Dodgers confound beyond Kershaw
It’s been a win-one, lose-one kind of post-season for NL West champions
LOS ANGELES— Heading into their 10th game of this post-season, we still didn’t know for sure who these Los Angeles Dodgers were. They split their first four games, and the four before Thursday night. In the middle was a 272-minute crucible in Washington that they won by one run, earning a date in this National League Championship Series.
In Game 4 on Wednesday night, the Dodgers might have played their worst game of the season. The Chicago Cubs evened the series, two games apiece, with a10-2 victory. The Dodgers made four errors, allowed 13 hits and stranded nine runners. That did not include Justin Turner, who was picked off second base — by the catcher — to end the first inning with Adrian Gonzalez at the plate.
“Just the things on the bases and the overthrows and catching the baseball — this is very, very uncharacteristic for our group,” the team’s manager, Dave Roberts, said afterward. “But over the course of 162plus games, it’s going to happen. And it hasn’t happened very often with our guys.”
That is true, and the Dodgers would not have gotten here without doing lots of things right. Roberts, a rookie in this job, has skilfully managed the clubhouse and run the games. He made more pitching changes in the regular season, 606, than any manager in baseball history and constantly deploys pinch-hitters to get the best matchup advantages.
All the shuffling makes you wonder, though, just how good this team really is. They are extraordinarily deep, the mark of a front office loaded with former general managers who have the ingenuity, statistics, scouting and cash to do what they want. By surging to a division title while Clayton Kershaw recovered from a back injury, the Dodgers showed they could win without him.
Yet now, against better competition, that ability seems uncertain. Kershaw started the Dodgers’ first two victories over the Nationals in the division series and saved the clincher with one day of rest, after Kenley Jansen had thrown a careerhigh 51 pitches. They got their first victory of this series, on Sunday, with seven innings from Kershaw and two from Jansen.
“I’m not trying to be a hero,” Jansen said the next day. “I can’t do it all by myself. Kersh can’t do it all by himself. It’s going to take 25 on our roster to do this.”
In Game 3 on Tuesday, the Dodgers finally won without Kershaw’s power pitching; Rich Hill, a very different kind of left-hander, tamed the Cubs for six innings, and the bullpen finished the shutout. Julio Urias started Game 4 and held the Cubs hitless for three innings, a tantalizing glimpse of his promising future. Then he gave up four in the fourth, and a rout was on.
Roberts said Kershaw offered to pitch on short rest for Game 5. Roberts insisted that he start Game 6 at Wrigley Field on Saturday — on five days’ rest.
“(Game 5 is) not an elimination game. And I think the accumulation of his usage over the last10 days plays a factor in our decision.”
If the good version of the Dodgers showed up Thursday night, Kershaw could have a chance to give an everlasting title to his confounding band of teammates: National League champions, with potential for more.