[ad_1]
LOS ANGELES — Nobody was hotter than the Cardinals as they thundered down the stretch of the 2021 season. St. Louis gained 17 in a row at one level, setting a franchise report and streaking into the postseason.
But with the embers nonetheless scorching from a extremely entertaining National League wild-card recreation right here in Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night time, Chris Taylor’s bottom-of-the-ninth, two-out, two-run homer that despatched the Dodgers to a heart-thumping 3-1 victory served as a reminder that the Dodgers had been simply as sizzling in the season’s closing months.
While trying to chase down San Francisco and keep away from the embarrassing chance of a loss stamping them with one-and-done standing as an encore to their World Series title in 2020, they went 45-15 over their closing 60 video games.
They additionally completed the common season by profitable their closing 15 consecutive house video games, a franchise report.
Wednesday’s win made it 16 in a row, and counting. The Dodgers will now open as dramatic a division collection as baseball has had in fairly a while on Friday in San Francisco, the primary time the ancient-rival golf equipment have confronted one another in the postseason since 1889, when the Brooklyn membership of the American Association, a predecessor of the Dodgers, confronted the National League’s New York Giants in what was then billed as a World Series.
Games 1 and a couple of of the division collection between the fashionable Giants and Dodgers are Friday and Saturday in San Francisco’s Oracle Park earlier than the Dodgers look to make it 17 consecutive house wins in Game 3 on Monday.
“I think it’s great,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts mentioned shortly after the champagne sprayed in the clubhouse, one thing that was forbidden final 12 months in the course of the top of the pandemic. “It’s just what baseball wants, the Giants and the Dodgers.
“It’s one of the greatest rivalries in sports, and it’s happening.”
The Dodgers completed 106-56 this 12 months, a second-place report that impressed an excessive amount of debate. How unfair was it {that a} 106-win workforce, a membership with the second-best general report in the sport, might see its season doubtlessly worn out with one loss?
And what in regards to the Giants? They went 107-55 and now they need to face the 106-win Dodgers in a division collection relatively than the National League Championship Series?
With speaking factors, perceived slights and historical past round each flip, it’s a matchup that had individuals arguing earlier than it even got here to fruition.
Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ third-year president of baseball operations, was employed away from the Dodgers, the place he was the final supervisor below Andrew Friedman. The intrastate rivalry is in full drive, with the opposing followers hating one another and the Giants profitable the season collection, 10-9. But there are additionally unmistakable bonds between the groups that shine by means of. They simply get placed on ice for a number of days every time these two face one another.
“I think it’s great for baseball,” Roberts mentioned. “They think a lot of the way we think as far as getting platoon and matchup advantages. There’s a lot of familiarity, which makes it fun, even more challenging.
“It’s going to be a great series. It’s going to be a fantastic series.”
The closest the West Coast variations of those historic franchises have come to assembly in the postseason got here in 1962, after they tied for first and the Giants gained a best-of-three tiebreaker with the Dodgers for the suitable to advance to the World Series, the place they misplaced to the Yankees.
In 1951, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants had additionally tied for first and performed a finest two-of-three collection with the Giants profitable that one as nicely.
This 12 months’s N.L. West race wasn’t determined till the ultimate day of the season. Over their closing 29 video games, the Giants went 23-6 and the Dodgers 22-7.
“They beat us, but now we have the opportunity to get them where we want them,” mentioned the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer, whose gritty 4 and a 3rd innings Wednesday night time put the Dodgers in place to maintain their season alive.
It wasn’t classic Scherzer, nevertheless it was sufficient. His command was not as sharp as traditional and, by giving up a first-inning run, he mentioned he was “on pins and needles” at each flip.
The Cardinals had struck rapidly when leadoff man Tommy Edman roped a base hit to proper, stole second, moved to 3rd on a fly ball after which raced house on a wild pitch.
The Dodgers tied it at 1-1 when Justin Turner led off the fourth by launching a dangling, 75-mile-per-hour Adam Wainwright curveball into the left subject seats.
It stayed 1-1 over the course of 5 innings, by means of 9 mixed reduction pitchers, a number of pinch-hitters and two beginning pitchers — Scherzer (4 and a 3rd innings, one run, three hits, three walks and 4 strikeouts) and Wainwright (5 and a 3rd innings, one run, 4 hits, two walks, 5 strikeouts) — reluctant to go away the sport when their managers signaled to the bullpen.
“I don’t think it was the most popular decision, but it probably made for good TV,” St. Louis Manager Mike Schildt quipped.
The sellout crowd of 53,193 spent a lot of the 4 hour 15 minute recreation on its toes hoping to will the Dodgers into motion. Then, in the underside of the ninth, Cody Bellinger, a former winner of the National League Most Valuable Player Award who has struggled badly all season, labored a stroll from a 2-2 depend towards the lefty reliever T.J. McFarland to set the stage for Taylor, who had entered the sport in the seventh inning.
Taylor had additionally been struggling, batting simply 7 for 65 over his previous 25 video games.
“Obviously it’s a little different not starting,” Taylor mentioned. “I was trying to stay ready off the bench, and I knew there was a chance I was going to come in knowing the way we operate.”
In the dugout with Bellinger on the plate and Taylor in the on-deck circle as the specter of extra-innings loomed, Scherzer was standing subsequent to reliever Joe Kelly.
“I appeared and Joe and I mentioned, ‘I think Belly is going to get on here and C.T. is going to hit a home run,” Scherzer said, noting that “I actually had a vision for him right there. I’ve performed with him, I’ve confronted him, and I assumed it was the suitable man for the suitable spot.”
On a 2-1 depend, Taylor unloaded on an 88-m.p.h. slider from Cardinals reliever Alex Reyes. It appeared like a rifle shot in the night time, and as quickly because the ball left the bat there was little question that it was a game-winner.
The Dodgers exploded out of their dugout and Dodger Stadium shook with noise. A giant blue mob met Taylor at house plate in celebration and, after a number of minutes and a while spent pumping his arms to lift the extent of crowd noise even increased, Roberts discovered Taylor and held one in every of his star’s arms over his head like a heavyweight champion.
It was becoming, not just for Taylor however for this workforce and the collection it’s about to play. In 146 years of National League baseball, solely 4 groups have had a greater profitable share than this 12 months’s 107-55 Giants. The 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates (103-36), the 1906 Chicago Cubs (116-36), the 1907 Cubs (107-45) and the 1909 Pirates (110-42). A report that stellar is what it took to unseat the Dodgers from a string of eight straight N.L. West titles. And even at that, the Dodgers almost chased them down.
Roberts mentioned earlier than the sport that shedding the division additionally induced him to lose a wager along with his good buddy, and former San Francisco supervisor, Bruce Bochy.
“He had the Giants, I had the Dodgers,” Roberts mentioned. “I lost a dinner and a nice bottle of Bordeaux.”
But with the Cardinals eradicated and the Dodgers getting yet another scrumptious crack on the Giants, somebody requested Roberts late Wednesday night time if possibly now he’s going to go double-or-nothing with Bochy.
“Yes I am,” Roberts mentioned, grinning. “I’m going to shoot him a text tonight. I am, yeah. We’re going to go double or nothing for the series.”
[ad_2]
