Steve Webb
Taylor-made moment: CT3 walk-off bomb sends the Dodgers to San Francisco
LOS ANGELES — Damn, I love baseball. And I especially love Chris Taylor. Damn, I love every damn one of those Dodgers tonight. Because they sent me to bed with on of the biggest thrills of LA Sports history. Faced with a win-or-go home game, the Dodgers and the Cards matched each other move for move for eight and a half innings, going into the bottom of the ninth deadlocked at 1-1. Then, my boy Chris Taylor, who’s been struggling mightily in the last month and a half, stroked the biggest hit of his career. A two-out, two-run walk-off home run to beat the Cardinals 3-1 in the Wild Card game. The Dodgers have lived to fight another day, but just barely. Here’s how it all went down:
Cards get a run in the first
To be quite honest, this game could have gotten off to a much better start for the Boys in Blue. Dave Roberts sent Max Scherzer to the mound with the challenge of pitching the Dodgers into the next round of the postseason. And frankly speaking, the first inning was a bit of a mess. Tommy Edman got a little doinker into right to lead off the game, so right away Scherzer had traffic to deal with. It was something Mad Max would have to get used to on this night. As soon as he had a chance, Edman stole second and when Paul Goldschmidt drew a walk, Scherzer found himself in a real pickle.
The next hitter, Tyler O’Neill fouled out to Mookie Betts in deep right, but Edman was able to tag up and move to third on the play. Now with runners on the corners, Scherzer got down to the business of striking out the next hitter, the always dangerous Nolan Arenado. However, Scherzer put a little too much on a breaking ball and bounced it past Will Smith for a wild pitch. The speedy Edman scored easily, and suddenly it was 1-0 Cards. Scherzer was able to get out of the inning with no further damage, but the Dodgers headed to the bat rack playing from behind.
Wainwright nearly perfect. Nearly.
Adam Wainwright started the game for the Cardinals with a fifteen-year history of giving Dodgers’ hitters fits with his breaking stuff. The Dodgers are already a team that struggles with the off-speed stuff, and Wainwright’s is elite. So it never was a good match-up for the home squad tonight. However, they did have a few scoring opportunities in the early innings. Mookie Betts led off the game with a single, but got stranded at first. In the second they went quietly, but in the third they got something going with a Bellinger walk, a Scherzer sacrifice and another single from Mookie.
Now with runners at first and second, they were in business. Corey Seager walked, and hey now, the bases were loaded with the NL batting champ Trea Turner coming to the plate. However, it was too early in the game for heroes, and Trea ground into an inning-ending double play. It was a bang-bang play at first, and a run would have scored if Turner had legged it out, but the throw from second bagger Tommy Edman just did nab Turner to kill the rally.
JT with a postseason home run. Because of course
Scherzer had a hit batsman in the the top of the fourth, but other than that, he put the Cards down without much fuss. Still trailing by one, the Dodgers started the home half of the fourth with Justin Turner, who last year set the franchise record for most postseason home runs, passing the great Duke Snider with 12 October dingers. Well, add one more to that list. He led off the fourth inning with a high blast to left field off of a 2-2 curveball from Wainwright. The ball hung a bit, and Turner barreled it up. It flew 401 feet off the bat and landed in the midst of an ecstatic Dodger bullpen. The Dodgers had finally gotten to Waino. It was now a new ball game going into the fifth.
Roberts with an early hook for Scherzer
Scherzer returned to the mound in the fifth, looking for a shutdown inning to keep the momentum on the Dodgers’ side. However, exactly the opposite happened when he gave up another leadoff single to Tommy Edman and a walk to the dangerous Paul Goldschmidt. With the heart of the order coming up and Wainwright dealing, Dave Roberts knew that he had little margin for error. He let Scherzer pitch to Tyler O’Neill, but after Scherzer recorded a quick strikeout, he headed to the mound with a quick hook for the Cy Young winner.
Scherzer tried to get out of the removal by shaking his skipper’s hand rather than handing him the ball but Roberts wasn’t having any of it. He scooped the ball out of Scherzer’s glove and send Mad Max heading to the showers. Sherzer’s final line on a very short night: 4.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 4 K, but most importantly three walks and a lot of deep counts that led to a pitch count way too high for the Max we’re used to seeing.
Damn right, Joe Kelly did that!
Who had Joe Kelly as the first reliever out of the pen in this one? Not me, that’s for sure. However, it was indeed Mariachi Joe that got the call in this crucial spot with two on and one out and perennial All-Star Nolan Arenado coming up. Sure, why not? Anyway, Kelly came through in this one. Big time. He got Arenado to hit a weak grounder to third for a force out that kept the status quo on the bases.
Then, after a wild pitch (this is Joe Kelly after all) advanced Goldy to third, Kelly got his biggest out in a Dodger uniform. With the game teetering in the balance, he got Dylan Carlson to swing through a knuckle curve for a strikeout to retire the side, much to the pleasure of an animated Max Scherzer watching from the dugout.
Bullpen shuts down Redbirds’ bats
Though the Dodgers’ hitters still couldn’t solve Wainwright, the pitchers made sure the game stayed tied. After Scherzer’s early exit, Roberts made some calls that I wouldn’t necessarily have made, but on this night anyway, they all seemed to work. After Kelly was lifted for a pinch hitter, Brusdar Graterol came in and pitched a scoreless sixth inning.
Treinen shines for 1.2 innings
Then, with the top of the Cardinal lineup coming up again, Roberts brought out the big guns. He went with Blake Treinen, perhaps a little earlier than usual, but when you look at who he was facing, it makes a lot of sense. Treinen had the sinker and slider both working to perfection, and pitched a scoreless seventh that was only marred by a two-out walk. After the Dodgers failed to score in their half of the seventh, Treinen came out again for the eighth. Dylan Carlson squirted a ground ball the opposite way, beating the shift for a lead-off single. This no doubt drove Treinen batty, as it was pretty low on the exit velocity scale and would have been an easy out had there been a third baseman in that zip code.
The next hitter Yadier Molina flew out to Chris Taylor in left, but it looked like Carlson might have missed the second base bag on his way back to first. However, the Dodgers’ challenge to the call on the field was not accepted, so the Dodgers had to content themselves with just one out on the play. If you ask me the guy missed the bag, but whatevs…
Knebel finishes off the 8th with a K
Now with one out, Treinen attacked Edmundo Sosa with a first-pitch sinker, which Sosa promptly drove into left. It looked for a bit like Chris Taylor might have misplayed the ball a bit, but in the end he made an awkward grab on the sinking line drive for the second out. Then, with Treinen’s pitch count north of 30 pitches, Dave Roberts came out for another call to the bullpen. This time it was Corey Knebel, who’s been nails for the Dodgers down the stretch. Knebel came through again, getting Harrison Bader to chase a 3-2 curveball for the final out of the inning.
A scoreless ninth for Kenley
With nothing doing at the plate for the Dodgers in the eighth, the game went into the ninth still tied. Roberts made one more move, bringing in closer Kenley Jansen to get the Dodgers to the ninth with a chance to walk it off. He got a quick strikeout of Paul DeJong, but then Tommy Edman hit a weak liner to right. It looked like Mookie Betts might have toyed with the idea of diving for the ball, but that just wasn’t justified given the situation, so he decided to field it on a bounce and hold Edman to a single.
The pesky leadoff man Edman was brilliant for the Cards in this one: 3-for-5 with one run scored and two stolen bases. Edman got that second stolen base in the ninth, swiping second only a couple of pitches into Paul Goldschmidt’s at-bat. However, Jansen had bigger fish to fry than Tommy Edman. He got Goldy to go down on three perfectly-sequenced pitches: Sinker. Cutter. Slider. Sit down.
Now with two outs, Jansen got into a full count with the powerful Tyler O’Neill. But, he too got O’Neill to bit on a nasty cutter and struck him out for the final out of the Cards’ half of the ninth. It was a brilliant performance from the much-maligned Jansen and one that will give his teammates a lot of confidence in him going forward.
CT3!
Chris Taylor was probably the last guy anybody thought would be a hero in this game. Although he was clutch and brilliant and all things wonderful before the All-Star break, he had really been struggling going into the postseason. However, in the last game of the season, he’d gotten good wood on a couple of pitches, and got a base knock in his final at-bat of the year. So, it wasn’t that surprising to see Taylor start this one on the bench. In his first at-bat, he hit a weak pop-up to the right side in the seventh, so he didn’t have a lot of momentum going into his final plate appearance.
However, Taylor was the fourth hitter of the inning. He might not have even got there. Here’s how it happened: Gavin Lux was announced as a pinch hitter to lead off the inning, which prompted Cards manager Mike Shildt to go to his pen for the lefty T.J. McFarland. This forced Roberts to counter with pulling Lux and sending former Cardinal great Albert Pujols up to lead off the inning. Tio Albert hit it on the screws, but didn’t quite get it elevated enough to do any damage. He flew out to center fielder Harrison Bader just short of the track. Then, pinch hitter Steven Souza Jr. did the same.
This brought up former MVP Cody Bellinger. And you know he would have loved to be the hero in this one. And, he certainly tried to go yard with a couple of mighty swings early in the at-bat. However, in the end, he had the discipline to lay off a couple of pitches out of the zone and work the two-out walk. Shildt had seen enough from McFarland and decided to go with his former closer Alex Reyes to send the game into extra innings.
Reyes had been amazing in the first half of the year, but was really having problems with location in the last few weeks. So much so that he lost his closer’s job outright to Giovanny Gallegos late in the season. However, Gallegos had been spent in the eighth against the heart of the Dodger lineup, so he was unavailable. It was Reyes or bust for the Redbirds.
Reyes started Taylor off with a couple of sliders. CT3 swung and missed badly at the first one, but let the second sail by out of the zone for a ball. On the third pitch of the at-bat, Bellinger took off for second. He couldn’t have picked a better pitch to go on, Reyes bounced a change-up and Yadi Molina couldn’t get it cleanly out of his glove after he scooped it out of the dirt. Bellinger had stolen second without a throw. Reyes went back to the slider on the next pitch, and that baby just huuuuung for Taylor.
He mashed it. Hard. Right off the bat, everybody in the stadium knew the game was over. Left fielder Tyler O’Neill took a few steps toward the fence but quickly gave up the chase. He watched the biggest homer of the Dodgers’ season sail over his head and land among a sea of happy Dodger fans. 3-1 Dodgers. Game. Over.
Wooboy! On to San Francisco on Friday, but tonight is a night to be savored. There will be plenty of time to fret about the next opponent. Right now, it was time to party. Everybody sing…
Rollin’ down the Imperial Highway
Big nasty redhead at my side
Santa Ana winds blowing hot from the north
We was born to ride
Yes we was, Randy Newman. Yes, we was….
