss, but the Series is tied and so far, the Dodgers pitching and hitting is better than the Rays. Opportunism is the difference. This ain’t the end… but it might feel like it to you.

That “bum” Pedro Baez and the “Great Nick Anderson” both have 6.75 ERA’s. Go figure!

According to FANGRAPHS, the Dodgers Bullpen ERA in the World Series is 1.64 (33 IP) while the Rays is 2.57 (29 IP). There is plenty of blame to go around, but like in game 3 when Hawkeye said they were all pulling on the same rope, this is an EPIC FAIL for the team. Can they recover? That is the question…

Barnes will start today with Clayton. Let’s hope he has some more magic. This loss feels horrible!

Dodgers lost the game but not the series, that is up to Kershaw tonight, he wins tonight and he makes up for a lot of the past, he pitches poorly and it’s another big game where he fails.

The Dodgers need Kershaw to step up and put the team on his back and get the biggest win of his career. Let’s see what happens.

Good–> 2 Out RBI’s: 7

Not So Good–> Team RISP: 4-16 & LOB: 10

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Also, Walker has never started on 3 days rest… so him pitching in game 6 would not be the ideal situation. So that turns Sunday night’s game into somewhat of a must win… that is, if you would like to have Walker on regular rest for a potential game 7.

It was gut wrenching to watch. I am not going to make excuses for anyone, not going to blame anyone either. This is baseball. Stuff like this happens every year. Last night it happened to the Dodgers. Shake it off and go from there. I do put some blame on the offense for leaving far too many runners on base. For every two out run they scored, they left a man in scoring position. You get a runner to second with no outs and he stays there, that is on the offense. But Kershaw is up next, and even as bad as the night was, they are still in this and can still win. They win tomorrow, and you can bet Buehler will be pitching game 6.

Couple thoughts. I thought Urias looked good and this stretches back over several consecutive starts/appearances. Yes, he was at 80 pitches, but he went for 101 against Atlanta almost two weeks ago and was coming off 5 days rest. I thought he deserved the benefit of doubt, especially considering our bullpen’s prior performance this series. As it ended up, I thought his 5th inning stuff was better than any of the subsequent pitchers. Live and hopefully learn.

I’ll be interested to see if they go back to using Urias, May, Gonsolin in middle/late relief over the final three games. If it makes game 7, maybe everyone but Buehler gets an inning. Gonsolin and May are struggling too, but in room full of struggling pitchers, I’ll take odds on the guys with the best stuff. This is where we maybe miss Maeda and Stripling, getting thru innings 6-8, especially if our starters aren’t allowed to go deep.

My safest bet of the night was Joc getting a hit over Bellinger in the 7th, so I’m glad they walked Bellinger. Joc looks back to me and maybe for awhile now. Bellinger has one of the sweetest looking swings in the league when he connects, and conversely one of the ugliest when he doesn’t. He needs an offseason of fine tuning more than anyone. I sure wish he would have played in CF, not only for the last play but there were some bloopers he might have gotten to as well. I’m not sure why balls are carrying further now in this ballpark as the air gets cooler. Some of those Rays shots seemed like deep fly outs coming off the bat, but just carried. Against the Padres, we were just clearing the fence, now hitting into the 2nd level stands. Tough call on the Muncy would-be double. It’s natural instinct to reach out if you’re falling, so I don’t think it was deviously deliberate by Adames, but it was still a foul.

When will Roberts ever learn. The Dodgers have a narrow lead at a critical juncture of WS game 4. He brings in anti reliever (Baez) known to blow leads. Ask any Dodger faithful. At that moment, Anxiety hit, knowing that disaster was about to strike and did on schedule. Following the three run jack, I ask myself, what is this F…ing manager thinking? The boys in Blue rally. Then, as if in a surreal nightmare, anti reliever returns the next inning, throwing another home run pitch! Did this really just happen? As the game progressed, epic play unfolded. Two awesome teams battling away, the Dodgers though, clearly the better. Enter the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers leading 7/6. No, please No!! On comes KJ. The supposedly improved version of himself. Who’s kidding who? Why is he in there with a one run lead? Did not want to immerse myself in condescending thoughts but somehow I knew this outcome would not be favorable for Dodger nation. Two outs, two on. Up comes a hitter that hasn’t seen much time at the plate. Easy out right. Naw, bloop single. Error by Chris Taylor, relay throw from Muncy to Will Smith looked liked a slider that eluded Smiths glove. Two runs in, game over. Rays prevail 8/7. Position players botched it? Yes and No. The way I see it, the game was handed to the Rays when Roberts inserted Baez then polished it off with KJ in the ninth. The Rays didn’t beat the Dodgers. The Dodgers did!

The Dodgers will toss and turn all night, no sleep, might feel it tomorrow. The Rays are gonna sleep like babies.

I noticed that Will Smith didn’t toss his mask when the play at home developed.

His peripheral vision therefore was limited, and he rushed his reception of the throw because he didn’t see the runner fall down.

This felt like a repeating nightmare, or like a scene from a horror movie when the killer keeps coming back, just when you think it’s dead. Now they will need to regroup, and come back strong today. It will be a test of their mental toughness. But however they handle this, I don’t know how much more I can take!

A good review, Jeff, with statistics for backing. I don’t have any, but I know from memory that Baez is not a reliable pitcher, he has a good game or two and then on not so good, where he gives up a bunch of runs, often on home runs. Bringing him out for another inning was almost incomprehensible. And Graterol should have started the ninth, I think, because it is not like Jansen has been impressive in the late season.

The meta-issue, as they say, is the bullpen ,and why the ownership and management does not make sure that we have one of the best bullpens in baseball. We do not, that should be obvious. And I am not impressed by regular season statistics, particularly in a short season where we were better than almost everyone we played. If we want to go back and look at our playoff failures and disappointments over the last 30 years, it almost always comes down the the bullpen. I don’t remember all the names, but I do remember Broxton, Elbert, Jansen, Baez, Kelly, Jansen again. And there were others. Of course all teams blow saves at times, and no closer is perfect. But we keep going out there with someone who we keep saying is our closer, but who has struggled for three years, so much that we did not use him in any key situation in the World Series last year, and then every time he pitches decently, people say that he is back to his form in 2016-2017, but he is not. We use him partly because of sentimentality, and partly because we have one else we trust to close. Yes, losing Ferguson hurt, but every team has a loss like that, and he wasn’t a closer. We bring in people, but never a bona fide closer; and with rare exception (Morrow, and he was a well-placed longshot), we never even bring in a legitimate setup man. We keep falling back to using Baez. It is almost laughable, but it is actually rather pathetic, for this organization with all that money.

i know nothing about cars, but i know that if you have a really fancy car with top parts, but you have bad tires, or even just one, you will have a breakdown or an accident. A baseball team does not need 20 all-stars, but it absolutely needs a top bullpen. And we are proving it again, with a great lineup, but a team which is very likely to lose the World Series to a lesser team with a great bullpen, and a manager who masterfully uses it. Maybe our goal is to be a lesson for all the other franchises.

This organization was always proud of its bullpens, from Hugh Casey, to Joe Black, to Clem Labine, Larry Sherry, Ron Perranoski, Ed Roebuck, Phil Regan, Jim Brewer, Steve Howe. Many of our tittles have featured great bullpen work. But for whatever reason; counting pennies, laziness, vain hope that it will all work out, oversentimentality, all or some of those, we keep going into each season with a bullpen with holes in it. And eventually it catches up with us. We lose leads, and we lose games in the late innings. Tonight we led 2-0, then 4-2, then Baez gave up a three-run homer and we trailed 5-4. Then we took the lead 6-5 (why was Bellinger trying for third with two outs?), then Baez gave up another homer. Then we took a 7-6 lead, and Jansen gave up two runs , yes, one we screwed up, but it would have been tied, and we likely would have lost anyway with our bullpen. So that is why I worried about the bullpen all season, and why I never trusted the regular season work, and why I have complained for at least two years that not enough was done to fix the bullpen. And like a faulty valve in the car, it inevitably comes up to thwart all the other good parts we have. And for this organization to allow this each year,, is really unforgivable, at least within the realm of sports. If Tampa Bay can build that kind of bullpen, if the Yankees can mostly buy one, why can’t we? is there some rule that it would be too arrogant of us to try to have a great bullpen, we might win too easily? I’m being only partly sarcastic here, I have this sense that ownership never wants us to be truly great, born out by the fact that we do not win multiple titles as some franchises do, and actually we don’t win any.

Did Roberts explain not having Graterol come back out in the 9th in his post game conference?

Maybe fatalistic, but it sure feels like they lost the series tonight.

Ray are definitely at the advantage now with the top of their rotation ready to go.

I keep wanting Kenley to succeed and yes the hits werent hard but here are a couple things to notice. Kenley made a good pitch just outside on Arezarena. He hit his spot for one of the few times. Then Smith set up even further outside. It was a totally non-competitive pitch and really no intention to be. There’s no way he’s going to chase that far outside. What does that say about confidence in the pitcher?

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Second, against Phillips all he had to do was get the ball above his hands. You absolutely don’t miss in the zone there. Just like game 2 of 2017 WS he did not execute the same pitch and the same pitch he’s had problems executing for a couple of years now.

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I’m taking my chance with 100 mph over a guy with less velo and can’t hit his spots and they lack so much confidence in they set up 2 feet outside on a pitch.

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The experienced team shit the bed in the 9th.

The pitch location was just terrible on that last pitch… Will was set up high and inside… but Kenley missed and left it middle in. The count was 1-2… that ball shouldn’t have been anywhere near the strike zone. He missed badly on the Kiermaier single… left it over the plate again. And Kenley shockingly left two over the middle of the plate to Arozarena too… but he looked at one and fouled the other off. He has done this so often over the last few years… it is beyond frustrating.

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Watching the replays again… all the damage against us was done on pitches that caught way too much of the plate. A lot of this seemed to be bad execution by our pitchers… but I did also notice that our pitchers were shaking off Will’s signs a bit throughout the game… not sure if they do that as often with Austin.

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I would definitely be in favor of having Austin catch the remaining games and Will DHing or pinch hitting. Btw… Will is batting .176 in this series, as of tonight.