Dodgers carry some advantages out of Game 3 win against Mets
NEW YORK — Question: How do you empty a full Citi Field?
Answer: Pitch to Shohei Ohtani with men on base.
Did the Dodgers take command of the National League Championship Series on Wednesday night in the moment that Ohtani turned on a Tylor Megill cutter and sent it screaming over the right field foul pole and into the second deck?
Probably not right away. But Ohtani's three-run bomb, upheld by video review and occurring two innings after another Kiké Hernández playoff moment, turned a relatively tight game into another runaway. It helped the Dodgers toward an 8-0 victory over the New York Mets and a 2-1 series lead – and consider that in NLCS history, teams winning Game 3 have won 35 of 54 series (64.8%).
And there were some subtle advantages beyond the series lead created by Ohtani's latest Ruthian – yes, I said it – blast.
One benefit was to get Freddie Freeman off of his feet for a couple of innings. Freeman has been limited but gamely soldiering on with a bad ankle, and he made two big scoops of throws in the dirt at first base on Wednesday night. The more chances to give him innings off the better.
The other advantage? The big lead saved Manager Dave Roberts from having to use a couple more of his high-leverage relievers in the late innings, after Walker Buehler had given the Dodgers a stubbornly magnificent four innings and 90 pitches, struggling with traffic on the bases but coming up with what he needed to keep those runners from scoring.
Notably, Buehler ended each inning with a strikeout. He fanned Pete Alonso with a runner on in the first and got Francisco Alvarez and Francisco Lindor to end the second and leave the bases loaded, the latter on a 3-and-2 curveball that prompted a primal scream from Buehler as he walked off the mound. Buehler fanned J.D. Martinez to strand two more runners in the third and got Alvarez on a called third strike on his 90th and final pitch to close the fourth.
It wasn't necessarily vintage Buehler. But given the twists and turns of his return from Tommy John surgery, contributing what he did in a big-game atmosphere felt familiar, and felt good.
"Yeah, it's everything to me," he said. "... The big games or me being in big games, that's literally all I care about. The way Kiké talks about our team having some sort of confidence when I pitch, regardless, I think is kind of really the goal for any starting pitcher.
"There's the stats and free agency and all this (stuff), but I want 25 guys in the locker room that believe I give us a really good chance to win. If I've created that in our locker room somehow, that's probably what I'll be the most proud of when I'm done."
With 90 pitches and the stress that went with them, four innings was enough for Buehler. Michael Kopech got the side in order in the fifth, Ryan Brasier came in after Hernández's 15th career postseason home run (and second this October) had extended L.A.'s lead to 4-0 in the sixth, and Blake Treinen dispatched the 8-9-1 portion of the Mets' lineup in the seventh. Treinen threw 11 pitches, 10 strikes, and finished his night's work by fanning Lindor as well.
(Funny thing. Lindor heard lots of "M-V-P" chants at the start of the game from the Citi Field crowd announced at 43,893. He was 0 for 4, and by the time Treinen struck him out ... well, empty seats do not chant "M-V-P.")
With a big lead, Roberts was able to use Ben Casparius the final two innings, thus saving Evan Phillips and Daniel Hudson for another day. "Those things matter" in a long series, Roberts said.
Even beyond the way workloads pile up during a seven-game series, and especially the middle three games, the longer a series goes the more chances hitters have to see those relievers and, theoretically, the better success they might have. But if Roberts handles this skillfully – and even those who doubt his aplomb have to admit that he's done so pretty well so far this October, with maybe the exception of Game 2 – hitters might not get multiple looks at a particular reliever.
The Ohtani dilemma has been strange . After a statistically historic regular season, with the expectations that he would carry the club in October, this has been a Jekyll-and-Hyde stretch. He is now 0 for 22 in the postseason with no one on base ahead of him. But with runners in scoring position he's 5 for 6 with two walks, two homers and eight RBIs, including Tuesday night's three.
Roberts expressed some puzzlement with the notion that maybe the team would benefit from moving Ohtani out of the leadoff spot, and his reasoning makes sense: You want your best hitter to have as many at-bats as possible. In fairness, it does seem kind of an overreaction from a city and a fan base for whom October can be a sadistic form of torture every time the Dodgers lose a game, with all those grisly memories floating back to the surface.
And there's this as well: Former player and current analyst Harold Reynolds noted on MLB Network's programming Tuesday that when Ohtani was going well, he would get into the batter's box and rest the bat on his shoulder momentarily, as a relaxation device, before getting into hitting position. Lately, Reynolds observed, he hadn't.
Before that fateful cutter from Megill in the eighth, he
