Jansen’s pitch is turning point
Dodgers closer serves up ninth-inning, tying homer to Gonzalez on an 0-and-2 pitch.
Tim Leary saw firsthand how quickly a World Series can change with one swing of the bat. He threw three scoreless innings in relief of struggling starter Tim Belcher in the 1988 series opener for the Dodgers, a game that ended with Kirk Gibson’s pinchhit, two-out, two-run, walkoff homer against Dennis Eckersley.
That iconic shot lifted the Dodgers to a 5-4 win over the Oakland Athletics and catapulted them toward their last championship.
Wednesday night’s game overflowed with such seriesaltering moments — Marwin Gonzalez’s score-tying homer for the Astros in the ninth, solo shots by Houston’s Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa in the 10th, Yasiel Puig’s homer and Enrique Hernandez’s run-scoring single to tie it in the 10th and, finally, George Springer’s two-run shot to win it for the Astros in the 11th.
It was about as crazy and compelling of a postseason game as baseball can muster. Leary, now 58 and a World Series guest analyst, breaks it down with an assist from Times staff writer Mike DiGiovanna.
DiGiovanna: What’s it like playing in a game with so many twists and turns, so many momentum swings?
Leary: Well, it’s the biggest stage there is in baseball. Every play, every pitch is dissected, every hit, every home run, every walk and error is amplified. People are gonna second guess this, that and every other thing.
It comes down to the players getting it done. The Astros threw out enough firepower to make a second surge there with Cameron Maybin and Springer in the 11th. Some teams would have fallen apart after giving up that lead in the 10th.
It’s a boxing match, back and forth, back and forth, last man standing wins. That’s what a World Series is supposed to be, a knockem-out, drag-em-out affair. That was a tough loss for the Dodgers, but they’re resilient. They’ll bounce back. They have an acecaliber pitcher (Yu Darvish) starting in Game 3.
There were so many turning points in the game. What was the biggest one?
To me, the whole game turned on that 0-and-2 middle-of-the-strike-zone fastball that Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen threw to Gonzalez for the game-tying homer in the ninth. As Don Sutton told me in 1988, “You have four chances to be perfect.” And he threw a straight fastball down the middle, belt high. That changed the complexion of the whole series.
Jansen has been almost untouchable all season. How stunned were you by that pitch?
I wasn’t really stunned because I’ve seen him throw balls right down the middle and hitters miss them for years. It was more just a great swing, an on-time swing. Most guys tend to swing under his pitches because his ball doesn’t sink as most other pitchers.
It was just a great at-bat, down 0-2 and he put a good swing on that pitch, hit it out to left-center. When you hit the ball where it’s pitched, in the year of the home run, with warm air and low humidity, I mean … there were eight homers combined. Any ball that was up, mid-thigh and above, it had a chance to go out.
How impressive was Springer’s at-bat in the 11th? Runner on second, no outs, looked as if he was trying to advance the runner with a grounder to the right side and he hits a two-run homer to rightcenter.
I saw him interviewed after the game, and he said he tried to slow the game down. He wasn’t swinging within himself in Game 1, when he struck out four times. The pressure and nerves of your first World Series game will do that. He’s a strong guy with a great swing, a great athlete, clearly a clutch player and a superstar. It was a fantastic game, it really was.
Dodgers relievers had thrown 28 scoreless innings in the postseason before Houston scored against setup man Brandon Morrow in the eighth and Jansen in the ninth. How important was it for the Astros to put a dent in the Dodgers bullpen?
What Houston did against Morrow and Jansen basically gave them the chance to get to the last reliever the Dodgers had, Brandon McCarthy, and they got to him right away in the 11th.
There’s definitely a psychological edge for the Astros. You just can’t let the other team’s top two relievers dominate you every time, or you’ll win zero games. Morrow and Jansen are great pitchers with great stuff, but trying to get six outs from your closer isn’t the same as coming in to get three outs.
(Dodgers manager) Dave Roberts was very aggressive tonight. I’m guessing they had preplanned it for (starter Rich) Hill to go through the lineup twice, see what the score is, and with five right-handed hitters up in the fifth, it made sense to bring in Kenta Maeda. This is not the regular season.
How lucky were the Astros in the 10th when, with the score tied 5-5, Chris Devenski’s wild pick-off throw to second in an attempt to nail Hernandez hit umpire Laz Diaz?
I was thinking the pitcher had some extra nerves and he just hooked that throw. They got a huge break there with the umpire. The center fielder was shaded toward the gap in right-center. Hernandez might have scored on that play.
Didn’t the Dodgers get a pretty big break in the fourth, too?
They did. Two on, one out, Alex Bregman hits a sinking liner that Dodgers center fielder Chris Taylor dives for and can’t catch. The ball caroms off the bill of his cap and right to Joc Pederson in left. If that ball doesn’t hit Taylor’s hat, it would have been a double or triple, for sure. A run scores, but it’s only a single. The runners have to hold at first and second. Altuve and Correa strike out. Inning over.
The Dodgers had a 3-1 lead in the sixth after Corey Seager’s two-run homer, and it looked as if they might rout the Astros. How has the series changed with the teams tied 1-1 and Houston returning home, where they won four American League Championship Series games against the New York Yankees?
You want to create momentum going back home, and they have Lance McCullers and Charlie Morton going in Games 3 and 4. The Astros’ confidence is way up. This win tonight gets them feeling like they did when they were so awesome during the season.
mike.digiovanna@latimes.com Twitter: @MikeDiGiovanna