Smart hitting arrives in nick of time in NLCS BRUCE JENKINS
As the NLCS heads to Milwaukee:
The game of baseball became an annoying swirl of shifts, strikeouts and launch angles this season, but Colorado manager Bud Black offered a ray of hope. “I’m not worried about it,” he said. “The game will find its way back to higher scoring. Hitters will be more focused on contact, fewer strikeouts, beating the shifts. It won’t happen overnight. But it’s always cyclical.”
Without question, the Dodgers-Brewers series has tested one’s patience with the endless pitching changes and drawnout games. But at precisely the right time, with their season on the brink, the Dodgers have resurrected the art of fundamental hitting.
Based on statistical trends, we were warned to expect precious few rallies, stolen bases or clutch hits with runners in scoring position. Wrong. The Dodgers have built their 3-2 series lead on the strength of rallies, with the occasional timely steal and just two home runs. Going into Game 5, they’d picked up RBI singles by Manny Machado, Matt Kemp, Brian Dozier and Clay Bellinger (twice). Wednesday night’s 5-2 win was all about patient, short-stroke singles with runners in scoring position, featuring Austin Barnes, Yasiel Puig, Justin Turner and Max Muncy’s deftly placed opposite-field hit for a 2-1 lead in the sixth.
Now, if somebody would just lay down a bunt when the entire left side of the infield is empty ...
Ultimate contrast: The Brewers started Wade Miley in Game 5 and gave him one batter, who walked. Call to the bullpen. The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw steamed through the seventh inning having retired 13 straight hitters, and manager Dave Roberts even let him hit in the bottom of the seventh. (Why Roberts took him out is something that cannot be logically explained, not with an athlete of Kershaw’s caliber. Call it pitch-count paranoia at its worst.)
Machado isn’t running out routine groundballs. When he does hustle, he sometimes goes overboard with aggressive slides. He pulled a cheap-shot baserunning stunt on Milwaukee first baseman Jesus Aguilar in Game 4, as if with intent to injure. Back in 2014, playing for Baltimore against the A’s, he conked catcher Derek Norris in the head with his bat twice with his sweeping follow-through. (“As close to a deliberate MLB assault as I’d seen,” wrote Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post.)
Dirty player? Without question, at times. Will it make a difference on the free-agent market? Probably not. Big money always awaits talent and panache.