Dodgers need spark to avoid big 0-3 hole
LOS ANGELES — Everyone gets it: The guy who’s been in this precise predicament before, the guy in his first full big-league season and all the guys in between.
In this World Series, the Dodgers have looked helpless and defeated. But others have appeared equally lost and recovered. Just not in a while.
Can the Dodgers buck the recent trend and revive not only themselves but wider interest in this one-sided Fall Classic, which the dominant Red Sox lead by a 2-0 count? The answer, a sizable part of which will be revealed in Friday night’s Game 3 here at Dodger Stadium, will come largely from a rookie — and partly from a manager who helped author the greatest comeback ever.
“For us, right now, it’s a game that we really need to win,” Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts said Thursday at his home ballpark, where both clubs opted not to work out after flying across the country.
Los Angeles will turn to freshman Walker Buehler, whose last start came on Oct. 20 in Game 7 of the NLCS at Miller Park, where he allowed only one run in 4 2/3 innings to help the Dodgers claim their second NL pennant in two seasons.
“It’s probably pretty similar,” Buehler said Thursday, in comparing the intensity and pressure of his last assignment to his next one. “I don’t think tomorrow is do-or-die quite the way Game 7 is obviously, but being down 2-0 in the Series going into it, there’s definitely some pressure there.
“But we train for this, this is why we play. I guess [it’s] good pressure.”
A Vanderbilt product like Game 2 winner David Price of the Red Sox, Buehler would aid his team greatly by providing more length than did his veteran rotation mates Clayton Kershaw (four-plus innings in Game 1) and Hyun-Jin Ryu (4 2/3 innings in Game 2), which would thereby empower Roberts to go to his bullpen less — in particular veteran Ryan Madson, who has inherited five runners so far and let all of them score.
Maybe it won’t matter with the way these Red Sox are hitting overall and in clutch situations in particular.
“They got some big hits when they needed them,” Roberts said, in a dramatic understatement.
Something must change, though. While it could be the location, this is where it must be pointed out that the Red Sox are 5-0 on the road (2-0 at Yankee Stadium, 3-0 at Minute Maid Park) so far this postseason.
Perhaps the Red Sox starting veteran right-hander Rick Porcello, after going with southpaws Chris Sale and Price in the first two games, will provide a spark, as the Dodgers figure to field a dramatically different lineup. Their ultra-deep roster gave the Dodgers an all-righty-hitting lineup versus the lefties, yet that didn’t lead to victories. This time, lefty swingers such as Cody Bellinger (the NLCS MVP), Max Muncy and Joc Pederson figure to start.
Or maybe these Dodgers, as advanced analytically as any team in the industry, will find a way to tap into Roberts’ memories of being a member of the 2004 Red Sox, who wiped out not just a 2-0 deficit but a 3-0 hole — the only baseball team ever to pull that off — to the Yankees in that ALCS. No team has prevailed after falling behind 2-0 in a best-of-seven series since then, and overall, 68 of 81 teams that have won the first two games have proceeded to win the series.
“I think that it’s something where I have lived it, that situation, being down and still coming back,” said Roberts, who famously pinch-ran for Kevin Millar and stole second base in the ninth inning of ALCS Game 4, coming around to score the tying run and sparking the turnaround. “I think the big takeaway is you can’t win four games in one night. Just the focus on one game at a time mentality. That’s as simple as you can put it. … I know that’s echoed in our clubhouse.”
If that echo doesn’t stick, then this Series and this season will end with a thud.