Steve Webb
CHICAGO, IL — Human sacrifice! Dogs and Cats living together! Mass Hysteria!
Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was a wild one on the south side on Thursday afternoon. The Dodgers spotted the White Sox to a four run lead, came roaring back to take a lead of their own in the middle innings, and then nearly threw it away in the last two frames. It. Was. Something.
Anyway, when the dust had cleared, the Dodgers had an 11-9 victory and series win. But nothing about this game went according to script. For anybody. Let’s dig in, shall we?
Anderson gets rocked, streak broken
The first big surprise of the afternoon was the oddly ineffective and inefficient outing by the usually reliable Tyler Anderson for the Dodgers. While his counterpart Dylan Cease held the Boys in Blue in check for the first part of the game, Anderson was roughed up pretty quickly. He had a couple of scoreless innings to extend his streak of zeroes to 28 consecutive innings, but about then the wheels fell off the apple cart for the soft-tossing lefty.
The trouble began when Josh Harrison led off the bottom of the third with a triple and scored on an infield ground ball. The streak was broken, but no further damage was done in the inning. However, the same couldn’t be said for the following frame. The fourth started out with a walk to Jose Abreu and a single to Josh Burger, but it was AJ Pollock who supplied the big shot in the inning. Just as he had on Tuesday night, the former Dodger reminded his old employer what they were missing. He ripped an opposite field double down the right field line that scored Abreu and moved Burger to third. Already it was 2-0 Sox.
After Yasmani Grandal walked, Dave Roberts had seen enough. However, Anderson’s replacement, Brusdar Graterol, didn’t fare much better. He plunked a batter to score a run on his second pitch, and then gave up a sac fly two pitches after that. A very David Pricean performance. The inning finally ended with the Dodgers in a four-run hole going into the fifth.
Dodgers flip the script
However, boy howdy, did things ever change after that. Over the next two innings, the Dodgers batted around a couple of times and put ten (count ’em, ten!) runs on the board. In the fifth, most of the damage came with two outs, thanks to doubles by both Freddie Freeman and the newly activated Max Muncy, just back from his rehab start in OKC.
Then, in the sixth, Tony La Russa got a little too cute and walked Trea Turner with a 1-2 count (what was he thinking?) in order to get a left on left matchup with Muncy. Max didn’t particularly care for that monkeyshine, so he promptly whacked a three-run home run to left center to make the score a seemingly insurmountable 10-5.
Bullpen falters, but holds on
However, the Sox did their best to “surmount” that lead. They took advantage of an erratic Alex Vesia in the eighth and a ineffective Daniel Hudson in the ninth to score four runs and crawl right back into the game.
Now behind 11-9 (Gavin Lux had knocked home the Dodgers’ 11th run in the ninth), the Sox had the winning run at the plate with two outs. Luckily, Hudson got a whiff from pinch hitter Gavin Sheets to end the game and preserve the win. It was a crazy end to an insane game.
On to San Francisco…
Winning this series, the Dodgers push their road record to 21-10, best in baseball. If not for the underperformance at home this year, the Dodgers could be starting to get some separation from the pack. As it is, though, the standings have been sort of frozen in place for the last couple of weeks. However, the Dodgers can do their cause a lot of good in the race this weekend with a good series against the Giants up in Oracle Park. The Giants are hanging on by their fingernails right now, trailing the Dodgers by 6.5 games. They could fall off the end of the earth this weekend, or they could play themselves right back into contention. Should be a good weekend of baseball. Walker Buehler tries to right the ship on Friday, facing off against righty Jakob Junis. Let’s go!
Cans of Corn…
- Man, it was good to see Max Muncy getting hits in the middle of the lineup again. That’s what this batting order should look like.
- Gavin Lux had a very good afternoon — 4-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored. The good day at the office raises his batting average to .290. That’s kind of All-Star-ish, isn’t it?
- Hopefully this is just a bump in the road for Anderson, but he just didn’t have it in this one.
- Freddie Freeman, very quiet in the first two games of the series, went 3-for-5 with 2 RBI.
- Mookie Betts went 0-for-6. Is it a slump, or a few bad days? Time will tell.
- Not impressed by the bullpen of late.
- I can’t be the only one who wants more high leverage from Yency Almonte.
