Steve Webb
NEW YORK, NY — It’s a story that is told too many times by visitors to the Big Apple. You come to the big city, hoping for a pleasant stay, and you end up being a crime statistic. That is what happened to poor out-of-towner Justin Turner on Wednesday night. Turner blasted a shot of Mets’ ace Jacob deGrom in the top of the seventh that looked to be headed for a game-tying home run. Instead, poor JT was a victim of a robbery. Centerfielder Brandon Nimmo leapt high and snatched the ball out of the night sky and pulled it back onto the field of play. And that play turned out to be the difference in a nail-biter of a 2-1 victory for the Mets.
Marte strikes again
You know when you’re up against a pitcher like deGrom, you’re going to want to limit the damage on the other side of the scorecard. For the first two innings, things went pretty well for Dodgers starter Tyler Anderson. But, after putting up two straight scoreless innings, the Mets broke through in the bottom of the third. With two outs, the top of the New York order came to the plate, and were ready to attack. First, Brandon Nimmo, knocked a single into left field. That brought up Starling Marte, whose home run in Tuesday’s ballgame got the Mets to within a run.
Marte must be seeing the ball very well these days, because he completely crushed an Anderson change-up for a two-run bomb. The Mets would get two more straight hits off Anderson before he got the final out of the inning, so the Dodgers went into the fourth inning trailing 2-0 and with a pitcher who was starting to look a little shaky on the bump.
Mookie breaks the ice for the Dodgers
Let’s face it. Jacob deGrom was pretty much owning the Dodgers in the first half of the ballgame. It wasn’t until the fifth inning that the Dodgers got their first base hit. Throwing triple-digit gas and placing his “off-speed” pitches with precision, he had the Dodgers flummoxed until Justin Turner got a single in the top of the fifth.
However, in the top of sixth, the Dodgers finally got on board, courtesy of You-know-who. For the fifth time on this road trip, Mookie Betts went deep, this time against one of the game’s premier right-handed pitchers. On an 0-1 count, deGrom delivered a rare hanging slider, and Mookie just pounced all over it. He blasted it 415 feet, and the ball easily cleared the fence in left centerfield for a solo home run. And with Anderson seemingly back on track, the Dodgers had cut the margin to 2-1.
Nimmo robs JT to preserve the lead!
Betts’s homer easily found the seats. In the next inning, Justin Turner was not quite so lucky. After breaking up the no-hitter in the fifth, Turner stepped in with one out and nobody on. And that’s when the theft occurred. JT swung through a 99-mph fastball from deGrom for strike one. But then, deGrom went to the well once too often. He threw a second straight four-seamer, and Turner had this one measured perfectly. He put a great swing on the pitch and sent it flying deep to right center.
Nimmo went back on the ball, streaking toward the fence and a possible collision with the wall. Instead, the Mets’ centerfielder perfectly timed his jump, and caught the ball just as it was clearing the fence. deGrom tipped his hat from the mound as Nimmo celebrated the catch from the outfield. deGrom definitely owes Nimmo a steak.
“You do what you can. Do everything right, then it’s out of your control,” Turner said after the game. “It was a great play by Nimmo. Not a whole lot you can do about it.”
TA goes 7 strong, but exits behind
Though the robbery of Turner was a bummer, the Dodgers were still in the game, thanks mostly to the efficient and effective pitching of Tyler Anderson. He gave up more hits than he probably would have liked, but most of them were isolated hits that didn’t amount to much. Other than the blast from Marte, it was a great night for TA. He made it seven complete innings on just 93 pitches, but got tagged with a hard-luck defeat. The final line for the evening: 7.0 IP, 8 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 3 K. Jake Reed pitched a scoreless 8th for a very good showing from the Dodgers’ pitchers in this tight series.
When asked about the performance after the game, TA was feeling positive, despite the L. “I just feel like every time, it’s one of those things where you want to go out there, you’ve got to throw strikes because you want to go deep in the game, because you know [deGrom is] going to,” he said. “You’ve just got to try to limit mistakes, because he’s obviously a really good pitcher and a hard guy to score runs off [of].”
The return of the legend
The regular season series between these two heavyweights wraps up on Thursday afternoon with a name Dodger fans have been eager to write on their scorecards again: Clayton Kershaw. Foregoing the usual rehab start in Rancho or OKC, Kersh brings his bag of tricks directly back to the big leagues. It’s going to be interesting to see how things go in his first start in nearly a month. He wasn’t altogether thrilled with his stuff in his sim game in Miami, so he’s sort of going into this on depending on his old self to kick in again in the game setting. We’ll see. Chris Bassitt gets the ball for the Metropolitans. 1:10 PDT start time.
Cans of Corn…
- Other than Turner, Gavin Lux also got robbed earlier in the game by left fielder Mark Canha. Derp.
- Manager Dave Roberts said that this was an “information gathering series.” Hopefully, the Dodgers’ hitters have a lot more information on deGrom that they can use to their advantage in October if necessary.
- deGrom only gave up three hits, but the Dodgers’ put a half-dozen good swings on him that went for outs. Something to build on for next time.
- In the at-bat before Turner was robbed, Max Muncy got a bad strike call on a 3-1 pitch. So, you could imagine a scenario where EXACTLY the same things happened, but the Dodgers win the game 3-2.
- Mookie’s homer in the 6th was his 32nd of the season, matching his career high of 2018.
- Timmy Trumpet finally got to play “Narco.”
- Kind of glad the Dodgers got a look at Diaz, even though things didn’t fall our way this time around.
- Roster expansion on Thursday. We’ll se who shows up on the scorecard.
