By Yours Truly
No matter who writes what about the sports goat business and how foolish and demoralising it turns out to be, the temptation to hang the nefarious horns when your team loses in the postseason is still as overpowering as a Walker Buehler fastball or a Jhoulys Chacin slider. Especially when the recipient is a player who has a notorious problem that impacts upon the team’s first two National League Championship Series losses.
What makes it worse for Dodger catcher Yasmani Grandal is that, in Game Three of this NLCS, he actually had a moment in which he could have blown the horns away with one swing in the bottom of the ninth, batting with the bases loaded and one out. Coming after he ended the top of the ninth executing a flawless throw to second to complete an inning-ending strike-‘em-out/throw-‘em-out double play, he’d have gone from the stockade to the keys to the city in an instant.
Nobody quite expected him to hit an eleventh-hour game-tying grand slam, but even a sacrifice fly would have restored Grandal to Dodger fans’ good graces. All Grandal had to do was wrap his arms around this unexpected moment like a little boy greeting Daddy coming home from a long overseas military deployment, and practically all would have been forgiven.
It might have gotten him off the hook for the two passed balls and two errors in the first three innings of Game One, making him the first in Show ever to do that in a postseason game. It might have acquitted the passed ball Monday night that allowed Ryan Braun to advance earlier in the game, or his inability to handle what was ruled a run-scoring wild pitch even earlier. It might have acquitted his striking out with second and third in the third Monday.
But Grandal couldn’t do it. Never mind grand slam, he couldn’t get a simple base hit. He couldn’t even get a sacrifice fly. He couldn’t even set himself up with an RBI walk. He took a called strike, he swung for a strike on a pitch a little up and a little in, and then it was strike three swinging at a service down and away.
And Grandal wasn’t even the final out of the game. That honour belonged to pinch hitter Brian Dozier, formerly a Twins star, who at least got to see ball one before he looked at strike three to end the 4-0 Brewers win leaving the bases loaded. The Dodger Stadium chants of “We Want Austin!†earlier in the game, after the passed ball allowing the Braun advance, couldn’t possibly have stung Grandal as badly as that swing and miss.
Maybe Grandal had a not-so-small itch to redeem himself that he scratched a little too hard in that at-bat. Taking until he saw something worth swinging on didn’t seem to be in play. But before you fume that we’re not talking about a future Hall of Famer here, you might want to remind yourself that even Hall of Famers have come up short enough in the postseason clutch. Even at the end, and not when a set is only going to its fourth game.
Ask Carl Yastrzemski. He was the final out of two of the Red Sox’s worst heartbreaks, the 1975 World Series and the 1978 American League East tiebreaker. With two out, nobody on, and the Red Sox down a run in Game Seven of the former, Yastrzemski flied out to center; with first and third and two out in the latter, he popped out to third base. In the bottom of the ninth of each game.
Yastrzemski’s Red Sox were done right then and there both times. Grandal’s Dodgers still have time enough to redeem themselves. They can tie the NLCS up with a Game Four win. Even if the way the rest of the Dodgers played in Game Three doesn’t exactly give the prospect encouragement. Because Monday night’s loss was a team effort.
Four times Monday night the Dodgers stranded men in scoring position and on two of those occasions they left the bases loaded. All night long they were 0-for-10 with men in scoring position. The team who’d slapped that vaunted Brewers bullpen silly for a .333 batting average against them and eight of the nine Dodger runs of the first two games ended Game Three with their own behinds fanned.
When Brewers manager Craig Counsell graduated from high stakes gambler to genius in the making, when he restricted his young relief lancer Josh Hader to two outs in the eighth and turned the ninth over to his lately-hard luck bullpenner Jeremy Jeffress, Counsell tempted the gods themselves.
The Dodgers helped the gods surrender. Given the golden opportunity to teach Jeffress the lesson that a big mouth works best when it’s kept shut, after Jeffress popped off about the Dodgers being “lucky†to win Game Two in a comeback including against him, the Dodgers had no gag to stuff into Mr. Lucky's mouth.
“We had no energy,†said Hernandez. “The stadium had no energy. The fans had no energy. Overall, it was a pretty bad game for everybody who calls themselves Dodgers.†It just might have been that the Dodgers’ futility at the plate and inability to back up Buehler’s mostly sterling outing---Braun’s RBI double in the first and Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia’s two-run homer in seventh the only truly lethal blows against him—had the most to do with the lack of stadium energy.
It might be to wonder why Buehler was even out there for the seventh in the first place. It’s one thing to know that the kid is as much an innings-eater as he is a virtuoso pitcher in the making, but manager Dave Roberts wasn’t exactly lacking for pen options to help him keep the game within reach at an 0-2 deficit.
And maybe these Dodgers are a little too over-reliant on the long ball. “The home runs weren’t there, and when the home runs aren’t there, we have to find ways to score,†said center fielder Cody Bellinger, who had four chances to find them Monday night batting with men on base, but hit into one forceout, dialed Area Code 1-6-1, struck out swinging to end one inning, and popped out to short with second and third and nobody out in the ninth.
The Dodgers’ other big bats were just as futile. Joc Pederson went 0-for-3; Max Muncy likewise; Justin Turner went 1-for-4 (his base hit opened the fatal ninth). Manny Machado went 2-for-3 but his foolish baserunning in the fourth, after leading off with a walk, helped kill a rally when he was ruled in violation of the Utley Rule with his arm up as he crossed second base compelling Arcia to throw wild after the out. It was ruled a double play after all, and Yasiel Puig grounded out to end the inning.
Bellinger also helped ruin Buehler’s evening when he misjudged Shaw’s high liner toward the back of right center field completely, changing his running speed a time or two before finally figuring out where the ball might actually be, by which time Shaw was on third with a triple . . . and due to come home when Grandal mishandled Buehler’s heater to Jesus Aguilar.
It was ruled a wild pitch but probably should have been ruled a passed ball, yet again, when replays showed the pitch wasn’t all that tough for an experienced catcher to stop. But maybe the ruling was all for the best. Grandal’s is a hard enough series already.
Hernandez, for one, refused to hang it all on Grandal’s beleaguered head. “He’s trying, he’s trying his best,†Hernandez told the
Los Angeles Times. “Catchers have a lot going on. Everything revolves around them. They are involved in every pitch, they are involved in every situation of the game.
“It’s the playoffs, it’s the big leagues, if they [the fans] can do it, go ahead, put on your gear, and go catch 99 with breaking balls that have a lot of movement,†Hernandez continued. “You know, he’s been one of the best catchers in the game for awhile now, and he’s having a little bit of a rough patch, which we all as human beings, as baseball players, go through.â€
You can answer that two ways. Way One: An experienced catcher shouldn’t find himself making such mistakes even with big fast breaking balls bearing a lot of movement. Way Two: If Joe and Jane Fan think it’s that easy, let
them strap it on and try in front of 56,000 people in the ballpark and who knows how many million in front of television sets or next to radios.
It takes an entire team to come up empty. It takes a better team on the night to make sure they come up that way. Every Dodger was overmatched by the Brewers in Game Three, not just one hapless catcher who must be thinking to himself—as he prepares to ride the pine for Game Four with Barnes getting the assignment behind the plate for Rich Hill—that when it comes his time for purgatory, he can say honestly, “No, thank you, I’ve done my time.â€
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