Vin Scully only has one more game to call in his professional career, and he was the only reason to keep watching this game. He called a better game than the Dodgers played, as the team blew a chance to knock the Giants out of playoff position, losing 3-0 to, that’s right, another lefty *drink*.
Clayton Kershaw was, playoff good? I guess that is a decent way to describe it, Kershaw was rolling for a long time, getting through the first 3 innings throwing somewhere close to the minimum amount of pitches, but he got extremely unlucky, as one of very few mistakes got hit a long way by Angel Pagan in the 5th inning giving the Giants a 1-0 lead.
Kershaw did get into trouble in the 7th inning as Angel Pagan singled to right, Brandon Crawford followed that with a single to third base that was scored as a single, as it was a deflection of Clayton Kershaw. Unfortunately for Clayton, Justin Turner tried to do too much with it and threw the ball in the stands, scoring Pagan. A sacrifice fly would bring in Brandon Crawford to give the Giants an insurmountable 3-0 lead.
It would be nice for Kershaw to turn in a dominant performance in a playoff like atmosphere like he did in New York last season, but there isn’t much he could do about the deflection that resulted in 2 unearned runs against him. Ultimately he turned in 7 innings pitched, 1 earned run, 4 K’s (he made up for that by only making 82 pitches) with 6 hits allowed and his 11th walk of the season (!!). It was adequate! hah.
None of that matters if the Dodgers can’t hit lefties. Some guy named Ty Blach, who was making his 2nd ever start, dominated this lineup, only allowing 3 hits (singles by Yasiel Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, and Joc Pederson). This has been a problem all season, but the Nationals have a left handed starter in Gio Gonzalez that the Dodgers could see as early as game 2 against them, and if the Dodgers are fortunate enough to advance to the NLCS, the 100+ win Cub team could throw Jon Lester against the team 3 times in a 7 game series.
I wish I could say I didn’t care about this game but not being able to hit a mediocre lefty just feels terrible considering the team versus LHP might be a fatal flaw this team has.
But we should recognize that the Dodgers closed out the last 2 seasons extremely strong and that didn’t matter at all in the playoffs. Heck the Giants have looked totally inept in the last series of the season before and went on to win the world series so it doesn’t really matter how the team is playing as long as they figure it out next Friday.
The goals tomorrow should be to win to force a 1 game playoff for the 1 game playoff and to soak up as much Vin as possible.
Kike shouldn’t be on playoff roster
Posted this once already. So much for going into the post season hot. Better just hope for luck.
Since 1958
Did you think this leftie today, was better then the lefties the Dodgers just faced in that last game against the Padres?
I feel the same way you feel.
I also don’t want to see the Giants get passed the wild card game, and end up going farther then us in the post season again.
Luck is always a good thing. Can we make it a stat? Luck-o-meter?
The Nats are going to have a long layoff like us, and they’re without one of their best pitchers and starting catcher. Murphy might be back but he will be rusty. Not saying we will, but if we don’t beat them after being 5-1 on the season, somebody will have some ‘splaining to do.
Mark, didn’t you say Kershaw 5 and then done? Albeit it was your assumption.
Did you pull that out of your ass!!!!! Just pushing it back!!!
Did you have facts?
Well I expected him to throw about 15-20 pitches an inning, but he allowed less than 12 per inning, so maybe I should have stated the number of pitches he would throw… which I thought would be 80-90.
The fact are he usually throws 13-15 pitches an inning (on average). Today, he was very efficient.
In case you didn’t major in math – 5 innings x 15 per inning pitches = 75 pitches.
He threw 84 pitches in 7 innings.
Those are the facts. I guess in the future I should count the number of nose hairs on any given player?
Man, some of this stuff is so weak…
Scott says I am the most hated person on this board.
That just reinforces that I am right in my thinking.
Mark,
If you’d only stop judging what is weak and throwing it back to many posters, your comments would be much more readable. You remind me of some of these highly opinionated teenagers who think they are right all of the time and really aren’t listening to anything except their own thoughts. Growing up is not about what you think everyone should be thinking. You seem like the kind of guy that just wants attention. Very odd because the attention you get is from a computer screen which is no attention at all. Your imagination is out of control.
Mark
I guess your one of those people that any attention is better then no attention.
No such thing as bad publicity. If these posters would quit saying ridiculous things like FAZ is stupid, FAZ is incompetent, FAZ is the debil, it would be easier to cut them some slack.
Mark
You said you thought Toles would play left.
What do you think about Roberts continuing to hit Howie in the lead off position, and playing leftfield today?
It looks much like the regular lineup
We need some Scott Andes mojo for Vin Scully’/ last game.
Oh I’ll be here
Scott
Why did you tell Mark he is the most hated guy on this site?
You know Marks loves to think he has that much power!
As OC Dodger would say, “it’s in the past”…
I had the Blue as a NLW lock and beyond that I’m still clueless…
Win today and rest up for the Nats, that’s all I got!!!
Damn I bet Kersh is thinking ahead already…
Damn I miss a big RH bopper in the middle of the lineup…
Why, didn’t help in 2013 or 14. What we need is dominant pitching, both BP and starters. We’ve had it in the past and lately in the reg, BP anyway,but not in the post season tournament, not for quite a while.
In the off season something needs to be done, to make this team more balanced, so any old leftie pitcher, won’t dominate this team.
I don’t understand why it is more acceptable that leftie hitters, can’t hit lefties.
Because they come across leftie pitchers, just as often as rightie hitters do.
I don’t think Bumgarner is going to be as dominate in the post season this year, because he is losing his velocity, and he is not quite as dominate, as he use to be.
So I hope the Giants are eliminated by the Mets.
It would even better today, if we beat the Giants, and the Cardinals beat the Pirates.
There is one thing I hate that goes with playing baseball in Oct. and that is the cold weather.
It was 59 in SF yesterday, and it is much better to play baseball in the heat.
But in Washington it might be even colder.
NLW div champ is awesome,4 in a row. But I find myself wanting more. Guess I’m greedy, always wanting more.
You’re not greedy. It’s been 28 years since we’ve been to the World Series. Expansion teams have won the series since we were there. This is the Dodgers we’re talking about. And the people who are dancing in the streets like they just won a world championship in September are damn fools.
Snider
I can’t imagine any Dodger fan that is convinced for sure, this is the year.
They aren’t called them Bums for nothing.
But it would sure be nice!