No, we haven't taken up covering college basketball. But through all the twists and turns of the 2021 regular season, a bunch of those teams who love to hate each other ended up in the postseason-- when it actually matters.
The Yanks Are Going
We profess to having had a bit of schadenfreude right after the All-Star break when the MLB (and TV) schedulers decided to plop a lone Yankees/Red Sox game on that Thursday so it would be the only game in the country and they could hype it even more... and then it got rained out.
In the postseason, however, the hype when these two play each other is more justified. Especially when it's not even a 5- or 7-game series between the rivals. Nope, this is a single winner-take-all game to decide who moves on in/to the postseason. This is for all the Tostitos.
There had been five previous such games between the Yanks and Sawx; they played regular-season tiebreakers in 1949 and 1978 (the latter is "The Bucky [expletive] Dent Game"). When the Wild Card came along, we suddenly had the potential for two teams from the same division to meet in an official postseason game, which of course happened between those two in 2003 ("Aaron [expletive] Boone") and again in 2004.
Eighteen years hence, some fans were again yelling "Aaron [expletive] Boone" at the conclusion of such a game. Except this time it was the Yankees faithful. Because you might have heard that Aaron Boone is now their manager. And he's going to be sitting around his office (or cleaning it out, maybe?) while watching the remainder of the 2021 postseason.
If you needed a starter for a winner-take-all game, you could do a lot worse than Gerrit Cole. He's started 13 prior postseason game, including three for the Yankees last year, won eight of them, and always made it to at least the 5th or 6th inning before running out of gas. But if you've followed him this season, it's been a very different second half. The batting average against him went from .203 to .255, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio went from nearly 7 down to 5. Meanwhile, here's Xander Bogaerts.
After Cole walked Rafael Devers, "X" sent the Fenway faithful into a frenzy from which they would not emerge. His 2-run homer was just the fourth multi-run shot in the 1st inning of a postseason game against the Yankees, and also the fourth 1st-inning homer (any number of runs) for the Sawx in a WTA game. David Ortiz off Kevin Brown, in that 2004 ALCS we already mentioned, is on both lists. The others against the Yankees were J.D. Martinez off J.A. Happ in 2018 ALDS 1 and John Valentin off Roger Clemens in 1999 ALCS 3. The other 1st-inning homers were Dustin Pedroia against the Rays in 2008 ALCS 7, and Nomar Garciaparra in 1999 ALDS 5 against Cleveland.
Still, though, plenty of time. Until Kyle Schwarber leads off the 3rd with another dinger, joining Troy O'Leary as the only players ever to hit a postseason homer for both the Red Sox and Cubs. Cole gives up another single, walks Devers again, and then exits after only 6 outs. Luis Severino, in the 2017 Wild Card game, and Ivan Nova, in 2011 ALDS 5 against Detroit, are the only other Yankees starters to give up 2 homers and not get out of the 3rd inning in a WTA game. And Cole is the first Yankees starter to give up 2 homers and get 6 or fewer outs at Fenway Park since Andy Hawkins did it on September 1, 1990. (That's not his 4-run no-hitter, obviously, but it's exactly 2 months later.)
On the other side, Nate Eovaldi was confounding the Yankee hitters, striking out 8 of them before Anthony Rizzo finally got hold of a ball in the 6th. That tied the Red Sox record for K's in a WTA game; Jon Lester fanned 8 Rays in the final game of the 2008 ALCS, and Pedro Martinez did it twice.
This game also featured the escapades of multiple third-base coaches. Shortly after Rizzo's homer, Phil Nevin tried to send Aaron Judge all the way from first on what would ultimately be a classic Fenway Park single after bouncing off the wall in left-center. Judge, naturally, was thrown out easily to end the Yankees rally. Then, an inning later, Carlos Febles does the reverse and tries to stop Enrique Hernandez and set up bases loaded with two outs. Hernandez ignores him, runs the stop sign, and scores what would be Boston's final run of the game. You may be aware that Nevin and Febles, like many current coaches, both played in the majors themselves. And it turns out these two overlapped for six seasons from 1998-2003. In that time, the number of outs they made on the basepaths was exactly equal (25). Advantage back to Nevin?
By the way, that Alex Verdugo single on which Hernandez scored also came with the bases loaded, and thanks to running the stop sign, it scored two runs instead of just one. The only other multi-run bases-loaded single in the 7th or later of a Red Sox postseason game was by Rico Petrocelli off Will McEnaney of the Reds in the opener of the 1975 World Series.
The Yankees would end the game-- and their season-- on a strikeout by Anthony Rizzo, their 11th of the game against 0 walks. They'd only done that twice before in a postseason contest-- and they won those other games (2012 ALDS 3 vs Orioles, 1949 WS 1 vs Dodgers). They'd only had one other such game at Fenway Park, against John Lackey on April 23, 2014. Rizzo joined A-Rod (twice), Jorge Posada (2007), and Willie Randolph (1980) as the "lucky" batters to eliminate the Yankees from a postseason with a whiff.
Wild: Cards
Much like with Gerrit Cole, if you have the opportunity to start Max Scherzer in a winner-take-all game, you really should do it. The Dodgers and their 106 wins still had to get through a one-game playoff with the 90-win Cardinals and make a lot of commentators write things about seedings and how a third- or fourth-place team from a really good division might lose out to a "champion" from a really bad division. But here we are, and for a brief moment, it looked like the Cardinals might have gotten to Max. Single, stolen base, walk to start the game. Tommy Edman joined Matt Carpenter (2013), Tony Womack (2004), and Vince Coleman (1985) in snagging a leadoff hit in a postseason game at Dodger Stadium. With 1 out Edman scores on a wild pitch, the first run-scoring WP in a 1st inning in Dodgers postseason history. Then presumably the coffee kicks in and Scherzer remembers where he is-- on the mound to start a WTA game for the fourth time. That trails only Roger Clemens and Gerrit Cole, who matched Clemens with his fifth such start yesterday. He gets two flyouts and then shuts down the Cardinals until the 5th.
Meanwhile, who's right behind Scherzer in a big bunch of pitchers to start three WTA games? Why that's Adam Wainwright. He gets through 3 innings unscathed despite allowing a leadoff single to Mookie Betts, who tied Davey Lopes for the most leadoff hits (7) in Dodgers postseason history. The NLWC also marked the 24th time the Dodgers and Cardinals had met in a postseason game, but the first of those where both teams began the game with a base hit. Waino escaped the 3rd when Trea Turner grounded into a double play with the bases loaded, the first time the Dodgers have done that since Russell Martin in 2008 NLCS 4 against the Phillies.
By the 6th, however, Waino and Max are both gone and we are knotted at 1-1 after Justin Turner homered to lead off the 4th. And for the last four frames we didn't have a single 1-2-3 inning. Tommy Edman got a third hit and a second stolen base, joining Edgar Renteria (2000) and Lou Brock (twice) on the list of Cardinals to do that in a postseason game. Harrison Bader got hit by a pitch twice, which no Cardinal had ever had happen in a PS game before.
And when Albert Pujols came out to pinch hit to start the 9th, well, the collective heartbeats of baseball writers everywhere seemed to stop. We remember all those great years Pujols had with the Cardinals. Is it remotely possible he could suddenly eliminate them from the postseason with one swing, now batting for the Dodgers? He's never had a postseason walkoff anything, much less a home run (which would be needed here).
Annnnd he still doesn't. Lined to center. [Sound of deflating balloon.] But that just paves the way for Chris Taylor to be the hero. A 2-out walk to Cody Bellinger keeps the Dodgers' inning alive. And four pitches later the Cardinals' season is dead when Taylor does this. If you're thinking Kirk Gibson or Max Muncy, that's fine, but those weren't WTA games. No Dodgers batter had ever hit any walkoff in one of those before. Even a go-ahead hit in the 8th or later of a WTA had only been done by one other Dodger in history, Rick Monday in 1981 NLCS 5 at Montréal.
There is one Kirk Gibson connection, however. Chris Taylor came in as part of a double-switch for the pitcher to start the 7th inning. So he hit a walkoff homer for the Dodgers in a game he didn't start. The last Dodgers batter to do that against the Cardinals in any game was none other than Dusty Baker on September 5, 1981. And when it comes to the postseason, against any team, well, yes, Gibson is the only other Dodgers batter to ever do that.
Since the introduction of the second Wild Card and the elimination games between them, it's been touted as a "reward" for winning the division. You get three or even four days off to reset your lineup and pitching staff while those "underlings" (even if they have 106 wins of their own) battle it out for the "right" to face you. Or you could be one of those middle two teams who both get the days off and don't even care who wins the Wild Card games because it doesn't matter. We give you the other team with which Gerrit Cole wrote his postseason legacy, the Houston Astros.
In 2005 the Astros and White Sox faced off in a World Series that did not go very well for Houston. Chicago swept that Fall Classic 4-0 for its first title in 88 years, just one season after the Red Sox had broken their own, more-famous, 86-year drought. Here in 2021 they're facing off again as division champions, thanks to the MLB realignment in 2013 that flipped the Astros from the NL Central into the AL West. And you might have heard that the Astros keep appearing in the postseason ever since. And the Division Series round is kinda quaint because they keep, um, "trashing" whoever they play.
Lance Lynn found his way to the mound in Game 1 for the White Sox. It would be the 4th inning when he found his way to the showers. Two singles and a walk started the scoring in the 2nd, but another walk, a failed fielder's choice, and a double by Yordan Alvarez would leave him on the hook for 3 runs in the 3rd, and then three hits in the 4th were the last (Myles) Straw. Lynn joined Dallas Keuchel (2020), Early Wynn (1959), and Eddie Cicotte (1919) as the only White Sox starters to give up 5 runs in a postseason game without finishing the 4th inning. Yordan's leadoff homer in the 6th was the Astros' 6th and final run; he became the second Houstonian with 2 XBH and 2 RBI in a postseason game against the White Sox. Jason Lane did it in Game 3 of that previously-mentioned 2005 World Series.
Lucas Giolito, who you may remember as throwing a no-hitter last year for the White Sox, got the honors in Game 2. This time he took a no-hitter all the way to... uh... the 2nd inning. He did become the first pitcher in White Sox postseason history to strike out the first three opposing batters of a game. Except Giolito also issued five walks and was already at 90 pitches by the time he got taken out in the 5th. He's the first Sox postseason starter to issue that many free passes without getting through the 5th, and combined with Lynn getting pulled in the 4th in Game 1, the first time the Sox had ever had their first two starters of a series leave that early.
As you would expect, this is leading to another Houston victory. But not before Framber Valdez got in some trouble in the top half of the 5th and let in 3 runs. When the last of Giolito's walks finally scored, it left us knotted at 4-4 with neither starter involved in the decision. So for the Sox this is setting up to be a Bummer. That is unfortunately-named relief pitcher Aaron, who got the ball for the 7th and promptly gave up three singles. Craig Kimbrel was pressed into service a little earlier than usual, and Carlos Correa smoked him for a double. Two pitches later, Kyle Tucker polishes it off with a homer for your final score of 9-4. The pairing of Bummer and Kimbrel is the first in White Sox postseason history to each give up 2 runs while getting 2 outs in the same game. And unfortunately there aren't a lot of Astros-related notes here, because as mentioned, they've been here every year lately. Even the 5 runs in the 7th inning happened three years ago in Cleveland.
And even though the White Sox lost Game 2, they did collect 11 hits. Part of the reason they lost is that every one of those hits was a single. The last team to do that in a postseason game was the 2008 Brewers. And if you remembered anything about Game 1, you may know that all seven Sox hits in that game were singles as well. Only one other team in postseason history had collected 7+ hits in consecutive games with all of them being singles; the Tigers did it against the Red Sox in the 2013 ALCS. And Tim Anderson had three of those 11 in Game 2, the fourth time he's had 3 hits in a postseason game for the Sox. That surpasses Shoeless Joe Jackson for the most in team history.
Game 3 featured another offensive outburst, but suddenly we're back in Chicago and the exploding scoreboard is in favor of the White Sox. There's one school of thought that says the Astros are up 2-0, go for the dagger and the sweep and four more days off. Except the Astros are without Justin Verlander, and Gerrit Cole's already pitched this week (for the Yankees). Luis Garcia had a very good regular season regardless of which stats you use, but he did not have a very good Game 3. Tim Anderson started the game with another of those pesky singles en route to his fifth 3-hit postseason game. But here's where we point out that Sox starter Dylan Cease didn't have a very good Game 3 either. In fact he had to Cease pitching in the 2nd inning after 3 walks, a 2-run double to Kyle Tucker, and an RBI single from Jake Meyers. Tucker's double was only the second one in Astros postseason history (any inning) that flipped a lead, since they usually do that with homers. Marwin Gonzalez had the other against Cleveland in the 2018 ALDS. Granted, managers have much quicker hooks these days, especially with 13 and 14 pitchers on the team, but Cease became the third starter in Sox history to only get 5 outs in a potential elimination game. Dane Dunning did it in the Wild Card round last year, and we're pretty sure the other doesn't count. Lefty Williams "mysteriously" gave up 4 runs to the Reds in the final game of the 1919 World Series.
Luis Garcia at least made it to the 3rd before his wheels fell off. Walk, strikeout, home run by Yasmani Grandal to get the Sox back to 5-3. Groundout. Two more singles. Then we all get invited to the Garcia family reunion. The batter is now Leury Garcia who struck out his first time up. Luis throws two pitches way out of the zone to Leury. And, in a very-rare mid-at-bat pitching change (so rare we couldn't verify exactly how many had occurred in the postseason), Dusty Baker decides he's had enough. And the call to the bullpen goes out for... Yimi Garcia. Which of course broke baseball Twitter almost as badly as when Will Smith homered off of Will Smith last October. Predictably, yes, Leury is the first Garcia to face two other Garciae in the same at-bat (regular season or post-), which means he's also the first one to homer off either of them. (Maybe should've left Luis out there to just walk him.) That gives the game back to the Sox, and Leury hits the fourth lead-flipping homer in their postseason history. Happily none of the others was by a Garcia; they're Dewayne Wise in 2008 and both Tadahito Iguchi and Paul Konerko in 2005 (the latter in Game 2 of that World Series against Houston).
Yimi ended up with his own problems in the 4th, giving up three straight singles and forcing Zack Greinke to enter the game in the middle of an inning. He hadn't done that since he was with the Royals on August 20, 2007, also against the Sox. And his first batter is going to teach us all about "runner's lane interference". Once in a very long while, someone at a game will ask about that second, shorter line as you near first base. And it's tricky to explain. But the batter's supposed to stay over there so that the defense has the opportunity to make a play on him from anywhere in fair terrirory. So was Yasmani Grandal running on the grass for at least part of way to first? Yes. Was that legal? Ehhhh, maybe. Does it matter? Nope. Like we say, the purpose of the rule is that the ball's in fair territory (or else the batter wouldn't be running), so the defense gets ample opportunity to make a play on him. On him. Not on another runner, which is what happened. So when Abreu is throwing to the plate and hits Grandal with the ball, the rule book basically says, oops. There was a little argument about whether Grandal "leaned into it" or deflected the throw intentionally, in which case, yes, he could have been called out. But that is ultimately the go-ahead run and the turning point in our game. The Sox roll on to five more unanswered runs and a 12-6 win to force a Game 4 on Monday. The only other postseason game where the South Siders collected a dozen runs was a 14-2 win over Boston in the 2005 ALDS.
Ah yes, Game 4 on Monday. Add one to the conspiracies about the league office helping out the Astros. In the postseason, MLB brass, not the home team or the umpires, decides whether games will be played (or resumed in case of a delay). At 11:25 am, over 3 hours before first pitch and 1 hour before the gates were set to open, came the edict that it was going to rain all afternoon and we were going to play on Tuesday instead. And we're sure the White Sox would not have done that on their own, because instead of facing Jose Urquidy in an elimination game, the extra day off gives the ball to (gulp) Lance McCullers. It also deprives us of one final postseason day with four baseball games.
Did the extra day hurt Carlos Rodon? We may never know, but the Sox ace hadn't pitched in a real game in over two weeks. It had been more than a month since he'd thrown 70 pitches in any outing. So while McCullers took care of the White Sox, the Astros offense took care of Rodon. Jose Altuve got hit by a pitch, and just as the radio broadcast is saying that he "doesn't run like he used to", he swipes second. That's not going to matter because Rodon walks the next two batters and then gives up a double to Carlos Correa. Moral: Don't pitch to Correa in Game 4. He had a lead-flipping hit (a home run) against Oakland in last year's ALDS 4, and the only other batter in Astros postseason history with multiple lead-flipping hits is George Springer.
That 1 run that the White Sox already had was on a homer by Gavin Sheets, who later doubled to join Ted Kluszewski (1959) and Shoeless Joe Jackson (1919) as the only players to do both in a game where the team got eliminated. It did take them a record 4 hours 32 minutes to get eliminated, the longest 9-inning game in White Sox history, mainly because the already-depleted bullpen (remember the short starts in the first two games?) couldn't stop giving up runs. Michael Kopech was charged with three even through Garrett Crochet gave up the important hit. Craig Kimbrel was used in the 8th and gave up an unearned one. And in the 9th Liam Hendriks couldn't just get it over with. Jose Altuve drills a 3-run homer to make the scoreboard look even worse at 10-1. It also gives Altuve some history, at least until he breaks his own mark again next week. He's the first leadoff batter in team history to score 4 runs in a postseason game. He's also the second leadoff batter for any team to score 4 runs and have 3 RBI in a postseason game; Len Dykstra did that for the Phillies in the famous 15-14 game with Toronto in 1993. And that bomb was Altuve's 19th postseason homer, tying Springer's team mark and putting him in a fourth-place tie among all players (granted, there are more rounds now, so the list is quite recent).
Whoever gets to play the Astros in the Division Series next year, be prepared. We mentioned they keep dominating this round. If your postseason bracket has their logo burned into the ALCS spot, it's because they've been it for five seasons in a row now. In 52 seasons of LCS play, the only other team to appear in five straight was the Braves of 1995-99.
Milwaukee's Best
Cue the segue to the Braves of 2021. They'll be in the LCS again too, though only for a second straight year. But to set up their rematch with the Dodgers starting on Saturday, they had to give a farewell wave to Milwaukee. It's not the first time they've done that.
Braves/Brewers hasn't really emerged as a big "rivalry", but they do share the distinction of being the only two Milwaukee-based MLB teams in the past 100 years. So it's fun that the first two games of their first-ever postseason meeting were played in Milwaukee.
It was five weeks ago when Corbin Burnes started, and Josh Hader, finished, the Brewers' second-ever no-hitter. Appropriately enough, this series is going to start with Corbin Burnes and end with Josh Hader. They will both give up hits this time, although Burnes managed to get into the 5th inning again in Game 1. The longest no-hitter in Brewers postseason history belongs to Moose Haas in the 1982 ALCS. But the second- and now third-longest belong to Burnes; he also got into the 5th in the opener of their 2018 Division Series with Colorado. He will end up being the first pitcher in Brewers postseason history (which admittedly isn't very long) to throw 6+ scoreless innings and allow only 2 hits.
Meanwhile, Charlie Morton has picked up where he left off in September, allowing the Brewers only 3 hits and striking out 9. He posted that line eight times during the regular season; the only other Braves pitcher in the modern era to have nine such games in a year is Mike Foltynewicz in 2018. And if you think that means not much happened in Game 1, you're right-- at least until the 7th inning. Was Morton out there "one batter too long"? You could make that case. Or even two. He plunked Avisail Garcia to start things. Four pitches later, Rowdy Tellez yanks a 2-run homer to center. Did we mention it's a 0-0 tie before that? That's a multi-run go-ahead homer in the 7th or later; the only other one in Brewers postseason history was by Ted Simmons off Tommy John in the special Division Series played 40 years ago because of the strike. Those would be the only 2 runs the Brewers would need as well; that same ALDS in 1981 also features the other postseason game where the Brewers had 5 hits and won.
The Braves did not go down without one last "chop", however. That came from Joc Pederson in the 8th after Burnes had been pinch-hit for. Like Kyle Schwarber earlier in the week, Pederson has now hit a postseason homer for two iconic teams, the Dodgers and Braves. The only other player with that pair is Rafael Furcal. And here's where our Milwaukee factoids get fun. We mentioned this is the first postseason meeting between the Braves and Brewers. Which means the last time that the Braves played a postseason game in Wisconsin... yep, they were the home team. It was Game 7 of the 1958 World Series against the Yankees. And that game is both the last time they lost a PS game in Milwaukee and the last time they hit a PS home run there. Joc Pederson bridged a gap of 63 years minus 1 day to Del Crandall off Bob Turley on October 9, 1958.
Outside of Burnes, we dare say that neither the Brewers nor Braves have any nationally-known "big name" pitchers that you heard about all season. Of course they're all big names to their own fanbases, but the only others you may know something about are Brandon Woodruff and Max Fried. Naturally they squared off in Game 2 and threw us another pitcher's duel. Both of them went 6 innings (earning a "quality start" as the stat used to be known), and the only time either of them faced more than 4 batters in a frame was... ew, yeah. That would be the top of the 3rd which started with Fried striking out because pitchers are mysteriously still batting. But then it's back to the top of the order and Woodruff wasn't fooling them. Jorge Soler double. Freddie Freeman single to score him. Ozzie Albies double to score Freddie. Since it's our last chance at one of these, that double was the first RBI two-bagger for the Braves in a postseason game in Milwaukee since... yep, but this time it's 1957. Johnny Logan drove in a run against Bob Grim of the Yankees in the bottom of the 10th. Grim was not grim, however, because the Yankees had scored 2 in their half and Logan's double was not a walkoff.
Austin Riley added one last insurance run with a solo homer in the 6th, giving us the first Braves batter with 2 hits and at least 1 RBI in a postseason game in Milwaukee since Hank Aaron in 1958. But those 3 runs were more than enough with Fried busy mowing down Brewers. He recorded 9 strikeouts, joining Ian Anderson (2020) and Steve Avery (1991) as the only Braves pitchers with a 0-run, 9-K win in the postseason. Meanwhile, how many Brewers pitchers have struck out 7+ in a postseason game and lost? One-- Brandon Woodruff. But get this, he's done it three times now, the others in their series losses to the Dodgers in both 2018 and 2020. All told Game 2 was the ninth home game in Brewers history (either stadium) where they scored 0 runs and struck out 14 times; three of them were this year. The last Braves shutout in Milwaukee was-- no, no, they weren't the home team. But it was in the first series of 2014, a 1-0 game behind Aaron Harang.
So the teams with the star pitchers (Astros and White Sox) are slugging their way to 9-4 and 12-6 finals, and the teams with lesser-known folks are combining for 6 runs in two games. Postseason baseball, everyone. Since we spent time looking this up, it had been four seasons since Games 1 and 2 of a series each finished with 3 runs or fewer. And that previous one has already come up; it was the 2017 ALCS, the first one in Houston's run, when they had just gotten Justin Verlander and the Yankees still had CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka. But now it's on to Game 3, back in Atlanta, and surely one of these offenses will bust out. It's Freddy Peralta and Ian Anderson on the hill, again good enough to be big-league starters, but neither of them's blowing fastballs past you at 98.
Postseason baseball, everyone. Neither of them gave up a run either. The only issue here is length. Peralta only went 4 innings, even less than his season average of 5.16. Peralta could have landed a top-10 spot in the ERA list this season but didn't throw the required 162 innings (1 per team game) to qualify. (The aforementioned Lance Lynn, also in that category.) On the other side, Anderson needs 84 pitches to get through 5 and qualify for a win (except it's tied), and he only escapes the 5th because Luis Urias forgets he's not forced on a grounder to third and gets caught in a mini-rundown. And if you're wondering how Anderson could qualify for a win when the game is tied, well, leave that to Joc Pederson again.
Adrian Houser has replaced Peralta for the bottom of the 5th, and immediately surrenders singles to Travis d'Arnaud and Dansby Swanson. Which means Pederson is about to replace that 0 on the scoreboard with a 3. It's the second 3- or 4-run pinch-hit homer in postseason history to break a 0-0 tie; the other was by Ben Francisco of the Phillies in 2011. Recall that Joc also had a pinch-hit homer in Game 1 for the Braves' only run. He's the first player in Braves postseason history to hit multiple pinch-hit homers, and just the third for any team to do it in the same series. The others on that list are Bernie Carbo of the Red Sox in 1975, and Chuck Essegian for the 1959 Dodgers. In between, Joc also pinch-hit when Max Fried left Game 2 and recorded a single. He is thus the first player in postseason history to pinch-hit in three straight games of the same series and get hits in all of them. There are two players (Jose Martinez in 2019 and Allen Craig in 2011) who have done it in three straight in a season, but they were both split across multiple rounds.
That 3 would once again be all the Braves needed to secure a win. The bullpen even came up solid behind Anderson, with four pitchers throwing an inning each and the only threat being Eduardo Escobar's leadoff double in the 7th. It's the first time that the Braves have ever shut out the Brewers in back-to-back games, and the last time they even did it twice in a season was 2014.
So is Joc your hero again in Game 4? Well, not as a pinch hitter because he's starting this time against lefty Eric Lauer. He does get an honorable mention in the 5th inning for grounding out with the bases loaded. Not something you usually mention honorably, but this came with 1 out and the Braves down by 2 runs (again). Pederson managed to beat the relay throw that would have gotten the Brewers defense out of the inning. So instead of a GIDP, Pederson "settles" for an RBI groundout but keeps the inning going. And then Travis d'Arnaud singles in the tying run which will set up our real heroics later.
The reason the Braves were down by 2 at that point was another multi-run homer by Rowdy Tellez. Recall that he drove in both Brewers runs in the Game 1 victory. The only other player in Brewers postseason history to hit two multi-run, go-ahead homers is Ryan Braun, and his weren't both in the same series. But of course, the real Rowdy-ness down in The Battery happened in the 8th. We told you this series, like the no-hitter, would end with Josh Hader on the mound. Presumably he's going to go 2 innings and hope the Brewers come up with a run in the 9th to force a Game 5. Hader predictably strikes out the first two Braves batters. That's what he does. As Freddie Freeman strolls to the plate, Braves radio casually mentions that he hit a walkoff homer against Hader back on May 18, 2019. And then very. first. pitch. Freeman joins Eugenio Suarez of the Reds as the only players ever to hit multiple go-ahead homers off Hader. It's the first go-ahead homer in the 8th or later of any game in which the Braves clinched a postseason series. Freeman is the fifth player to homer and also double at any point in such a game, after Paul Bako (2001 NLDS), Javy Lopez (1996 NLCS), David Justice (1995 WS, he WAS the 1-0 final), and Brian Hunter (1991 NLCS). And while it may be the first go-ahead homer in the 8th or later of a clincher, it's also just the franchise's second hit in such a situation. The other is, in our humble opinion, up there with the best announcer calls in baseball history. You know it as The Sid Bream Play.
For licensing-type reasons, we usually only link official videos from MLB or the teams. But the best part of Harry Caray's call is after Bream crosses the plate, and MLB cut that part out. So no video on this one, but extended audio intermission!
The Postseason Rules!
Yeah, sure, you knew what Rule 5.05(a)(8) was before this series. We'll allow partial credit if you knew the rule but not the actual citation. We had to look it up (quickly) too. But the Rays/Red Sox ALDS is going to be remembered for one play, and it's one we'll get to momentarily. After we memoralize all the other plays that nobody will remember. Except maybe Christian Vazquez.
Randy Arozarena's had plenty of postseason plays to remember in the past two years. He's hit so many homers that he's probably forgotten some of them. So around hitting his 11th one in the bottom of the 5th of Game 1-- extending his own team record-- he added a couple more bits of interesting-ness. He led off the game not with another homer, as happened a lot last year, but with a walk. He's had lots of walks. This was the 73rd of his 3-year career. But it's only the third one in Rays postseason history that led off a series. Austin Meadows got one in 2019 against the Astros, and Akinori Iwamura started their 2008 ALCS, also against Botson, with a free pass. After drawing his 74th career walk in the 7th and finding himself on third later that inning, Aroz just does this. Depending on how many asterisks you want to add, it's the first steal of home in a postseason game since Javy Baez of the Cubs did it in the 2016 NLDS. Baez, however, was sorta forced to try that steal after he took too early a jump and there was a pickoff throw behind him. Marquis Grissom was credited with stealing home in the 1997 ALCS, but that was on a squeeze play where Omar Vizquel missed the bunt. So you can make the argument that Arozarena pulled off the first straight steal of home in a postseason game since Jackie Robinson did it in 1955. Only two other players in postseason history have collected a homer, two walks, any stolen base, and 3 runs scored; the others are Eddie Murray of the 1983 Orioles and Tommie Agee for the 1969 Mets. (Ergo, the Rays are winning the Wor-- oh, wait.)
There's one other play that may make Game 1 memorable, especially for fans (or detractors) of catwalks. And we don't mean the kind you see at Fashion Week or in Right Said Fred videos. We mean the kind that hang from the "ceiling" at Tropicana Field, into which Nelson Cruz mashed a high fly ball in the 3rd inning of this game. Even though it most likely would have left the field on its own, it was ruled, correctly, to have hit "Ring C" and thus result in a "ground-rule home run". (The catwalks are true "ground rules" because they are specific to that park, unlike the universal "a ball that bounces out of play is a double". (Yeah, we're getting there.) The Sawx, meanwhile, just never got anything going against Shane McClanahan, who helped the cause by not issuing a single walk. He became the third Rays pitcher to allow 0 runs, 0 walks, and get a win against Boston, after Blake Snell (August 2020) and Matt Andriese (June 2015). The Red Sox hadn't collected 9+ hits in any game, but had all of them be singles and end up getting shut out, since May 3, 1993, against Seattle.
Let's just say the Sawx would not be getting shut out in Game 2. They guaranteed that early when Xander Bogaerts and Alex Verdugo hit back-to-back RBI singles in the 1st. And hey, we've got Chris Sale starting, he may not be the bonanza 75%-off Black Friday Sale that he once was, but he can still hold his own against a Toyotathon or a Presidents' Day mattress Sale. Let's see how that went. Oof. Single, single, strikeout, walk, single, Jordan Luplow grand slam. So here we go. There's been one other grand slam in Rays postseason history, and the guy who hit it was busy admiring Luplow's. That's Hunter Renfroe in last year's Wild Card series, now stationed in right field for the Sawx. It was, by inning, the earliest slam ever hit by the Rays against Boston; Ben Zobrist held that record with one in the 2nd on July 15, 2011. And because Boston had those 2 runs in the top half, Luplow managed to hit the second lead-flipping slam in the 1st inning of any postseason game in history; Ryan Roberts of Arizona had the other one against Milwaukee's Randy Wolf in 2011 NLDS 4. Sale, meanwhile, joined an illustrious list of Red Sox starters to give up 5 runs and get 3 outs in a postseason game: Bret Saberhagen in the 1999 ALDS against Cleveland, plus Smoky Joe Wood and Buck O'Brien who both did it in the 1912 World Series.
So it's up to the Sawx to climb back into this one, and who better than Bogaerts and Verdugo again? They hit back-to-back homers in the 3rd, Enrique Hernandez ties it with another dinger in the 5th, and then "X" scores ahead of J.D. Martinez's 3-run shot a few batters later. The Red Sox hadn't hit 4 homers in a game at The Trop since September 12, 2015, and it turns out Martinez also had a go-ahead 3-run bomb against the Yankees in Game 1 of their 2018 Division Series. The only other batters in Red Sox postseason history to hit two of those are Troy O'Leary and Manny Ramirez.
The Red Sox now have the lead at 8-5 and you can stop now. Nah, we're gonna have Rafael Devers hit another bomb in the 8th, after Hernandez collects another not-really "ground-rule" double. That's his third two-bagger of the game; he and Albert Pujols (2011 NLCS 2) are the only players in postseason history to do that and also homer in the same game. Only two other teams have ever hit 5 homers in a true postseason "road game" (so, excluding last year's neutral-site affairs). The 1928 Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig did it in St Louis, and appropriately, the A's did it in the 1989 "Earthquake Game".
5.05(a) et seq. list the situations in which the batter and/or runners may advance "without liability to be put out". You know The Play. You've seen The Play. You've read articles about The Play. Here's the play again.
The keyword there is "bounding". Subsection 9 addresses a "fair fly ball" and is the reason that a doink off Jose Canseco's head is a home run, but this is not. Logic being, it's already hit the ground (or something else, in this case the bullpen wall) so would not have been a home run in flight. So, someone asked, why can't every fielder, with a runner on first, just toss the ball into the seats to force that runner to go back to third? Well, no, there's a "spirit of the game" thing there, and much like the Grandal play in the other series, the umpires could award more bases if they thought the interference was intentional. So this was the right call, even if the "bounding" was a bit unconventional, and everyone on the field seemed to know it as well. Oddly enough, it's not the first time the Red Sox have been involved in a fun rules-related incident in a playoff game. It's also not the first time Sam Holbrook has either.
The first 12 (yep, 12!) innings of Game 3 are going to be lost to history. Yeah, Kyle Schwarber hit a leadoff homer for Boston, joining Dustin Pedroia (2007), Johnny Damon (2004), and Patsy Dougherty (1903) as the only ones to do it in Red Sox postseason history. And that didn't even tie the game, because in the top half Austin Meadows took Nate Eovaldi deep. The only other teams we found to score multiple runs in the 1st inning in each of the first three games of a postseason series were the 2002 Athletics and 1989 Cubs.
When not giving up homers, Eovaldi was on his game, recording the first 6 outs of the contest via the K. There have only been six pitchers in postseason history to do that, and if you thought Clemens, Randy, Pedro, or Koufax, you're wrong. Still a good list though: Jacob deGrom (2015), Adam Wainwright (2013), Mike Hampton (2003), Orlando Hernandez (2000), and Jim Palmer (1973).
Our game ended up in the 13th inning due to the efforts of Wander Franco and (who else?) Randy Arozarena in the 8th. Franco's leadoff homer in that inning was just the third hit by the Rays that late in a PS game at Fenway. The other two happened in the same game, when Rocco Baldelli and Carlos Peña took Paul Byrd deep in 2008 ALCS 3. Aroz's double was the third game-tying hit for the Rays in the 8th or later of a postseason game; Ji-Man Choi homered in ALCS 5 last year against Houston, and Peña had a go-ahead single in the 2010 Division Series against Texas.
As we mentioned in the final regular-season post, we might have seen the last of the free-runner rule. [Plays tiny violin.] It's not a thing in the postseason. So it's a battle between Nick Pivetta, who may or may not have been slated to start Game 4 for the Red Sox, and David Robertson who's been around some postseason games in the late innings. They match each other through the 10th, 11th, and 12th before, well, The Play happens in the 13th. After Yandy Diaz gets sent back to third, Pivetta finishes the inning by fanning Mike Zunino, his seventh K of the game. He's going to become the first Sawx pitcher in four decades to throw 4+ innings in relief, strike out 7+, and get a win (Mark Clear, May 27, 1981). Because while everyone is still trying to figure out What Just Happened, Christian Vazquez does this. Yep, that's the first extra-inning walkoff homer in the 13th or later in Red Sox postseason history. The previous record had been held by David Ortiz with his "we'll see you later tonight" homer in the 12th in the 2004 ALCS. "Later tonight" he ended up hitting a blooper to center in the 14th that still keeps its record as the latest Sawx postseason walkoff. And the Red Sox had not hit any multi-run walkoff homer in the 13th or later since Kevin Youkilis went deep against the Cardinals' Mike Parisi on June 22, 2008.
Can you handle one more game? What about one more walkoff? The Rays are now in "all hands on deck" mode trailing the series 2-1, so they toss Collin McHugh out on the mound. He runs through his 2 innings on 18 pitches, but he also hasn't been a full-time starter since 2016 after developing shoulder and then elbow problems. So he's gone by the time the 3rd rolls out. That's back to Game 1 starter Shane McClanahan, who also happens to be on short rest. Not a good combo, unless you're the Red Sox lineup. Which, around two fly-ball outs, goes single, walk, homer, single, double, single, and 5 runs. Incredibly, that's not going to result in a loss.
The Rays gradually climb back into this, with Wander Franco hitting a solo homer in the 6th. You may remember him hitting one in Game 3 also; he's the youngest player NOT named Tony Conigliaro to go deep in consecutive games at Fenway Park (regular season or post-). That was also his seventh hit of the postseason series, something only four other players have done before reaching the age of 21. Those others are Miguel Cabrera (2003), Andruw Jones (1996), Mickey Mantle (1952), and Freddie Lindstrom (1924). Juan Soto would be on this list as well, except he turned 21 in the middle of the 2019 World Series and didn't hit the mark in time.
The Rays come all the way back when Mike Zunino and Kevin Kiermaier hit back-to-back doubles to start the 8th, and then (of course!) Randy Arozarena ties things back up with a single to score KK. McClanahan is thus the first Rays pitcher to give up 5 runs, get 2 outs, and NOT take a loss in a road game since Austin Pruitt did it in Baltimore on July 27, 2018. Those doubles were the third pair ever hit at Fenway by the Rays' #8 and #9 hitters; Brandon Lowe and Ji-Man Choi did it in August, while Josh Paul and Joey Gathright connected back on May 27, 2006. Along the way Austin Meadows also had a 17-pitch at-bat which is the longest known plate appearance in both Rays and postseason history (complete pitch counts only go to 1988, but a few are available before that).
By the 9th the Rays are on pitcher number 8, in the form of J.P. Feyereisen. Who was not exactly on Feyer. Vazquez, the Game 3 hero, starts the inning with a single and gets bunted to second. Travis Shaw singles him to third, at which point Alex Cora decides to pinch-run with the game-winner just 90 feet away. Cora actually did pinch-run 36 times in his playing career, but this was not to be the 37th. He puts Danny Santana out there to score the series-winner when Enrique Hernandez sends a long fly ball to left that feels like it might clang the wall, but still results in a sacrifice fly. It's the fourth time the Red Sox have clinched a postseason series via walkoff; Jed Lowrie (single in 2008) and David Ortiz (homer in 2004) both sent the Angels home in the divisional round. The remaining walkoff was by Larry Gardner to win the 1912 World Series against the Giants; it was another "sac fly" as we would call it today, but back then there was no distinction made between sac flies and sac bunts, so it's not shown in contemporaneous boxscores.
We started with a winner-take-all game between perhaps the two biggest rivals in the game, we're going to end with a winner-take-all game between perhaps the two biggest rivals in the game. (Sorry, Cubs/Cardinals, maybe next year.) If any postseason series needed to go the distance, it's the first one in history between two teams who each won 106 games in the regular season. In fact, the Wild Card victory also gave the Dodgers 107 wins, so just like the Dodger Stadium parking lot in the 6th inning, the race is on to see who can reach 110 first.
Much like the other series, you've probably heard of the Dodgers' pitchers, especially when a couple of them were stars with other teams first. Schezer. Trevor Bauer. Kershaw (though he's done for the year). Walker Buehler. You might not have heard of the Giants' staff. It's okay if you still think they have MadBum and Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. (They don't.) What they do have, at least in Game 1 (and later 5), is a 4th-rounder named Logan Webb who will turn 25 next month and who finished 11-3 in the regular season while averaging barely 1.1 baserunners per inning.
In Game 1 that ratio dropped to a mere 0.65 as Webb shut down the visiting Dodgers. The closest Los Angeles got to a "threat" was when Will Smith doubled with 1 out in the 7th, but Webb struck out the final two batters and, in keeping with the theme, never faced more than four in an inning. Oh by the way he also struck out 10. The only other Giants pitchers to strike out 10 and allow 0 runs in a postseason game are-- well, we just gave them to you. Madison Bumgarner (2014 Wild Card) and Tim Lincecum (2010 NLDS 1). No Giants pitcher had thrown 7+ scoreless innings and struck out 10 in a home game against the Dodgers since Ray Sadecki on June 25, 1968.
Buster Posey's 2-run homer off Buehler in the 1st would thus be all the offense the Giants really needed to win this one. Hunter Pence (2014), Pat Burrell (2010), Mel Ott (1933), and Irish Meusel (1922) are the only other Giants batters to hit a multi-run dinger in the 1st inning of a postseason game. The only other time that the Dodgers were shut out on 5 or fewer hits in a postseason Game 1 was in 1949 when Tommy Henrich of the Yankees hit a walkoff homer to beat them 1-0.
For Game 2 the Giants gave Kevin Gausman the ball, and you may remember Gausman from his days with the Orioles a few years ago. Much of that time didn't go well, but considering it's the Orioles, it wasn't always Gausman's fault. By the end of the 2nd, though, he's given up 3 hits and 2 walks and the Dodgers are ahead 2-0. One of those hits was by pitcher Julio Urias, the first RBI knock by a Dodgers hurler in the postseason since Zack Greinke in the 2013 NLCS against the Cardinals. Gausman then gave up a leadoff double to Trea Turner in the 6th before being removed, but that just meant Dominic Leone was forced to face Cody Bellinger and A.J. Pollock. And they both hit RBI doubles as well to blow up the Dodgers' lead to 6-1. When Matt Beaty singled home another run in the 8th, it marked the first game where the Dodgers got multiple RBIs from their #7, #8, and #9 spots in the same game since James Loney, Andy LaRoche, and pitcher Esteban Loaiza did it against the Cubs on September 3, 2007.
Game 3 is in Los Angeles and these teams just love playing 1-0 games at Chavez Ravine. You might remember one of our favorite quirks in recent history, which is that Joe Panik hit solo homers in both of the first two games of the 2018 season to single-handedly #BeatLA. If you're thinking "whatever happened to Joe Panik", he's been with four different teams since then via free agency, ending 2021 on the Marlins roster as a primary DH. [Narrator voice: The Marlins are in the National League. They don't need a DH in most games.]
But this is the game between Pitchers You've Probably Heard Of. Max Scherzer, acquired by the Dodgers in the biggest trade of the year back in July, faced off against Alex Wood, who pitched for the Dodgers as recently as last year's World Series. (Can confirm. We were AT one of his games.) But this time he needed 74 pitches to get through 4 innings, and he's not even the one who gave up the run. No, that would be Scherzer on a solo homer by Evan Longoria to lead off the 5th. So even though Max lasted all the way until the 7th, that lone homer tagged him with the loss and sent us on to Game 4. Only one other pitcher in Dodgers history has allowed 1 run, struck out 10+, and lost, and we've already mentioned it. It was Don Newcombe on that Tommy Heinrich homer in Game 1 of the 1949 World Series. The only other time the Dodgers lost a 1-0 postseason game at Chavez Ravine was Game 1 of the 1983 NLCS against Philadelphia.
On to Game 4, which features Walker Buehler, again, opposing Anthony DeSclafani, who you likely thought was still with the Reds. Nope, free agency got him too, and he signed with Giants last December and ended up making 31 starts for them this season. Most of them were better than this. He gave up 5 hits and 2 runs before being removed in the 2nd inning, joining Jake Peavy (2014), Rick Reuschel (1989), and Jack Bentley (1923) as the only Giants postseason starters to do that and take a loss. Most of the damage was done after DeSclafani departed, however. Mookie Betts cranked a 2-run homer in the 4th, the first multi-run tater ever hit in the postseason by a "Mookie". Wilson never hit any postseason homers, and Betts had three previous ones but they were all solo shots. Betts then drove in the Dodgers' fifth run with a sac fly in the 5th, joining Edwin Rios (2020 NLCS 4) and Steve Yeager (1977 WS 5) as the only players in team history with a homer and a sac fly in the same postseason game.
The Giants had the luxury of being up 2-1, and because it's 2021, they had no problem throwing the kitchen sink at this game. Really, the kitchen sink might have been more interesting. ("It was hot early on, but seems to have gone cold.") After DeSclafani's early exit, San Francisco trotted seven more pitchers out to the mound, with Zack Littell being the only one to get more than 3 outs. He's the first Giants reliever to get 6 outs with 4 strikeouts in a postseason game since that famous Madison Bumgarner 5-inning save in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. Eventually the Giants would end up using 22 players in the game, matching the 2016 Nationals (NLDS 5 vs Dodgers) for the most in a 9-inning game in postseason history.
So we have finally arrived at what Vin Scully called the "most important" Dodgers/Giants game ever. Plenty of people tried to bring 1951 into the conversation, or even their follow-up 3-game tiebreaker in 1962. But hey, if Vin says it, it must be true, right?
The Dodgers previously announced their intent to start Julio Urias in Game 5. If by "start" you mean "have him show up in the 3rd inning", well, then, okay. In a neat little twist, Los Angeles sent reliever Corey Knebel out for the 1st inning as an "opener" and then Brusdar Graterol for the 2nd in his fourth appearance of the series. That seemed to work at first; they combined to give up 3 hits but no runs before Urias took over in the 3rd. And we were still knotted at 0-0 until the 6th when Corey Seager connected for a double off of Logan Webb. It was the first time-- regular season or post--- that a Dodgers batter had broken a 0-0 tie in the 6th or later at the Giants' current park. The only one to do it at Candlestick was Wes Parker on June 26, 1968.
Except that lead didn't last long. With Urias now pitching his fourth inning, Darin Ruf connects for a game-tying solo homer in the bottom half. The only other tying or go-ahead homer in Giants history to occur in the 6th or later of a WTA game was by Conor Gillaspie in the 2016 Wild Card game against the Mets.
By now Mookie Betts has collected 4 hits and a stolen base, joining George Brett (1985), Terry Puhl (1980), and Max Carey (1925) as the only players ever to do that in a winner-take-all game. He's the first Dodgers leadoff batter to do that in any game against the Giants since... the manager he's now playing for, Dave Roberts on September 19, 2003. And Logan Webb has gotten into the 8th allowing just that one run to Seager; he joined MadBum (2014 WC) and Ryan Vogelsong (2012 NLCS 6) as the only Giants pitchers to go 7+, allow 1 run, and strike out 7 in a potential elimination game.
But regardless, we're still stuck on 1-1 going to the 9th. Rookie Camilo Doval, who got a 2-inning save in Game 1, is back out on the mound to try and keep the Dodgers contained. He narrowly nicks Justin Turner with a pitch. That opens the door for Gavin Lux to shoot a single through the right side. And Cody Bellinger, whom you really haven't heard about this season, reminds us that he's still on the Dodgers with a single to center to score Turner and give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead with only three outs left to play. There have only been three go-ahead hits in the 9th or later of a winner-take-all game in Dodgers history, and they're all in this post. Remember Chris Taylor's walkoff in the Wild Card game? Seems so long ago. The other was Rick Monday's homer in the 1981 NLCS, which we already linked you in the WC section. May the circle be unbroken.
As for circles, the Giants faithful ended up with their heads spinning just a few minutes later. And first-base umpire Gabe Morales is going to have his definition of "going around" questioned for the rest of his career. (Not to mention, according to radio, being "pelted with beer cans" while leaving the field.) You hear all the time that teams and fans want the game decided "on the field", not by the league or even necessarily by the umpires. So when Morales rang up Wilmer Flores on a controversial check-swing call to end the game, it was anti-climactic to the "most important" game in this rivalry's history. Since we've all learned the rule book this week, there is no official definition of a "swing"; it's solely the umpire's judgement as to whether the batter is "attempting to strike at" the pitch.
Love that call or hate it, the pitcher who got that final out... was Max Scherzer. Remember him? Yeah, he's pitched in 431 career games prior to Thursday and never been anywhere near a save situation (unless you count finishing off his own 1-0 win or something). Turns out he's the third Dodgers pitcher to get a save in a winner-take-all game. Bob Welch, who was occasionally a reliever, got one in that same Rick Monday game in 1981 against the Expos. The Expos eventually became the Nationals. The other Dodgers pitcher with a save in a WTA game did it against the Nationals in 2016, also in a Game 5 of the Division Series. His name is Clayton Kershaw. That was Dave Roberts' first year as Dodgers manager. And in 416 career games, that's also Kershaw's only career save.
Starting pitcher for the Nats in that game? Max Scherzer. Because baseball.
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