By Yours Truly
If you believe in self-fulfilling prophecies, you may have been disabused by the ceremonial first pitch before Game Four Saturday night. When Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, in his old Oakland Athletics jersey, threw it to Kirk Gibson, in a Dodger jersey. Only this time, Gibson wasn’t likely to give the Dodgers a World Series game-winning two-run homer.
The Dodgers thought they’d had the potential game-winning three-run homer in the bottom of the sixth, when Yasiel Puig launched one half way up the left field bleachers. But after Puig flipped his bat high above his head line as he began his celebratory trip around the bases, and Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez slammed his glove to the mound in self disgust, Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale in their dugout saw cause for alarm.
Whatever Sale said to his teammates in the dugout, and it sure didn’t look as though he were trying to be a soothing David Ortiz in Game Four of the 2013 Series, it must have re-lit the Red Sox pilot light. Because they exploded from there to upend the Dodgers 9-4, and pushing the World Series to the brink of the fourth Red Sox World Series conquest of the 21st Century.
And if you believe in the law of unintended consequences, which is always a smart idea, your faith was reinforced too dramatically after Dodger manager Dave Roberts lifted his starter Rich Hill after a leadoff walk and a swinging strikeout with the Dodgers ahead 4-0 in the top of the seventh.
The Twitterverse exploded over it not long after no less than Donald Trump himself flapped his tweeter, wondering, and I quote, “Watching the Dodgers/Red Sox final innings. It is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who is loose & dominating through almost 7 innings, Rich Hill of Dodgers, and brings in nervous reliever(s) who get shellacked. 4 run lead gone. Managers do it all the time, big mistake!â€
In a classic instance of shooting first and asking questions later, Trump and about two thirds of the Twitterverse were blissfully unaware that the 38-year-old Hill himself went to Roberts before the seventh and asked the skipper to monitor him closely. Roberts did exactly that and, despite a three-pitch, swinging strikeout on Eduardo Nunez, saw his pitcher gassed at 91 pitches.
Funny thing about that. After Puig teed off, the second-guessers were wondering whether Red Sox manager Alex Cora should have hooked his man—who hadn’t had a starting assignment since September, and who’d probably seemed still fresh enough after working only a third of an inning the night before—after he opened the sixth by hitting Dodger first baseman David Freese on the ankle guard. Especially with Joe Kelly warm and ready in the Red Sox bullpen.
Cora admitted after the game he’d made a bad mistake. “We felt the matchup [against Puig] was good for us. But that matchup is good for us when Eddie is fresh and he’s able to get that fastball up. I had [Matt] Barnes ready and I was actually kicking myself for a few innings before the comeback.†At least he didn’t have President Tweety kicking him.
Nine runs in the final three innings do a great deal to send the second guessers in the Twitteriverse and elsewhere looking for fresh fish to fricasee. So when Hill arrived knocking at the door of his median pitch count for the entire season, Roberts took note exactly as his man suggested and went to his bullpen.
“Keep an eye on me,†Roberts quoted Hill as telling him before the inning. “I’m going to give it everything I have. Let’s go hitter to hitter and just keep an eye on me.â€
“I know Rich did everything he could,†the skipper himself said. “He competed. Left everything out there.†Admitting he’d never heard any pitcher ask a manager to keep an eye on him likewise, Roberts continued. “You’re talking about a World Series game where there’s no margin up to that point, and there’s a lot of emotions, intensity, effort, focus, and he did everything. He did everything to put us in a position to win a baseball game. And, again, we’ve got to do a better job of picking him up.â€
“Everybody has their opinion,†said Dodger reliever Ryan Madson, who’d suffer his own humiliation Saturday night and has had what’s called politely a difficult World Series for himself. “They don’t know what it feels like, but it’s OK. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. It’s fine. I’m sure there’s a lot of fans that said the same thing.â€
The Dodger pen was probably ridden harder and put to bed drowning after Game Three’s triple-double-secret-probation overtime. The Red Sox pen, out of which Nathan Eovaldi—originally scheduled to start Game Four—pitched heroically enough to lose Game Three heartbreakingly on Max Muncy’s game-ending bomb, may actually have been saved by Eovaldi’s effort for just such an evening as Game Four.
If there’s a manager on the planet who brings in relief with the secure knowledge that he’s about to be murdered, he’s probably out of a job. And with both Pedro Baez and Julio Urias unavailable for Game Four, Baez having worked two innings in Game Three and Urias having worked the seventeenth inning, Roberts brought in Scott Alexander, a lefthander without a distinguished resume, to face Brock Holt, a lefthanded hitter. And Alexander walked Holt on four unintentional pitches to set up first and second.
Then, Roberts brought in Madson, who’s been spending much of the Series surrendering inherited runners but who opened his assignment by getting Jackie Bradley, Jr., pinch hitting for Red Sox catcher Christian Vasquez, to pop out on 2-1.
The manager had every reason to believe at that point that Madson was going to get the Dodgers out of this little jam, even though it was the situation in which the Red Sox have been the most dangerous this postseason—two outs. Especially with Mitch Moreland coming up to pinch hit for Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes, who’d endured a walk before striking out Dodger catcher Austin Barnes to end that whippy seventh.
Moreland, who entered Game Four hitting zero with four strikeouts in seven at-bats in the first three games. If those paying closer attention than just rooting and hollering cared to notice, this should have been the most comfortable matchup in the house for Madson against a hitter doing so little in the Series.
Moreland, an 0-for-7 guy who looked like a simple strikeout in this Series, and barely past a hamstring ding earlier in the postseason, should have been dead meat. He wasn’t supposed to send a first-pitch changeup, even if the pitch is nicknamed a batting-practise fastball, two thirds of the way up the right field bleachers to bring the Red Sox back to within a run.
Some of Roberts’s Twitterverse critics charged that he was following a front office formula script to a fare-thee-well. Except nobody writes in that his starter warns about being gassed or that his bullpen can’t keep a four-run lead from being compressed and then vapourised. Which is just what happened in the top of the eighth, when Roberts reached for his closer Kenley Jansen and asked for six outs on a second consecutive day for the first time in Jansen’s career.
Getting Andrew Benintendi to ground out on two pitches to open the inning, so far, so good. But the script didn’t include Steve Pearce, the Red Sox first baseman who entered Game Four hitting zip for the Series and reaching base on nothing noisier than walks, hitting Jansen’s first pitch to him right into the gray glove of a fan waiting for it to fly over the left center field fence.
Jansen finished the inning with no further damage. But in the past seven Dodger losses in World Series games, Jansen was on the mound with a lead in two of those losses and surrendered the winning run in a tie game in another one. And in Game Three this time, Jansen surrendered the eighth-inning bomb Bradley hit to send the game toward that extra-inning marathon in the first place.
The least shocking move of the moment Saturday night should have been Roberts electing to open the top of the ninth with Dylan Floro, who’d worked an inning and a third in Game Three with three strikeouts. The script did not have an entry saying, “Holt will whack an RBI double down the left field line to break the four-all tie.â€
Nor did it say, “Pinch hitter Rafael Devers will single Holt home post haste and no later than a 2-1 count.†And it didn’t say, “Pinch hitter Blake Swihart will ground out to second before we give Mookie Betts—who isn’t hitting squatski in the Series so far—an intentional walk only because we’d like a double play ball at best case.â€
Roberts again looked at the percentages and brought Alex Wood in to face Benintendi. And neither did the script say Benintendi was supposed to nub one toward third that Justin Turner would field on the dead run and throw just late enough to let Benintendi beat it out to load the pads for Pearce while Roberts double-switched to bring in Kenta Maeda and send Brian Dozier to second base, moving Enrique Hernandez to left and Chris Taylor out of the game.
And with Maeda owning a splendid 2.75 Series ERA to date, including the fifteenth and sixteenth innings in Game Three with five strikeouts, Roberts and every Dodger fan on the planet, never mind in Dodger Stadium, had every reason to believe Maeda would get rid of the Red Sox swiftly enough, even if it did mean keeping the score to 5-4, Red Sox.
Neither he nor they had any reason to believe Pearce would clear the bases with a double to the rear of right center field. Or, after an intentional walk to also-ankle-addled J.D. Martinez on behalf of facing Xander Bogaerts, up to that moment mostly another Red Sox plate flop (1-for-15 with a double, an RBI, a walk, and five strikeouts), that Bogaerts would single up the pipe to send Pearce home with the ninth Boston run.
Why, Cardiac Craig Kimbrel came on for the bottom of the ninth and Hernandez greeted him after a leadoff walk to Dozier with a two-run homer. And Turner after a ground out slapped him for a single and took second on a followup groundout by Game Three hero Muncy.
Unfortunately for Roberts and the Dodgers, Cody Bellinger—winner of an NLCS Most Valuable Player award that probably belonged to Puig, and owner of one hit in ten Series at-bats entering Game Four—flied out to Benintendi in left.
Oh, yes. Just in case you’d forgotten. Seven of the Red Sox’s nine runs scored with—you guessed it!—two outs.
Just as Game Three’s long distance pitcharound made everyone come close to forgetting Walker Buehler’s magnificent enough pitching duel with Rick Porcello and part of the Red Sox pen, the seventh through the ninth of Game Four could well make everyone forget how Hill and Rodriguez matched shutouts until Hill’s manager took his advisory seriously enough.
And, how Rodriguez gave the Red Sox the greatest possible gift they could have asked for after Game Three—distance. Even with Puig making hash of him in the bottom of the sixth, or with Vasquez’s horrific throwing error turning an inning-ending double play into a run-scoring forceout one hitter before that, Rodriguez going six and two-thirds gave Cora’s bullpen exactly the breathers they needed without having to call the paramedics for oxygen.
Once upon a time, Dodger legend Don Newcombe admitted he was gassed in the bottom of the ninth in the third game of the 1951 pennant playoff. Newcombe was saddled somewhat unfairly with a no-heart reputation for it. Out came Newcombe, in came Ralph Branca, and into the left field stands went the pennant riding aboard Bobby Thomson’s three-run homer.
Some pitchers throw on fumes and get away with it. Some don’t. Hill like Newcombe believed he was doing his team a big favour by owning up to running past empty, and Hill like Newcombe had to watch in mute horror when all hell broke loose against their teams at the worst possible moments.
That’s not just unfair to Hill, but it’s unfair to the Red Sox who did the clutch hitting against, we must presume, the best that the Dodgers’ bullpen had to throw at them. And, to the Red Sox bullpen—so often underestimated all this postseason long—who did the clutch pitching against a Dodger team that led the Show in runs and home runs on the regular season.
Yes, Game Five has yet to begin but, yes, it’s awfully tempting to believe that, at the rate these Red Sox are going, they could send their bat boy out to pinch hit late in the game with two outs and watch him hit a game-changing RBI single or a three-run double or a three-run homer, while they could summon up septuagenarian team legends Jim Lonborg, D.M.D., Luis Tiant or Bill (Spaceman) Lee to pitch and win.
But don’t blame Roberts. If Moreland missed the Madson changeup and went down, if Pearce missed or fouled the Jansen cutter, if someone caught up to Devers’s single and held Holt at third, if Pearce didn’t make real contact, if he let Maeda pitch to ankle-hobbled Martinez instead of walking him intentionally, he’d probably look like a genius.
The good news is that Roberts and his Dodgers can still survive for now. The bad news is, they’ll have to do it against these Red Sox. Against whom survival often seems a luxury.
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