WHEN SPORTS CAME BACK Starters look to stay hot in Game 3
Following the World Series during the pandemic:
Charlie Morton has slowly and quietly become one of the most dominant postseason pitchers ever.
He starts World Series Game 3 for the Rays on Friday night with a chance to tie Orlando Hernandez’s record of eight consecutive winning postseason decisions, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. By beating the Dodgers and winning his sixth straight postseason start, he would move within one of Bob Gibson’s record.
How unlikely for a pitcher traded by the Pirates for a minor leaguer five years ago, a right-hander who turns 37 in three weeks and didn’t make his first All-Star team until 2018,
“I do not wake up in the morning and say it’s my time to shine. I wake up and I question if I’ve done what I was supposed to do to get ready for what I’ve been asked to do,” Morton said. “I wake up with the humble recognition that what I’m about to do is an opportunity that not many people get to experience, and I try to prepare for it just like that.”
Morton is 3-0 with a 0.57 ERA in this year’s postseason, allowing 11 hits in 152⁄ in
3 nings with 17 strikeouts and four walks.
Ace Walker Buehler, above, starts for the Dodgers, who won the opener 8-3 and were beaten 6-4 in Game 2. While there’s no travel in the first neutral-site World Series in Arlington, Texas, the teams had the day off, giving bullpens some recovery time.
Buehler, 26, is 1-0 with a 1.89 ERA in the postseason, striking out 29 and walking 11 in 19 innings.
Both t eams decided against full workouts, though some players threw in Globe Life Field’s outfield under the closed roof and a few pitched off mounds in the bullpens.