What a game.
What Happened
Atlanta 5, Los Angeles 4
We’ll get to the weird decisions, but first: That was quite a game of baseball. It had lead changes. It had rallies. It had big home runs.
The thing started badly for Atlanta. Ian Anderson was off, and the Dodgers jumped right on him, with Corey Seager following up a Mookie Betts bloop single with a banger of a home run, making the score 2-0 with nary an out recorded. Anderson worked through it from there (should not understate the importance of this—Anderson survived three innings in which he did not have it, and that might win Atlanta a pennant), navigating two more walks in the first and a leadoff walk of Seager in the third, but the damage was done. The Dodgers led 2-0 with one of the best pitchers in the world on the mound.
Scherzer was good. Seven strikeouts, one walk, just the one home run—sorry, should’ve mentioned this more emphatically: Joc Pederson pummeled one to tie the score in the fourth after Scherzer walked Austin Riley—but he left in the fifth, and the Dodgers got one inning ahead of themselves, and that’s when the trouble happened.
In the top of the seventh, having entered in the sixth to strike out Albert Pujols and escape a jam, Tyler Matzek walked Mookie Betts, and after striking out both Seager and Trea Turner, intentionally walked Will Smith. Betts had stolen second, Atlanta would prefer to face Gavin Lux, it made sense. The Dodgers countered by bringing in an injured Justin Turner to pinch-hit, and Atlanta countered that by bringing Luke Jackson in for Matzek. Jackson promptly loaded the bases, losing a slider on his third pitch and hitting Turner, which brought up Chris Taylor, who, though he didn’t smoke the ball, delivered. A soft liner into center fell in front of Guillermo Heredia (who’d entered alongside Jackson on a double switch), and when Heredia tried to make a play on Smith at the plate, he missed the ball, allowing Taylor to advance to second.
A lot was made of the play at the time, but the problem wasn’t that Heredia didn’t make the play, or that the ball went by Heredia. The problem was that Heredia didn’t dive and give himself a chance to keep the game tied, trusting Joc Pederson to back him up (which Pederson did). Would Heredia have caught it? Probably not. But that was the right move. Not slow-playing it to hold runners on first and second, as some seemed to advocate. Heredia split the difference, it went badly, but Pederson was there and the thing ended up as it would have had Heredia played it well anyway.
But we promised trouble for the Dodgers. Let’s get back to the proceedings.
Jackson got out of it, striking out AJ Pollock with the bases loaded (they’d intentionally walked Cody Bellinger after the Taylor double) to keep the game at 4-2. But remember, the Dodgers were one inning ahead of themselves. They’d ideally end the game with Blake Treinen and Kenley Jansen, but they needed one more arm to get there if they weren’t going to ask either of those two to get three more outs. And curiously, in the eighth, having used Treinen and having Brusdar Graterol available, they turned to Game 4 starter Julio Urías.
Urías didn’t pitch that badly. The Eddie Rosario leadoff single was a good piece of against-the-shift hitting (that was nearly an out anyway). The Ozzie Albies single that brought in Rosario (we’ll get to this) was a blooper’s favorite blooper. Austin Riley did smoke the double that tied it, but Urías battled back to strike out the next two hitters. The decision went badly in that the runs scored, but runs may have scored off of Graterol (and one run was charged to Graterol when he was called upon in the ninth), and Urías was just one of those soft singles not happening (or…well, we’ll get to that) away from a rather spotless outing. But Urías doing his job doesn’t make it magically the right decision, and the Dodgers were in this place in the first place because Scherzer only threw 79 pitches, possibly because he’s still tired from closing out a game last week the Dodgers probably didn’t need him to close out but asked him close out because of either their own distrust for their bullpen or their deference to the pitcher’s ego. The Dodgers are all-in on using starters out of the ‘pen, but they’re wearing these guys out while parts of their bullpen, very good parts of their bullpen, sit idly by.
Bizarre.
Meanwhile, Ron Washington and Rosario were conspiring to make some big ol’ outs on the bases, with Rosario advancing to second on Freddie Freeman’s flyout, needing a terribly off-line throw from Pollock to make it safely, and then scoring on the Albies single on another bang-bang play. And he wasn’t even the tying run! It wasn’t a “your run means nothing” situation—that would’ve been the case in the ninth, but in the eighth, getting that first run across the board really does matter—but it was a massive roll of the dice. Washington sending Albies on the eventual Riley double? (On which Betts made a quietly amazing play to corral the ball and get it in to even give Smith a chance of tagging Albies at home.) Made sense. Tying run, required a great play to even make it close. But the Rosario business…goodness.
In the top of the ninth, with Atlanta’s Will Smith on to try to keep it tied, Trea Turner flew out to the wall, Rosario—who evidently has a resting heart rates in the teens—nonchalantly hopping to catch it in a textbook piece of outfielding (found the ball, found the wall, set himself up, didn’t overdo it thinking it might be a home run). In the bottom of the ninth, Graterol was finally in, and after allowing a soft single from Travis d’Arnaud and cleanly notching an out at second on a strange bunt attempt from Dansby Swanson, Graterol induced a soft Heredia ground ball and exited the game with two outs, Swanson on second, and Kenley Jansen coming in to face Rosario, who smoked one off of Seager’s glove to score Swanson and send Atlanta to California with a 2-0 series lead.
To recap: The Dodgers are using their pitching alternatively aggressively and passively and in the oddest of ways, getting everyone out of position to do it. Ron Washington has a death wish. Eddie Rosario is the calmest man in the universe. There were, let’s see, six plays in the last inning and a half where a few inches made the difference, five of them involved Rosario, and all six went Atlanta’s way.
What a game.
The Heroes
Win Probability Added leaders, from FanGraphs:
- Rosario (0.50)
- Taylor (0.35)
- Riley (0.31)
Those are big numbers for WPA.
What It Means
Going by FanGraphs, Atlanta is now favored to win the World Series, though they’re only narrowly ahead of Boston and Houston, even with a 2-0 NLCS lead. They’re the favorite in the market as well, and less narrowly.
Other Notes
- Betts was on base three times, as was Taylor. Los Angeles’s Smith was on four times.
- Trea Turner continues to struggle, going 0-for-5 with three K’s.
- Atlanta walked nine batters, three intentionally.
- Rosario went 4-for-5.
- Freddie Freeman continues to struggle, going 0-for-4 with three K’s.
- Urías was working on two days’ rest after throwing 59 pitches in Game 5 of the NLDS. He only threw 14 last night, so he should be good to go in Game 4 still on two more days’ rest, but who knows what the Dodgers will do tomorrow with him. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a Buehler/Urías piggyback at this point followed by Scherzer trying to notch a six-inning save on one day of rest while Phil Bickford doesn’t even have his jersey on under his bullpen jacket.
***
Now, back to the AL:
The Basics
Where: Fenway Park
When: 8:08 PM EDT
Broadcast: FS1
Starting Pitchers: Eduardo Rodriguez (BOS); José Urquidy (HOU)
Odds: BOS -115; HOU -105; o/u 9 (o -115) [English translation: The Red Sox are roughly 51% likely to win; the Astros are roughly 49% likely to win; the expected number of runs scored is something like 9.1]
The Details
I wish I remember who made this observation on Twitter, but someone pointed out over the weekend how different the NLCS and ALCS are stylistically. They feel like different sports, almost. In the NLCS, every inning is a nailbiter, every run is a struggle, the hitters are trying to fight back against an onslaught of elite pitching. In the ALCS, we’re bopping. Pitchers? Good luck. We’re bopping.
*cue a 2-1 game that ends on a suicide squeeze*
Rodriguez was great in Game 4 of the ALDS, striking out six over five innings of work while just allowing two runs. We’ve talked before about his 3.32 FIP/4.74 ERA split, one of the widest in the game. His xERA this season was only 3.55, making the ERA even odder. He’s a good pitcher. Sometimes that doesn’t work out against a lineup as good as that of the Astros, but he’s a good pitcher.
Urquidy’s yet to throw a full major league season, but over parts of three he’s now up to 177.2 career innings pitched with a 3.55 ERA, a 4.13 FIP, and an xERA closer to the FIP than the ERA. Solid stuff from the young righty, who’ll have his work cut out for him tonight.
We still haven’t seen Jake Meyers since he crashed into the wall in the ALDS. Will he be out there? Unclear. Also unclear is Luis Garcia’s status after leaving Game 2 with a knee issue, but that’s not the most pressing concern for Houston.
The question over this series as a whole comes down to whether the Astros can outhit the Red Sox by enough to make up for the starting pitching deficit. Once the Astros get to the late innings, they have a trump card in Ryan Pressly, but the nature of relief pitching makes it such that this is only a defining advantage if the Astros already have a lead. The early innings are thus of major importance.
Keep an eye on Nick Pivetta. He’s supposed to start Game 4, so if the Red Sox have to turn to him tonight, plans will have changed.
The Stars
Pressly seems destined to have a moment at some point this series. Beyond that, those bats, man. Correa. Altuve. Bregman. Tucker. Devers. Bogaerts. Martinez. Hernández. Many, many more.
As was said:
We’re bopping.
