Tag Archives: Marcell Ozuna

All Betts were on

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Betts in the happy dance after his fifth-inning aerobatics.

Max Fried watched Justin Turner’s first-inning launch leave the yard Saturday. He looked for all the world like a man who’d come home to find his house cleaned out by burglars. With no idea how the hell they got past the gates, vault doors, barred windows, and armed guards. Or where they found the stones to return to the scene of the crime laughing.

Turner launched exactly three pitches after Corey Seager hit a 1-0 service over the right field corner fence. On a Saturday afternoon during which Los Angeles Dodgers starter Walker Buehler found his best side when the Dodgers needed it in the worst way possible, all that was the next-to-last thing Fried and his Atlanta Braves needed when they were one win from the World Series.

The last thing they needed, of course, was the Dodgers winning National League Championship Series Game Six, 3-1, and with maybe the key Dodger aid being That Catch in the top of the fifth.

If you thought Fried looked shocked in the first, don’t ask how he looked after Mookie Betts—who’d just cut Freddie Freeman’s two-liner to right center off to stop it from becoming extra bases—ran back on Marcell Ozuna’s deep drive, leaped with his back turning against the high Globe Life Park fence, and one-handed it before it might have struck either the yellow line or a hair’s width beneath it.

There wasn’t a soul on earth who blamed Betts for the berserk happy dance into which he broke from the split second his feet returned to the ground. He saved a certain run and probably signed the Braves’ Game Six death warrant while he was at it. Not to mention provoking a hyperbolic outcry from a longtime stalwart of Red Sox Nation.

“Hey LA!” tweeted self-described Boston Globe sports columnist emeritus Bob Ryan. “See that catch? You’d better damn well treasure Mookie. Worst mistake we made since selling The Babe to the Yankees.” Referring, of course, to the platinum-rich Red Sox refusing to even think about handing Betts what the Dodgers eventually did after they landed him in last winter’s blockbuster trade.

The catch will cling tighter to the memory if the Dodgers manage to win Game Seven on Sunday. At that, they’ll call it the one that turned the whole NLCS around and not just the one that signed, sealed, and delivered the Braves’ Game Six fate. They’re certainly calling it the one that makes Betts’s Game Five catch—the running shoestringer off Ozuna that turned into an inning-ending double play off Ozuna’s early-tag baserunning mistake—resemble a measly warmup.

In a pandemically-rearranged postseason loaded with fielding shows, including but not limited to the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays’ acrobatic aerialists, Betts blew all of those into near-oblivion. Even Manuel Margot’s pole-vaulting catch in Game Two of the ALCS.  “That’s an unbelievable play by an unbelievable player in a big moment,” Seager said post-Game Six.

“A tick behind last night’s play, but it just shows the athleticism,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “Right there, Walker was kind of stressing a little bit. And so to make that play to get out of it . . . was huge. [Betts] just impacts the game in so many ways.”

Second understatement of the day about the play. Since becoming a full-time right fielder in 2016, Betts had 104 defensive runs saved at that position. That’s only ten times any other right fielder in the entire game.

“I didn’t know he’d got it that good,” Betts told MLB Network’s in a field interview. “I just kind of kept going and, you know, I got to the wall, I could have got to the point of no return, I got to jump and go for a catch and come down with it. ”

Buehler wasn’t the only Dodger finding and delivering his best side in National League Championship Series Game Six. Oft-maligned manager Roberts didn’t suffer a single brain vapour. His oft-maligned bullpen—which seems to trigger “Danger, Will Robinson” warnings the minute Roberts reaches for it this postseason—didn’t waver, never mind melt.

Even embattled closer Kenley Jansen, whose issues really are bound more to his physical changes than his mind or his repertoire, got two outs on two pitches to open the ninth before needing four pitches to put pinch-hitter Pablo Sandoval and the 3-1 Dodger win into the safe deposit box. It was as though the Braves made the once-powerful Sandoval a sacrificial lamb just to be done to play one more day.

“You’re going to face the best hitters in the world and you can’t lose confidence,” said Jansen, who ended the game at the expense of a Kung Fu Panda who’s not even close to the younger teddy bear who homered three times in the first game of the 2012 World Series. “If you’re going to lose confidence then just quit.”

Saturday’s play began with the distinct possibility of both pennants being taken on the same day. It ended with the Dodgers living to play a Game Seven, the Braves frustrated that they’d have to play a Game Seven, and the Rays finally finishing what they started and sending the Houston Astros home for the winter.

NLCS Game Six also left the Dodgers 32-8 for the year in games where they scored first and the Braves 11-20 when the other guys score first. It also left Buehler—who stood with his right arm extended up and his hand in a fist saluting Betts’s hair-raising catch—the proud owner of a lifetime 18-0 won-lost record in games where he’s staked to a 3-0 lead.

The only reason Roberts lifted Buehler after six was the righthander beginning to tire after scattering seven hits and striking out six without walking a single Brave. After Betts saved the bacon of Buehler, the Dodgers, and every Dodger fan in creation, Blake Treinen coming in for the seventh saved his own hide after a leadoff triple (Nick Markakis) and a one-out RBI double (Ronald Acuna, Jr.) by striking Freeman out swinging and convincing Ozuna to fly out to Betts a little less dramatically.

Fried at least kept the Braves in the game until the bottom of the seventh. He’d outlasted the Dodger starter who’d outpitched him, but his mates couldn’t find other ways to pry open a Dodger bullpen that’s known as much for keeping the crash carts on white-hot alert as for driving the opposition into the ground with its speedy sinkers and hard breakers.

Loading the bases with nobody out in the top of the second? Two strikeouts and a ground out left the ducks on the pond. Going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position all day? Not the way to overcome that early Dodger attack, that ironed-up Dodger pitching, and that Betts taking a flying leap to end the fifth.

“When you throw a letter-high curveball to Seager, he’s going to do what he did to it,” said a humbled Fried post-game. “A fastball right down the middle to Turner, he did the same. I felt like I was searching for it, instead of going after guys and hitting spots.”

Braves manager Brian Snitker finally decided Fried did all he could with his 109 pitches and brought Darren O’Day in with two out and one on. O’Day needed shortstop Dansby Swanson to keep Will Smith’s nasty one-hopper from turning into a nastier base hit, Swanson backhanding it on the run and throwing over to second to force Turner for the side.

Fried did at least spare the Braves from dipping too deep into their own rising bullpen. They may well need it if the Dodgers find ways to puncture Game Seven starter Ian Anderson Sunday night. “We’re in a good spot,” said Snitker to reporters. “I like the guy that we’re going to pitch. The bullpen, everybody can pitch. Everybody’s available tomorrow. We’ll see what we do.”

They may have to think about having Betts kidnapped just to be on the safe side.

Symphony for shoestrings

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Maestro Betts.

This time, Dave Roberts got it right. It didn’t hurt that his Los Angeles Dodgers behaved like Dodgers when they absolutely had to in National League Championship Series Game Five, either.

Meaning they ironed up when they were down in the fourth inning, with eighteen outs between them and yet another winter full of recriminations.

All it took was someone reminding them there come times for the band to break into “Symphony for Shoestrings.” Someone like Mookie Betts in the third inning.

The Atlanta Braves didn’t have a Dodger managerial lapse through which to shove a tank yet. They’d scratched their first two runs out while their youthful opening pitcher, A.J. Minter, setting precedent by making his first major league start in a postseason game, struck out seven in his three innings including the side in the third.

“I surprised myself a little bit,” Minter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Coming into the game, I just wanted to set the tone, attack one guy at a time and not worry about pitch count. Just come out and be aggressive and get us off to a good start.”

He got them off to a very good start. What happened after he was lifted for Tyler Matzek to start the fourth wasn’t his fault. The Dodgers bumped, ground, and swung their way back to a 7-2 win while their own company of opener Dustin May and six further relievers made sure the Braves couldn’t even think of an overthrow.

Roberts managed his pitching just right all night long and neither pushed a panic button nor fell asleep at any switch. His Dodgers also ran, if you add as you should Betts’s staggering catch and double play in the third to stop a third Braves run. Just don’t ask Betts about it.

If you want him to tell you which moment changed the game in the Dodgers’ favour, it was first baseman Max Muncy hanging in to walk against Braves reliever Will Smith to set up first and second in the sixth—after Betts himself had his leadoff beat-it-out single turned into a one-out force eliminating him at second base—for Dodgers catcher Will Smith.

You read it right. Your eyes didn’t play tricks. Will Smith versus Will Smith. The first time namesakes faced each other in postseason play. The Braves’ Smith and the Dodgers’ Smith wrung their way to a full count, Smith not taking the bat off his shoulder once. Then, Dodger Smith swung on what some umps might have called ball four. And hit it about six or seven rows into the left field seats.

“Last night hurt,” Dodger Smith said post-game, referring to the late-enough Clayton Kershaw hook that opened the gates for the Atlanta tanks to barrel in. “We got back on the same page, a little motivation, I guess. We were coming out tonight hungry and ready to go.”

He didn’t deny that facing his namesake in the postseason was exciting. “I faced him once last year in the regular season,” he told MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds, “but yeah, [this] was a big swing for us.”

“He battled his ass off the whole time,” said Friday night’s two-bomb Dodger shortstop Corey Seager of his and their Smith.

“He put together a really good AB, took some really tough pitches, then put a good swing on a pitch inside and got the head to it and clipped me,” said the Braves’ Smith post-game. “Oh, well.”

“Oh, well” isn’t going to work when the two combatants square off for Game Six. The Braves still have the 3-2 NLCS lead but they’ve been reminded these Dodgers aren’t exactly pushovers just yet. Not even if the Game Six pitching match to begin will be Max Fried against Walker Buehler. The Braves won’t just take for granted that there’s yet another too-classic postseason Dodger dissipation on the horizon.

Sure the Smith smash overthrew what was then a 2-1 Braves lead for keeps, so sure it was one game changer. But Betts doesn’t give himself enough credit. He only stopped any momentum the Braves might have had left for the night three innings earlier with his legs, his glove, and his arm.

He ran in when Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson with second and third and two outs hit a soft sinking liner to shallow right and caught it on the shoestring, firing home in a bid to bag Marcell Ozuna at the plate. Ozuna slid across the plate just as the throw reached Dodger Smith—but oops! Dodger bench coach Bob Geren called for a review. He’d seen Ozuna tag a hair too soon as Swanson’s sinker hit the web of Betts’s glove.

Side retired. Inning-ending double play. “If you’re talking about momentum shifts,” Roberts said post-game, “that’s the play of the year for me. I just thought there was no way he’d make that play. He’s just kind of the straw that stirs us.”

“A big play like that, a big moment, changes everything for you,” Seager said. “You go into the dugout with some energy, you scratch some runs and the whole thing changes.”

Betts isn’t buying it. So far as he’s concerned, it’s everyone with a job to do and he’s just one of the crew. “Our backs are against the wall,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck, and we’re showing emotion and helping each other out.”

Seager didn’t waste any time leading off the bottom of the third against Matzek. He caught hold of a 2-1 fastball and drove it over the center field fence to cut that early, scratchy 2-0 Braves lead in half in the first place. Four innings later, after struggling Chris Taylor doubled with two outs and Betts promptly singled him home against Braves reliever Jacob Webb, Seager turned on the first pitch and yanked it into the right field seats.

“That guy is something else,” marveled Braves manager Brian Snitker. “He’s one of those guys who never gives an at-bat away. It’s very impressive. He’s a dangerous, impressive hitter.”

By the time youthful Braves outfielder Cristian Parche robbed Muncy blind of an eighth-inning home run, it was too little, too late for the Braves in Game Five. Even the much-maligned Dodger bullpen held fort when they absolutely had to hold it. Right down to much-embattled closer Kenley Jansen handed that four-run lead for the ninth and striking out the side to finish.

Sometimes it takes just one gig with a little extra oxygen to hit the reset button the right way. Doesn’t it?

Most eyes will be upon San Diego Saturday night, where the Tampa Bay Rays will learn once and for all whether they can hold the Houston Astros off to go to the World Series or the Astros will finish what they’ve started, becoming the Show’s second team ever to win a pennant after being down 3-0 in their LCS.

NLCS Game Six may seem like a modest afternoon opening matinee by comparison. But the Dodgers and the Braves have no intention of playing it that way.

Waste not, want not

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Like Trevor Bauer in Game One, Luis Castillo’s Game Two effort was wasted by the Reds’ absentee bats and futile running.

Joey Votto said going in that his Cincinnati Reds in the postseason, however rough and tumble things had to be to get them there, would be a “[fornicating] nightmare.” He just didn’t bargain on every man in a Red uniform at the plate or on the bases being their own worst nightmares.

If the Reds wish to remain postseason competitive, waste management means waste avoidance. Because if you don’t avoid waste, no matter how efficient your pitching might be, you’ll get wasted the way the Atlanta Braves wasted the Reds late but imperatively Thursday afternoon.

The Reds’ irregular season’s grind just to claim one of this year’s ten wild cards got wasted, too, even worse than Marcell Ozuna and Adam Duvall wasted relief pitcher Raisel Iglesias’s canteloupes.

Nobody wants to take anything away from the National League East-winning Braves. They clung stubbornly in their wild card set, held on to win Thursday, 5-0, and didn’t let the Reds’ stellar starting pitching blow the spirit out of them no matter how long it took. The Reds made it a little too simple for them in the end.

The Reds won’t live this one down too readily. They’re going to have to try explaining how they became the first team in Show history to be shut out for an entire postseason set, 22 innings worth, even if it was a mere best-of-three.

They’re going to have to try explaining how Trevor Bauer in Game One struck out twelve Braves without walking a soul or surrendering a run, without getting credit for a win, but with the Reds losing in the thirteenth inning on the game’s only run—on a measly RBI single by likely National League Most Valuable Player Freddie Freeman.

They’re going to have to explain how Luis Castillo’s first-ever postseason start produced seven strikeouts in five and a third innings, only one run surrendered, only one batter walked, and Iglesias getting blown up in the eighth after Lucas Sims spelled Castillo with an inning and two-thirds of spotless relief.

Ronald Acuna, Jr. doubling home Austin Riley off Castillo with two out in the fifth only made it 1-0. But Iglesias walking Freeman to open the eighth was flirting with death. Death accepted the invitation when Ozuna found a 1-0 meatball so irresistible he yanked it into the empty left center field seats.

Walking Ozzie Alibes after striking Travis d’Arnaud out following that launch wasn’t advisable, either. How inadvisable came too clear when Duvall licked his chops at an even meatier, 0-2 meatball, and sent it out down the left field line.

“Such a professional hitter,” Braves rookie starting pitcher Ian Anderson said of Ozuna after the game, calling Ozuna the life of the club all year long. “Loves the big moment. And I know it was getting to him a little bit, the way his at-bats had unfolded up until that point. Yeah, he couldn’t have been happier, and we couldn’t have been happier for him. That was a huge hit for the team. You could kind of sense that the dugout relaxed then, just a little bit.”

The Braves now wait to see who wins the win-or-be-gone game between the Miami Marlins and the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field, which might have been played Thursday but for the rain saying “not so fast.”

The Reds are also going to have to explain why they couldn’t find more than two hits off Anderson but found their way to nine strikeouts against the rook making his first postseason start following six irregular season assignments and a shimmering 1.95 ERA.

Those thirteen runners the Reds stranded need some explaining, too. So does having nothing to show against three Braves relievers from the seventh through the ninth.

They’re also going to have to explain why a team with baseball’s worst collective batting average (.212) despite a few offensive upgrades last winter couldn’t find ways to avoid becoming baseball’s first to be shut out of an entire postseason series.

How many times did the Reds answer opportunity’s knocking with “Go away, we gave at the office?”

When they greeted Max Fried in Game One with back-to-back singles giving them first and third and nobody out, only to see Votto—Mr. On-Base Machine—ground out to first, Eugenio Suarez line a badminton shuttlecock to Ozzie Albies at second base, and Mike Moustakas ground out?

When manager David Bell thought he could get away with a play that even the Little League won’t try all that often, having Kyle Farmer on first and Aristedes Aquino on third try a double steal the Braves could smell from about five minutes prior to attempt, with Aquino bagged in an even more kiddie-looking rundown?

When Bell sent spaghetti-bat veteran Freddy Galvis out to pinch hit for Shogo Akiyama with two out and two on in the top of the twelfth, despite Akiyama hitting well enough down the stretch to earn the opportunity, and Galvis rewarded Bell for his unexpected faith by looking at strike three right down the middle?

When they spent Game Two with no non Venezuelan-born Red getting a single base hit, and no Red from any geography reaching base between Galvis’s walk in the second and his off-the-pillow base hit up the first base line in the fifth? When no Red from there got so much as a hit by pitch to reach base and seven out of the final thirteen Red batters struck out?

Their number one irregular season issue, their inability to hit in multiples in most innings, swallowed them deeper than the Braves’ own pitching turned out to do.

“You can look at the defensive positioning, you can look at hard-hit balls that didn’t go for hits,” Bell said after the Game Two loss. “But, it’s something we have to take a closer look at because all teams are really good at defensive positioning and can hit into bad luck at times. Why did that happen for us? We just have to really take a close look at it. We did all year. Yeah, I say, we absolutely do believe in our guys, we made adjustments as much as we possibly could. But we have to find a way to get better.”

Right he is. Every Reds position player except for three will be back in 2021, and enough of them will be on the far enough side of thirty years old. They’ll still have most of their solid pitching, though the Braves didn’t get to see Sonny Gray this week, but Bauer could walk into the free agency market this year with as many potential suitors as a debutante.

Another, older Ian Anderson, leading a British band known as Jethro Tull, sang the epitaph for this year’s Reds a little over half a century ago: It was a new day yesterday, but it’s an old day now.