It Could Be Over Tonight
It has been 32 years! In some ways that is a lifetime, but here we finally are: Ready to see if the Dodgers can clinch the 2020 World Series tonight. I would be remiss if I did not consider our Dodger brothers and sisters who are in the path of the wildfires and have had to evacuate or are facing evacuation. May the Big Dodger in the Sky be with
It has been 32 years! In some ways that is a lifetime, but here we finally are: Ready to see if the Dodgers can clinch the 2020 World Series tonight. I would be remiss if I did not consider our Dodger brothers and sisters who are in the path of the wildfires and have had to evacuate or are facing evacuation. May the Big Dodger in the Sky be with you all! Facing losing everything is incomprehensible! All I can think of is the Old Irish Proverb:
May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
May the rain fall softly on your fields
And until we meet again
May you keep safe
In the gentle loving arms of God
Stay Safe my Brothers and Sisters!
At first blush, it seems like a mismatch. Blake Snell and his 3.33 ERA in the Postseason versus Tony Gonsolin and his 9.39 Postseason ERA. Some may think the Dodgers have no chance. I am going to suggest that you throw all of that hype and the stats out the window and see how it plays out. Several fans said that Dustin May should not pitch again in the Postseason and yet we saw how that worked out.
Tony Gonsolin has only pitched 1.1 innings this World Series and has logged 7.2 IP in the Postseason. Tony knows he can pitch to the big boys and I believe that Doc, Mark Prior, Clayton, and now even May are whispering in his ear “You can do this, Catman!” Katmando – I like that name! I usually refrain from gameday predictions, but just like I said that Dustin May would bounce back, I think the same thing about Tony Gonsolin. It would be HUGE if he went four or five innings… but we shall see.
Pitching is important, but the Dodgers’ bats can put a lot of pressure on the Rays tonight and they need to do exactly that. Cody Bellinger (.222), Mookie Betts (.284) and Will Smith (.197) are way past due. So is AJ Pollock (.231) for that matter!
The Dodgers have three players hitting over .300:
- Pederson – .382
- Seager – .344
- Barnes – .318
… and you also have to give Max Muncy a huge amount of credit. He is hitting .268 but leads the Dodgers with a .461 OB%. He is second to Corey Seager in RBI, and lots of fans wanted him outta’ the four-hole. Thank the Big Dodger in the Sky for Max Muncy.
Barnes and Smith have both caught Tony Gonsolin, but two of Tony’s best games were when Austin Barnes was his catcher. Now is not the time to find out if Smith catches the Catman as good as Austin. The disparity in runs allowed between when Smith is behind the plate and Barnes is behind the plate is too great. Smith can DH. Barnes needs to catch!
Look, I like Will Smith – he has exceeded my expectations by a lot. He is a great teammate with excellent skills, but Buehler, Kershaw, Treinen, and now May appear to pitch better with Austin as the Catcher. Will Smith is coachable and if he stays at Catcher, I am sure he will become the equal of Austin Barnes… but he is not RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! Barnes is a better framer, signal-caller and blocks pitches better. Smith has a better arm, but it’s not a cannon.
If I were Dave Roberts, I would tell Will Smith to just focus on tearing up the baseball. “Get us some offense!” I might even shake up the bottom of the lineup a little… or not.
Some of you wonder if I am serious about moving Will Smith to 2B or 3B and all I can say is that is something that I believe could be on the table. I think it has to be considered. We all have high hopes for Gavin Lux, but so far, he has not fulfilled that promise. Certainly, he may, but Smith could be Plan B, especially since the Dodgers are so deep at Catcher with Barnes, Ruiz, and Cartaya (at about the time Barnes will walk).
BTW, the Red Sox feel that they got quite a haul for Mookie Betts. At 24, Alex Verdugo hit .308 with a .367 OB% and .844 OPS. He was 21st in the AL in WAR. The Red Sox are expecting Jeter Downs to be their 2B and Conner Wong to be their starting catcher as soon as 2021. The Dodger paid a huge price to get Mookie…. and they never looked back!
After the season is over, we will delve into each position, all the prospects, and what possibilities exist next year. But, right about now, the Dodgers have a World Series to win and that is their singular focus. Some have questioned why Buehler is not starting on 3 years rest? If you asked that question you also answered it: Three Days Rest! Anything is possible, depending upon the situation, Striker could pitch an inning or two tonight, but right about now, he is the safety net.
It’s all hands on deck and that includes Baez and Jansen. Yes, Jansen was the loser of game four, but he turned one bat into toothpicks and gave up a “bloop” hit. No hard contact! For that matter, if Cody had been healthy, the Series would be over. Even Joe Kelly is available. Dave Roberts has made it clear that the Dodgers do not have a closer, but they have lots of arms. The Young Turks have left their imprint on this Dodger team and we will enjoy watching them pitch for a long time into the future!
Forget Bullpen ERA – it’s all about ERA Period! Right about now the Rays are giving up 5.57 runs a game while the Dodgers are at 4.03 runs allowed! At this stage of the season, there are no starters or relievers – just pitchers! If I were forced to guess what will happen tonight, I would predict that the second time the Dodgers see Blake Snell will result in a blowout! I guarantee they will make him work and I think it is time for an offensive uprising!
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Discussion (213)
Disagree, not disagreeable
LFG
It shall be interesting to see how Gonsolin pitches…
My son happen to be in Dallas on business and he scored a ticket for tonight’s game I am jealous
Two things about Tony Gonsolin and tonight’s game:
1. He is not the “opener.” They told him to start and go as far a possible; and
2. Austin Barnes is catching him.
Dear Dave Roberts:
If you want to win,
Use Gonsolin, May, Gonzales, Graterol, Treinen as needed in the 6th (or 7th) game, and Buehler, Urias, Kershaw for the 7th game.
McGee or Kolarek if necessary.
Please don’t blow the World Series by using Baez, Jansen, Kelly, Wood, Floro in either the 6th or 7th game.
This is by Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal and I am copying all of it (sue me):
“Clayton Kershaw doesn’t have much to prove. At 32, he’s assembled one of the great pitching résumés in Major League history, a 13-season run which, according to the statistics compendium Baseball-Reference.com, tracks closely with the numbers of Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Lefty Grove. Kershaw’s all-time regular-season record is 175 wins against 76 losses, and he possesses a comically-low lifetime earned-run average of 2.43. He has won the National League’s Cy Young Award three times, and the NL’s Most Valuable Player once. He is well paid for this: Kershaw has earned more than $225 million over the course of his career, all of which has taken place with one of the signature franchises in the sport, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
He also has fantastic hair. I mean, it’s enviably great.
Of course, if you follow baseball, and especially the Dodgers, you know there’s a whole other part of the Clayton Kershaw story, and it concerns what happens when the regular season shifts into the playoffs, and the games get consequential and emotionally tighter. Entering Sunday night’s World Series Game 5 versus Tampa Bay, Kershaw’s career record in the playoffs was a pedestrian 12-12, with an ERA of 4.22—almost two runs higher than his regular-season level.
Over these appearances, Kershaw had suffered from bad luck, some middling offensive efforts by his Dodger teammates, and, of course, there was the 2017 World Series, the season in which the champion Houston Astros would later cop to thumping on trash cans to alert each other to pitches. But Kershaw has often pitched below his standards, including a rough one in Game 4 of this year’s NLCS with Atlanta. The disappointment hung on him, fairly or not—a great one who, on the baseball’s biggest stage, had a habit of looking, well, mortal.
Until now. On Sunday, Kershaw won not his first, but his second game of this Series, improving his lifetime World Series record to 3-2, his playoff record in 2020 to 4-1 (with an ERA of 2.93), and, more importantly, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 edge over Tampa Bay, one win from clinching the championship.
It wasn’t the prettiest, most dominating performance. Kershaw let the Rays leadoff hitter on in each of the first four innings. In the third, pitching with a 3-0 lead, he gave up an infield hit, a sizzling triple to Yandy Diaz, then a single to playoff phenom Randy Arozarena, and the lead narrowed to one. Kershaw’s advantage is deception; he’s got nasty stuff that’s hard to read at the plate, but the clever Rays seemed to be reading him. If you’re a Dodgers fan, it is possible you spent a few moments Sunday quietly groaning please no, not again.
He gutted through it. He struck out six, but the best pitch Kershaw threw all night wasn’t a pitch—it was a throw home to catch Tampa Bay’s Manny Margot attempting to steal home in the fourth. It, too, wasn’t a perfect dart, but Kershaw executed it cleanly enough for Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes to drop down and narrowly apply the tag. Had Margot pulled it off—he said he was acting alone, trying to capitalize on Kershaw’s unhurried pitching windup—it would have tied the game in the most electrifying manner—and sucked the life out of the Dodgers on the spot. Instead, Kershaw escaped. It looked like his night.
Kershaw faced two more batters in the sixth, retiring both, and when Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts stepped to the mound and summoned the right-hander Dustin May, there was grumbling—more 21st-century strategic over-tinkering, lifting an ace just as he was finding his groove. It proved to be the right, unsentimental call. May shut the door, and the Dodgers bullpen held off the Rays the rest of the night. Los Angeles, 4-2.
This pandemic-era Series is proving to be a delight. They’re allowing just a scattering of fans in the new Arlington, Texas, ballpark—not terribly far from where Kershaw grew up, in Dallas—and it had the potential to feel like a low-energy bummer. It is anything but, because the high-energy Dodgers and Rays very badly seem to want it. They are throwing haymakers at each other, back, forth, back, forth—never more so than in Saturday’s epic Game 4, in which the Rays prevailed on a wild, two-out, double error in the ninth, and unlikely Tampa Bay hero Brett Phillips gleefully ran off the field, his arms outstretched like a Boeing.
Phillips is a lifetime .202 hitter who doesn’t presume he’ll get shots on this stage. Kershaw is the opposite: he is The Man, Cooperstown-built, generationally significant, expected to be masterful in October, with all the pressure, second-guessing and sniping that vaunted role attracts. (Being a Dodger lefty, and the inevitable comparisons to Sandy Koufax, only compounds the stress.) Compared with thrifty Tampa Bay, the Dodgers are a high-payroll Rolls-Royce, and though this season has been an abbreviated, mentally-draining chore, they are expected to do it here, or else.
They are doing it. Los Angeles is one win away from their first title since 1988, the magical Kirk Gibson fist-pump year. Kershaw is a huge reason why.
Redemption is a hokey word in sports—overwrought in ways that baseball, a sport with mawkish tendencies, should especially avoid. Win or lose this week, Kershaw has had a historic career, full stop, and nothing that happens in sideways 2020 changes that. But he’s rising to the moment, and, in a way, it’s been more impressive to see him do it the way he’s doing it, scuffling, fighting for outs, winning fallibly, instead of supernaturally breezing through. It is a human performance, and among his best.
Game 6 is Tuesday. Tampa Bay is an impressive beast that cannot be counted out. It’s possible Kershaw could face batters in a Game 7. We’ll see. This World Series has had a bit of everything. It’s not yet redemption, but it’s close.
An old rock song going around in my head about now,,,,Feelin Alright.
This from ESPN.com
” Overall this October, (Snell) has posted a 1.35 ERA and a .530 opponent OPS from the first inning through the fourth. After the fourth, those numbers balloon to 12.46 and 1.373, respectively.”
Who’s the hero tonight? Big guns or role players? My picks are Pollock early and Joc late! And Baez gives us a clean inning.
Go Blue. On pins and needles right now wanting for the game to start.
Note to Badger, hope you are safe from the fire and those nasty Santa Ana winds. I remember when living in Orange County how bad they are.
Key to the game. Don’t let our own bullpen beat us.
Let’s get it done tonight.
Write this down:
DO NOT PITCH TO AROZARENA AGAIN!
That guy is just CRAZY strong! That was not a bad pitch! He just flicked at it! Wow!
Too late Timmons they pitched to him, come on Robert’s. Wood will be needed soon, flashed 92 last time out.
Come on take it too Snell now.
Wow that was quick, cy young alert on mound, gonsolin keep it close, more runs and we could be done for the evening.
Mookie looking suboptimal at the plate right about now. We’ll need him to come up big tonight if we’re to win this thing. Gonsolin has to keep this game close and get some length.
I don’t see a splitter.
Gonsolin cooked, will be fortunate to get through 2. Get him out now Robert’s.
Gonsolin is not ready for the big stage. May grew up right before our eyes, Gonsolin not so much. Kid is pitching timid and tentative. BP right now Doc.
Freakin 200 hitter keirmeier has killed us.
The moment is too big for Gonsolin! U just can’t walk Choi there!
The Rays team OPS during the regular season was .753 that’s 13th out of 30 teams.
There’s no reason why they beat us with their offense.
Good move Robert’s, short leash was necessary, still believe walker should have started this game, don’t like planning for an unpredictable game 7, go for the jugular, we are the Dodgers and if does not work, then regroup and go for it again.
Gonsolin I thought could be he is probably trying a bit too hard and no confidence and no command.
Betts is really hanging his head and striking out way too much.
How is that for stating the obvious. Poor ole floro.
Nice work Dylan, no let’s put some at bats together, believe Snell is still young and though great will fold under pressure.