Last year, the Dodgers acquired Rich Hill and in the NLCS, it was all set for Kershaw to even the series and then Rich Hill could take the mound and do what the Dodgers acquired him for: win game seven. Unfortunately, Clayton Kershaw surrendered 5 runs on two homers and lost the game and the game and the series. Fast forward a little over a year later and Kershaw did one better: He gave up 6 runs to effectively snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
With your Ace up 4-0 in the 5th inning, you have to like your chances if you are a Dodger fan, except that we have seen this too many times. Some will say that Clayton is a choke artist. I don’t believe that for a minute. What I have been saying for quite some time is that his greatest strength is his greatest weakness. A-Rod said the same thing in the pre-game show last night. Clayton Kershaw throws more strikes on the first pitch than anyone. At one time, I believed that the Cardinals may have stolen the Dodgers signs, but they really didn’t need to – they knew that he wanted to get that first strike in and if he didn’t the second one would be there.
That is exactly what happened last night. Correa doubled on the second pitch and Gurriel homered on the first pitch. They knew what was coming. Clayton Kershaw is a very good pitcher but he is going to have to change his approach if the Dodgers are ever going to win the World Series. We have seen this too many times and you are insane if you believe doing what you have always done will get you different results. I don’t think Clayton is insane, so he will have to figure out how to change. It may be too late this year. Many fans are afraid that Clayton will walk after 2018 if the Dodgers don’t win. It turns out that the Dodgers may not win BECAUSE OF Clayton.
Tomorrow night, Rich Hill goes against Justin Verlander. This is why the Astros got Verlander. Of course, some will say that the Dodgers should have traded for Verlander, but if our Ace and Darvish had done their jobs, we wouldn’t be here. The bullpen is smoked, Jansen has lost confidence and Morrow looked like a deer in the headlights. If I had to guess what happens tomorrow, I would venture that Verlander will throw a complete game… maybe a shutout. I don’t see the Dodgers beating him again, but I never thought I’d see 25 runs last night with two former Cy Young winners pitching. You never know what will happen – that’s why they play the game.
You know who I am rooting for – I am just not confident!
Discussion (85)
Disagree, not disagreeable
JMO but Hill’s confidence is probalbly pretty high. He likes pitching at Didgers Stadium and he already had one pretty dang good game against the Astros there. Whether he does or not, he will expect to do well tonight and his plans will include pitching longer than 4 innings.
Confidence level of all the Dodger pitchers concerning me right now. Especially Hill and Jansen. We’ll know about Hill by about 8:30 or so.
I agree with what Mark has said in the past about Kersahw. I think he gets so amped up in the postseason that he wears himself out mentally and physically in addition to batters making him work so much harder in the post season. The ‘pitch’ where he stopped during his windup worried me because I didn’t think he had confidence in his pitches at that point.
I don’t think there is any question whether or not they’ll pick up Forsythe’s option not that there ever was in most our opinions.
Wah, Wah!
–
When FAZ was hired, I predicted great things for this organization and I was ridiculed… but I told you the truth as best I could. As the next couple years progressed, I continued to be ridiculed by many fans, but I told you the truth the best I could. I still have hope, but I am telling you the truth as best I can: It’s going to be tough to beat Verlander, but I will go down with the ship. I am not abandoing it!
Dodgers finally figure out Verlander tonight. Hill goes as far as he can then Wood comes in to get the ball to Jansen. Morton comes in for the Astros and it’s all hands on deck! This will be a great game that confounds the Astros favoring announcing crew. The Dodger Stadium crowd will be electric and have reason to cheer tonight!
JESUS CHRIST PANSIES!!!!!
I LOVE YOU ALL BUT EVEN MARK IS CRYING LIKE A WOMAN, WE STILL HAVE A GAME TO LOSE!
MAN UP BOYS, WE CAME THIS FAR TO LOSE THE WORLD SERIES BEFORE IT IS OVER?!?!??!
WELCOME BACK TO LA ASTROS, BOUT TO SEE THE REAL DEAL!!!
GO DODGERS!!!!!
Matt Beaty and Yusniel Diaz were named to the West Team for the 2017 Fall Stars Game. The 12th edition of the Fall Stars Game is being held at Salt River Fields on Saturday, Nov. 4, with first pitch set for 5:08 p.m. PT. It will be broadcast on MLB Network and streamed live on MLB.com.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers-report-20171029-story.html
–
There’s a backstory here. Not sure what it’s all about!
I definitely agree with the criticism of coming inside so much with the short porch in LF in that bandbox.
Dodgers should have won this series in 5. Instead, we lost two very winnable games through a mixture of bad management and bad pitching. While not exactly confidence inspiring, I like our chances to win 2 in a row at home. Eventually our pitching has to regress (improve) towards the mean, and I think, that begins tomorrow.
Reports out that Honeycutt unlikely to be back next year.
Cheer up Hawkeye, we are all right there with you searching for answers and having hope that things get better for the Didgers. The Astros are a really good team and have been so all year. It has been an amazing series so far, albeit, dissappointing for LA fans. The good news…the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. My pre-season call was Didgers in 7. We still got a shot at that and I’m not giving up yet to see the boys-in-blue pull this out. I know it is a big mountain to climb but I will shout out support for them until the last out of the 2017 WS. And whichever team wins, the Didgers had a great season and it was a helluva World Series already. Happy I got to watch some of it and root, root for the Didgers.
I’ve been so depressed today. It feels like we lost the World Series even though we haven’t yet. I can only imagine what the flight home felt like for the Dodgers players.
The easy thing to do is pile on Kershaw. Something changed at the 4th inning. He lost all command. He abandoned the curve ball and became a two pitch pitcher and the slider wasn’t effective. What hurt the most was not the HR’s it was the walks. Kershaw and Jansen don’t walk batters and they both walked batters and Kenley hit one. Kenley had nothing last night and he can’t use tired as an excuse in my opinion. Clayton going against the best teams in the playoffs has had good outings and bad outings. The team had won 8 out of his last 9 outings in the post-season so I was feeling good. Where was Honeycutt last night, where was Barnes to settle him back in? Was Grandal missed behind the plate last night? Kershaw sure has gotten beat coming in a lot and not working the outside part of the plate. We all were clamoring for Barnes to start, but Clayton may have missed Grandal. I don’t know. What hurt the most was that Kershaw was having a dud outing and no one to hand the ball over too. Maeda and Morrow didn’t belong on the diamond and I thought that would be the case with Maeda after game 3. McCarthy can’t be trusted to hand him the ball. Dan O’dowd made an argument that Kershaw should have been left out there because he HAD to go more with the bullpen spent. Morrow told the dugout he was ready to go, but obviously he wasn’t. Apparently, Doc won’t got back to Fields and didn’t got to Stripling in the 7th. If McCarthy isn’t really an option that was better than Kershaw struggling in the 5th he shouldn’t have been on the roster. The Astros are a fastball hitting team, the curve ball shouldn’t have been abandoned. Kershaw threw enough of them in Game 1 to keep it in the back of the mind of the Astros hitters.
Who knows if Taylor had tagged, what would have happened afterward. Do the Dodgers still score 3 in the 9th who knows? The home plate ump was just terrible. He was bad for the Astros at times, but horrific for the Dodgers hitters. Not even counting Barnes AB, I had the home plate ump at least 8 times either ringing up the Dodgers hitters on a bad called strike 3 or putting them in a 0-2 or 1-2 count. It was a complete collapse of the pitching staff that can be traced back to games 2 and 3. The outing by Darvish as well as the bullpen usage in Game 2 carried into Game 5.
The fact that the Dodgers hitters didn’t give up should give us hope for tomorrow, but it will be hard to get up from that one. The Dodgers crowd needs to pick them up.
Why would anyone put my TYPO “Didgers” in quotation marks. Take a look at the keyboard, where the “i” is next to the “o”. And I was also typing on an iphone, which is a lot smaller than a computer keyboard.
I am not in the Kershaw chokes in big games group, but he is not the same pitcher in the playoffs as he is during the season, for whatever reason. The bad games are no longer an aberration. They are piling up. The big difference in Game 5 and Game 1 was the slider. His slider was as good as it has been all year in Game 1, but disappeared in Game 5. When the slider is not working, he has to rely on his fastball which is not overpowering. No matter what, he is still an Ace, and I will believe the Dodgers will win every time he goes to the mound. But quietly I would rather have Madison Bumgarner pitch a must win game for the Dodgers (I know sacrilege).
.
I agree with the sentiment that the umpiring was horrid last night. But I have no objective means to quantify if it was really any different between the two teams. One thing MJ touched on that I agree with was that on 3-2 counts, the Dodger hitters were looking for walks rather than fouling off a borderline pitch. Right or wrong, they knew the umpire’s strike zone was all over the place, and they should have adjusted. The Astros did. 12 Dodgers went down on strikes, while only 6 K’s for the Astros. It would be interesting to see how many of the Dodger strikeouts were called rather than swing and miss. I will say that a couple of the inside pitches to Puig in particular were not even close, and forced him to swing at others well outside the zone. So even some of the swing and miss pitches were caused by unhittable inside pitches (at least to Puig).
.
The bullpen is absolutely gassed. Stripling threw 8 pitches last night, and was not hit hard by either Springer or Bregman. He also pitched well in Game 3; 1.1 IP, 0 runs 1 hit, 15 pitches. I know a lot of you have no confidence in Stripling, but he is on the roster, and he could have pitched in the 7th instead of Morrow, who needed the day off. He also could have pitched in the 9th instead of Jansen and use Jansen only in a three out save situation. Another pitcher nobody has confidence in is Brandon McCarthy, but again he is on the roster. If Morrow is going to get lit up because his arm is dragging, why cannot McCarthy get lit up? Or Josh Fields who has not pitched since Game 2? What difference does it make who gives up the runs? You knew what was going to happen with Morrow, but we might have been surprised by McCarthy or Fields.
.
I do not worry about confidence in the bullpen, but I do worry about who will be able to pitch. Luckily as bad as his pitches were, Morrow only threw 6 of them. But Jansen threw 33, after 14 in Game 4, 29 in Game 2, and 14 in Game 1. Morrow has thrown 57 pitches, and appeared in all 5 games, while Jansen has thrown 90 in 4 games. How many more effective pitches do they have left?
.
Let Hill pitch in Game 6. Hill loves to pitch in LA. In 14 games started, his ERA at home is 2.77, 1.051 WHIP, and batting against line is .179/.279/.289/.568. The one downside for him is that he does tend to issue a lot of walks at Dodger Stadium. It will be an extremely tough game against Verlander, who is great, but not perfect. Then hopefully Darvish can shut down the Astros in Game 7. I think he will have a little extra motivation. Both Wood and Kershaw should be available for relief in Game 7. Maybe Wood in Game 6 if needed.
He’s no Koufax. In the Bay Area, giants fans pull for the Astros. If they win, giants nation will be celebrating like their own team won it all. That stinks. Thanks for the bust, CK. Was it a choke? Sure smells like it.
Well Brooklyn, I did take a close look at what you were saying about the “Didgers” and Kershaw and you were pretty harsh (not necessarily somewhat deservedly) on Kersh, his performance and his pitch repitore. And then you said you wouldn’t be against them looking at a trade possibility of Kershaw.
.
I didn’t make up anything that you said or even argue against your point of view. I simply inquired of where you were coming from and how much angst this idea might cause. Glad you wre on board with not paying out the 206MM contract.
DD, take a careful look at what I wrote. I said that Didgers should “explore” a trade involving Kershaw, and not just for the sake of trading him, but for a “substantial package of young players”. And by the way I was happy when the Dodgers decided to let Greinke leave.
–
Kershaw can opt out after 2018. It may well be that the Dodgers are not looking forward to paying him $35 million a year as he moves into his 30’s, especially if they can add substantially to their talent base.
–
Dodgers management wants a championship now, but not at the expense of blowing up there long term plan to build a perennial winner, that has a chance at a championship year after year.
–
FAZ are young guys with a long term horizon unlike some of us old guys. There’s a lot of money coming off the books after this year, and also next year. I’m very interested to see how FAZ, and Dodgers management in general utilizes that flexibility.
If you take a deeper look at Clayton Kershaw’s Post-Season Record, you will see that he has a career 4.50 ERA. He has pitched 118 innings and allowed 95 hits with 35 BB and 135 K’s. His WHIP is 1.102 which is the unusual part. Greg Maddux had a 3.27 ERA in 198 innings in the Post-Season, but his WHIP was 1.242. Roger Clemens had a 1.221 WHIP in his Post-Season Career.
–
Once could conclude that Clayton has simply been unlucky to a degree.
Roberts bats Hernandez clean-up then asks him to bunt. What an totally asinine move. Getting out-managed by a slug like Hinch is tough to fathom.
Though extremely frustrated by the loss, that was one incredibly exciting game last night.
.
There’s much to say about Kershaw’s performance (he stunk after the 3rd inning) and the rest of the pitching, and how brutally bad the ump was, but for me, the play that most stuck in my craw was the friggin bunt attempt by Kike. With a runner on second (after one of the hardest hit balls of the night by Turner), with a pitcher trying to get his feel, no outs, and we have our clean-up hitter (Clean-up hitter!!!!!!) try to lay down a sacrifice bunt, something he has only done once all year. I just have not been able to get my mind around why they would do that in that situation. The momentum shifted big time after that play .
.
Still not giving up hope for the boys in blue. Tuesday night should be a lot of fun. Hoping for another exciting game like last night, but with a different outcome.
MLB forcing these slippery baseballs is unconsionable. They’re ruining the integrity of the sport. Its obvious both teams pitchers can’t throw their usual breaking balls.
The umpiring was bad for both teams last night. Same for the slick balls which resulted in bad sliders and lots of HRs.
–
The single biggest thing that the Dodgers could have done differently last night was to stick with their plan and give Morrow the night off. He obviously didn’t have it and Roberts shouldn’t have put him in, but should also have pulled him sooner. He had never pitched 3 consecutive days before and had pitched in more postseason games than anyone on the team. The 4 runs that the ‘Stros scored off of him were the difference in the game.
–
The other problem for the series has been Roberts’ quick hook. The bullpen has now pitched more innings than the starters and it is clearly exhausted. I get why Darvish got the hook in game 3 and Kershaw last night, but the hook after 4 innings for Hill in game 2 and Wood’s early exit in game 4 only served to tire the bullpen further. I was concerned after game 2 that lifting Hill early would cost the Dodgers. It arguably cost them both game 2 and the fatigue may have cost them last night as well.
World Series 2017
–
Death By A Thousand Cuts
Gabe Kapler to Phillies.
Amen on the umpiring. And it wasn’t just last night. But i’ll Leave that alone for now, although I hope that Dodgers are making an issue of it with MLB quietly behind the scenes. May not do any good now, but I firmly believe that the umpires are creating an airtight argument for an electronic strike zone.
–
I don’t think it’s so much that hitters can look look for Kershaw to get ahead, as it is that they can look for him to get ahead with the fastball. Kershaw does not have an electric arm. His fastball sits in the low to mid-90’s (mostly low 90’s), NOT the mid to upper 90’s. Last night it seemed that for the most part he had abandoned his curve, and was unable to throw an effective slider. Think back to that infamous 7th inning against the Cardinals. It wasn’t only that the Dodgers didn’t have a bridge to Kenley. Instead it was that Kershaw was throwing one predictable fastball after another. And I also think it is time for Kershaw to make the development of an effective changeup a priority. Cliff Lee threw strikes, but also had a devastating change to complement his other stuff.
–
The Dodgers offense needs to rise to the occasion tomorrow night, and give Hill as cushion with which to work late into the game. If the Dodgers bullpen gets called on early tomorrow, that could be fatal.
–
It’s probably not the time to begin thinking about this, but I wouldn’t be against the Dodgers exploring a trade of Kershaw this winter, if the result is a substantial package of young players. I have a feeling that the Dodgers wouldn’t mind getting out of the $30+ million pitching business.
–
And finally, if these are truly Destiny’s Dodgers, then what reason is there to believe that this will be easy? The Cubs broke their curse last year by overcoming a 1-3 hole. Time for the Dodgers to fulfill their Destiny by overcoming a 2-3 hole following a devastating loss.
–
Mark is justified for not being confident, but he is certainly not conceding this game. It’s time for the Dodgers to move a mountain.
If this does not motivate MLB to adopt the electronic strike zone I don’t know what will.
Mark, I remembered that you have always stated about CK’s lack of adjusting. Also, why didn’t Honeycutt walk over just to give CK a little break a la Astro’s pitching coach. This series should have been over and a parade being organized in LA, but like it is said, “That is why they play the game.”
I know this comment sounds like a sophomore, but the HP umpire was really horrible last night and I hope the MLB reviews his performance critically. It was not that that he called so many “out of the zone” strikes (although I couldn’t believe what I was watching) but he was terribly inconsistent…one time it’s a strike the next time it’s not.
It seemed he would call the inside strike off the plate but then also give Kuechel the pitch on the black outside as well. I’ve seen umpires give a pitcher the inside pitch or the outside pitch, but seldom do you see an umpire give both sides thereby extending the strike zone by 6 inches or more in total.
I couldn’t stand to watch any post game comments so I wonder if any pundits commented about this. I did read during the game a Joel Sherman (NY Times and MLB Network) tweet where he said Miller is the top MLB umpire for calling “out of the zone” pitches for strikes in the entire MLB, and sarcastically commented and that’s the guy who draws a WS opportunity.
Not sure how MLB selects umpires for the WS but Manfred and Torre had to witness one of the worst MLB umpire performances of all time with the exception of Don Denkinger who called Jorge Orta safe at 1B in the 1985 WS.
Dodgers lost the game because their pitching was terrible and gassed but it seems they were assisted by some awful umpiring as well.
So close last night and yet we are further away. An amazing game. But I don’t hear the fat lady singing yet.