By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/28/game-three-in-living-colour-on-b-r-a-d/For pulling Rich Hill in the fourth in Game Two when Hill clearly lost his stuff, Dave Roberts got
roasted because of what happened five innings later. For leaving Yu Darvish in Game Three to
get jumped for four in the second on a night Darvish had no stuff to begin with, it wouldn’t be
out of line to deep fry him.
What else do you do when Astros manager A.J. Hinch simply rides Brad Peacock—normally a
starter, and sometimes the best one on the Astro staff this year B.V. (Before Verlander)—for
three and two thirds of near-perfect relief to close it out and win a World Series game in Houston
for the first time?
You begin to ponder whether these Astros, 5-3 winners Friday night, really do have a crack at
winning their first World Series, that’s what you do. They’re halfway there now. And you ponder
whether boiling in oil would be too merciful for Roberts. Because Hinch is willing to do what
Roberts now seems unwilling at times to do.
Both managers are two of the modern breed who lean as heavily on analytics and advanced,
deep statistics as anyone you could ask for. But when shove came to push, Hinch was willing to
trust his vision when his starter Lance McCullers, Jr. finally got punctured in the top of the sixth.
Roberts had eyes to see and still left Darvish aboard to get a full four-run pummeling in the
second inning when anyone else with eyes to see could have told him Darvish, who hadn’t pitched
since Game Three of the National League Championship Series, had little enough fastball, a slider
that saw fit to betray him almost every time he threw it, and everything else in his repertoire
reporting to sick call.
“Yu had a hard time landing his slider,” said Roberts. “From the start he was out of sorts. His
fastball command was off.” Command off? Darvish could have charged half his pitches with
insubordination from the outset.
Hinch’s vision told him that, as long as Peacock was dealing from strength and the Dodgers
were going up to the plate without anything much resembling their usual plan, he could ride
the Peacock right to the finish. The righthander did allow two inherited runners to score to start
things off in the sixth, but even that exposed the Dodgers’ heretofore unexpected scuffling
further.
Peacock came in with Corey Seager (leadoff walk) and Justin Turner (a double off a scoreboard
on the left field side) aboard and one out (Cody Bellinger, swinging strikeout). He yielded a
sacrifice fly and wild-pitched Turner home. Then he battened down the hatch. No matter how
many times Hinch had men warming up along the way, the moment Peacock entered the Minute
Maid Park PA system might as well have purred, “The following program is brought to you in
living colour on B-R-A-D.”
Because the Astro bullpen is still somewhat suspect, even if Game Two exposed the Dodgers as
lacking in truly effective long men not named Kenta Maeda. And with Maeda working two and
two thirds spotless in Game Three, he won’t be around for Game Four. The Dodgers have no one
else fitting his description—a starter moved to the pen for the postseason—up to the job in the
Series so far.
You may notice that the two most important wins of the Astros’ postseason were secured that way
by starters working out of the pen. McCullers brought it off to put the Yankees to bed for the year
last Sunday. And Peacock brought it off to put the Dodgers to bed for the night Friday night.
Darvish looked suspect from the moment he went to work. He was lucky to get out of the first
inning alive, when George Springer’s leadoff double was followed by a ground out, a fly out to
right on which Springer could advance to third, and a ground out up the middle that looked like
it might have been driven downtown with a better swing by Carlos Correa.
Such as it was, his luck ran out an inning later, and it only began when Yuli Gurriel drove a 2-1
pitch into the Crawford Boxes over left field to lead off. With Darvish’s cutter flatter than last
week’s Dr. Pepper and his slider sliding like sandpaper, Josh Reddick doubled, Evan Gattis walked
on a full count, and Marwin Gonzalez—the destroyer of virtuoso closers already—ripped one off
the center field wall to drive home Reddick.
Roberts could and should have seen Darvish didn’t have it. The Dodger bullpen stirred but didn’t
shake just yet. And Brian McCann lined one to right center. Gattis was waved home and Yasiel
Puig’s throw home missed by a couple of feet.
Finally Roberts scrambled his pen and Springer scrambled a liner caught by second baseman
Logan Forsythe. No sign for Maeda, who was warming up in a hurry. Alex Bregman hit a sacrifice
fly and Jose Altuve ripped a long double to deep center. Then Roberts brought in Maeda, who
promptly got Carlos Correa to fly out to right center and kept the damage to 4-0.
Except for an insane play in which lefthander Tony Watson pounced on a grounder to the third
base side of the mound but threw the ball away to let Reddick come home in the fifth, with the
fifth Astro run, the Dodger pen returned to its customary stinginess. But the Dodger offense fell
asleep after Peacock shook off the sixth-inning shakes.
Maybe the biggest out Peacock got on the night was in the seventh, when he walked pinch hitter
Andre Ethier with two out and brought Chris Taylor to the plate as the potential tying run. Peacock
got Taylor to beat one into the ground for the side, then whipped through the Dodgers in order
the rest of the way.
“I’m not trying to bring back the three-inning save,” Hinch said with a tiny chuckle after the game.
“But he was cruising. He was in complete control of every at-bat.”
The Dodgers looked absolutely ugly in Game Three. They looked more like the team who lost sixteen
out of seventeen near the end of the season than the team who absolutely ruled the National League
for most of the season. They couldn't even cash more than a run in---and that one scoring on a
double play---when McCullers gifted them with the bases loaded on three straight walks and nobody
out in the third.
The only thing uglier in Game Three was how Gurriel celebrated his leadoff
blast off Darvish.
The Astros’ first baseman returned to the dugout, took the expected bath of high fives and pats on
the back and elsewhere, then sat on the bench making the old disgraceful slant-eyed gesture for a
split second. It wasn’t split enough to keep a camera from capturing it and sending it viral.
Bad enough taunting the poor sap you just hit for distance. But Gurriel pleaded after the game he
was only trying to tell his teammates he wasn’t normally lucky against Japanese pitchers and didn’t
think anyone would take his gesture otherwise. “If he feels offended,” Gurriel said for and presumably
to Darvish, who is Japanese-Iranian but raised in Japan, “I want to apologise to him.”
Darvish’s night was rough enough without something like that facing him; assorted reports indicated
he was told of the gesture during the game. At first he denounced the gesture as disrespectful when
told about it and, presumably, shown it. Then, he softened. ”No one is perfect,” he said in a statement.
“That includes both you and I . . . Since we are living in such a wonderful world, let’s stay positive and
move forward instead of focusing on the anger. I’m counting on everyone’s big love.”
Which was pretty gracious coming from a man whose stuff abandoned him and whose manager left
him in to take a nasty early beating anyway.
If the commissioner’s office suspends Grandal a game during the Series, it’ll bruise Grandal’s ego—
not to mention proving that nobody of any race is immune to a brain vapour—but it won’t bruise
the Astros overall. The way they’re playing now, and the way the Dodgers aren’t, the Astros could
send a bat boy out in Gurriel’s place and
he’s liable to hit for big enough damage or steal a couple
of would-be extra base hits up the line.
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