I watched most of the Dodger games in the postseason this year.[1] The best-played game was the final game against the Padres. The best moment was Freeman’s Gibsonesque walk-off grand slam. That’ll probably be the defining image of the World Series. It seemed to propel the Dodgers to a 3-0 lead in the series which made the outcome seem inevitable.
After giving up on game 4 with a bullpen game, the Dodgers were counting on their deadline acquisition and suddenly effective starter, Jack Flaherty, to keep pace with the Yankee’s ace, Gerrit Cole. It wasn’t to be as Flaherty was pulled after 1 and a third innings having given up 3 runs. Cole pitched 4 hitless innings. One out was this routine grounder to Mookie Betts in the top of the first:
First baseman Anthony Rizzo completed the play himself. You can tell from this image that Cole was on his way to cover the bag if Rizzo needed help. Betts just wasn’t fast enough to beat the defenders.[2] This will be relevant later.
By the top of the fifth inning, the Yankees were well on their way to winning a second game. Cole was still pitching, but gave up a leadoff single (the first Dodger hit of the night) to Kiké Hernández. Tommy Edman reached on an embarrassing error by Aaron Judge.[3] Will Smith reached on Anthony Volpe’s throwing error and suddenly the bases were loaded with Dodgers and no outs.
John Smoltz, the color commentator, suggested Cole would be happy to give up one or two runs in that situation. Instead it looked like he’d get away clean. Cole struck out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. Two outs, bases loaded and Betts hits another ball to Rizzo:
The ball was hit a little harder than the similar play in the first inning so Rizzo is a little further back when he fields it. Not so far back that it was impossible to make the play himself, but it would require a bit more effort. Meanwhile, Cole is clearly going to reach first before Betts since the distance from the mound is a lot shorter than the distance from the first-base-side batter’s box.
And then… Cole stopped running. Rizzo had decided to throw to the pitcher and the pitcher wasn’t even close to first base:
It’s counted as a single according to baseball’s scoring rules, but this was clearly a mental error. Kiké scored on the play: Dodgers 1, New York 5. Freddie Freeman hits a single into shallow center: 3-5. Teoscar Hernández drives a ball over Judge’s head to the centerfield warning track: 5-5. New game and the Dodgers won the second half 2-1.
Connoisseurs of bad baseball should not miss:
- a catcher’s interference call and
- a third pickoff attempt turned balk in the top of the 9th.[4]
In the postgame interviews, the Dodgers seemed a little embarrassed to talk about the 5th. To paraphrase: “Well, they gave us some extra outs and we capitalized.” Yeah. It was three extra outs with runners on base. When you have essentially 6 outs in an inning, scoring 5 runs is not quite the accomplishment as when you are limited to the standard number of outs. To put it another way: how many runs would you expect a pitcher to give up if the inning started with bases loaded?
I’ve long watched a few during the season since we cut our cable while I’m looking for work. For the playoff games, we used a free trial of YouTube TV. When that ended, I used another Google account I’d set up for managing sock puppets.
↩︎I have a somewhat insane idea that batters should be able to pick the direction they run the bases when nobody is on. If Betts could have run to the left instead, he would have been safe by a mile. Of course teams would need to put defenders with strong arms on both corner bases with this proposed rule. A third baseman playing first would probably get Betts out in that case. ↩︎
Though I would note he very nearly threw out Kiké on the force play at second. ↩︎
Apparently the MLB video clip library doesn’t show balks. So you’ll need to go to about 3:34:42 in the game broadcast to see it. ↩︎