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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — In the final inning of Game 3 of the National League Championship Series on Thursday, a 3-1 victory that put the Los Angeles Dodgers a win away from another pennant, Mookie Betts evoked visions of Derek Jeter.
Betts ranged to his right, backhanded an Andrew Vaughn grounder, leaped and threw to first to complete a play made iconic by the former New York Yankees captain. A converted right fielder, Betts had never practiced that play and had barely ever thought to attempt it. That he dared to in that moment spoke volumes not only of his confidence at the position, but of the conviction his team has carried throughout October.
The Dodgers, coming off an underwhelming 93-win regular season, have played in nine postseason games this year and lost only once. They breezed past the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card round, dispatched the star-laden Philadelphia Phillies in four Division Series games and have since held the No. 1-seeded Milwaukee Brewers to three runs in 27 innings in this NLCS. With a win in Friday’s Game 4 — with Shohei Ohtani back on the mound — the Dodgers will return to the World Series after a sweep.
These days, everything seems to come easy.
“We just have a lot of guys with experience, and we know what it takes to win the big games,” Dodgers infielder Tommy Edman said. “We have a lot of confident guys in the room, not in a bad way or in an arrogant way or anything like that, but guys are very confident in their ability. And it comes from having gotten it done in the past.”
It was less than 12 months ago that the Dodgers got it done, riding a resilient group of relievers to their first full-season championship in 36 years. Now, behind a starting rotation that is every bit as deep and overwhelming as last year’s bullpen, the Dodgers are one win away from joining the 2009 Phillies as the first team to return to the World Series one year after winning it. Five more wins, and they’ll become the first team to win back-to-back titles in a quarter century.
“We’re up,” Betts said. “But, you know, like [former Lakers great] Kobe [Bryant] said, ‘The job’s not done.’ So, we’ve got to keep going and just keep applying pressure.”
Tyler Glasnow took the ball three days after Blake Snell shut out the Brewers through eight innings in Game 1 and two days after Yoshinobu Yamamoto twirled nine innings of one-run ball in Game 2, producing baseball’s first postseason complete game in eight years. The Brewers threatened early, as four of their first eight batters reached base, but Glasnow cruised thereafter, striking out six of seven batters in the third and fourth innings and pitching into the sixth with only a run across.
The most encouraging development followed. Glasnow issued a two-out walk to Vaughn in the sixth, his pitch count already at 99, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts walked out of the dugout. He sought 10 outs from a bullpen that had been a major problem area all year and got it from Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen, Anthony Banda and Roki Sasaki, four relievers who combined to allow just one baserunner.
“I think the thing about our guys is they’re battle-tested, and they know that I’ve never lost faith in them,” Roberts said. “They’ve never lost confidence in each other. So, to see what they’re doing right now, I’m not surprised. We knew all along we were going to need these guys. And these guys are delivering, which is huge. We’re doing a great job of preventing runs. And the bullpen deserves a lot of credit.”
So does the Dodgers’ defense, which has been stellar in the playoffs. It was obvious again in Thursday’s second inning, when the Brewers tied the score at 1 and placed a runner on third with one out.
The Dodgers had their infield drawn in when Brewers shortstop Joey Ortiz reached out for a curveball and produced a sharp grounder to the left side. Max Muncy, the Dodgers’ third baseman who helped execute the memorable wheel play in Philadelphia during the previous round, made a sliding catch to his left, turned and fired a perfect throw to Dodgers catcher Will Smith, who applied the tag to get the lead runner.
The Brewers placed only one more runner in scoring position the rest of the game.
“It was kind of a big moment,” Muncy said.
Another big moment occurred in the sixth inning. Jacob Misiorowski, the Brewers’ hard-throwing sensation, relieved opener Aaron Ashby in the first inning and stifled the Dodgers’ hitters while pitching in the shadows. When Misiorowski caught Betts looking at a 99 mph fastball on the outside corner, it marked his ninth strikeout, the third most in postseason history by a reliever. But Smith followed with a sharp single, Freddie Freeman drew a walk, and Edman produced what became the game-winning hit by lining a low slider into center field.
Misiorowski was 73 pitches in by that point, the most he had thrown in a game since Sept. 19. Abner Uribe, who later allowed a third run to score with an errant pickoff throw, was ready in the bullpen.
“Abner has not been throwing the ball like he normally has,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “I had to make a decision on who’s a better matchup. Miz was the best player on the field for us today, and he was fantastic. I knew he was getting to the end because that’s his pitch-count kind of thing, but in a game like this, I wanted to give him a chance to get out of that.”
Before these Dodgers, the 1999 Yankees were the last defending champions to win eight of their first nine postseason games and the last defending champions to take a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series, according to ESPN Research. The Dodgers are also the last team since the 1996 Atlanta Braves — headlined by Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz — to allow no more than a run in four consecutive playoff games.
The Dodgers still feel as if they can be better offensively — as evidenced by Ohtani going 3-for-29 since the wild-card round — but they have the look of a team that no longer believes it can be beaten.
“When the postseason rolls around, we all kind of lean on each other a little harder,” Vesia said. “One-hundred and sixty-two games is a long season. Things go our way, things don’t. But it is a breath of fresh air when October rolls around.”
