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MILWAUKEE – The purpose of the bubble is supposed to be to prevent the races, not to generate them. Even regarding this, it seems that Milwaukee brewers can not follow the convention.
Ace of the Dodgers, Clayton Kershaw, struggled to perform during the loss to the Brewers in the opening game on Friday night, according to manager Dave Roberts, but the four errors and two balls of the Dodgers n & # Did not help his cause.
A new speaker against Clayton Kershaw? It looks like an inadequacy. But Milwaukee's slugging pitcher took LA's ace deep, and the situation got even wilder from there.
From the Wild Cards round to the World Series, we'll be covering the 2018 playoffs.
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Perhaps more than any other team in the playoffs, it was quite normal that it was a bullpen that caused the euphoria that engulfed 43,615 spectators at Miller Park on Friday and propelled the Brewers to a 6 to 5 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. . This middle man was a fast-paced debutant "called" Woody "- Brandon Woodruff – who, after a game in the National League series, is the most valuable player of the round.
Woodruff rocked Brewtown in the third inning as fastball Clayton Kershaw crossed the center fence of the ball for Milwaukee's first run of NLCS. He landed just off a party bridge hanging over the fence, escaping the enthusiastic arms of the Milwaukee faithful, 40 meters from the marble.
"It definitely changed the mood," said Craig Counsell, Brewer manager, perhaps downplaying the situation.
The explosion has generated all kinds of lists. He became only the third pitcher to ever play against Kershaw. He became the third lifter in history to play in a post-season game and the first to do so in a match between a left-handed to another. In short, what Woodruff did against Kershaw was not supposed to happen.
Kershaw fell into trouble after that. He did not receive any help from the ragged Dodgers' defense. Kershaw was eliminated after more than three innings and his club sank 5 to 1.
"It's obviously something that will happen in the day.You do not know, in your wildest dreams, that this is going to happen, being able to succeed a match against Kershaw and hit a home run," said Woodruff.
The short exit for Kershaw is a key detail of the game and, most likely, the series as a whole. Kershaw is a future member of the Hall of Famer – his business cards must wear this tag – and what you saw on Friday was more than a bad exit from an excellent pitcher. There was also a metaphorical punch.
If we can compare Kershaw to Gulliver fiction, then the horde of quality relief officers in the Brewers' paddock are the Lilliputians. And it was Kershaw who ended up being restrained and tied on the beach.
"Once I knew it was gone, it was just one of those times when you do not really think," Woodruff said. "I was just emitting a little bit of emotion – it was a cool moment and I was happy to be able to go there and do it for the team."
It was the perfect example of how the roles of pitchers evolve before our eyes, but also the reason why this happens. Kershaw is the practitioner of an art that is always vital and which, hopefully, will always be, but sometimes the masters of this art will be overwhelmed by the collective. Of course, here we are not talking about Woodruff's strike, but the task he actually belongs to: getting the hitters out.
The Woodruff home race will rightly lead all the top sellers, but it was his shots that had the biggest reverberations for the rest of the series. The Dodgers quickly took the lead when Manny Machado took advantage over Milwaukee's "starter" Gio Gonzalez, taking a series of 20 consecutive scoreless innings for the Brewers.
We must use the quotes of fear because there was no pretense of Gonzalez serving as starting pitcher, not in the sense that we always considered starting pitchers. Counsell had a big batter on the bridge to replace Gonzalez in the second run, after battling eight batters and making 32 shots. He did not start, he opened.
From there, we saw how bullpenning can be effective when everything works according to the script. We have also seen how tightrope can be precarious when you walk with this pattern on your back.
First, Woodruff made two perfect innings, eliminating the last four batters he faced, and passed the torch to southpaw Josh Hader.
This is how starts the game of failures between managers that will unfold over the next few days. It's a match that will focus on both shots that are not made and those that are. In this case, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did not lose weight when Counsell went from lefty Gonzalez to southpaw Woodruff because it was too early in the game. Max Muncy took over from David Freese, but that was all.
With LA's starting lineup being generally intact, as well as Muncy, who handles the left-handers well, this meant that Hader was mainly confronted with the training of dominant right-handers that Roberts had competed to face Gonzalez for his unique journey into the formation of Dodgers.
Righty, lefty – it does not matter with Hader. Right-handers have little chance against him, while left-handers have no chance. He made three scoreless innings, giving up a few hits and, like Woodruff, took out four.
"I threw Josh because he was throwing the ball very well," Counsell said. "I thought that once he had had two innings, he was away for tomorrow anyway, and so he has two days off now and he will be ready to start over."
When Hader finished at the end of the seventh, Milwaukee's collective pitching line resembled that of a classic Kershaw-style gem: seven innings, one point, three hits, one lap and nine strikeouts. Many, but – by design – it took three pitchers to do it.
It was already 6-1 in Milwaukee by the time the eighth rolled over, and Counsell treated it as a classic setup situation, of the kind at which the Dodgers pitcher's coach, Rick Honeycutt, has participated several times as a coach of the manager of the time, Tony La Russa a generation ago, to fill the gap with Dennis Eckersley.
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In other words, it was the hour of the match. Left-handed Xavier Cedeno and right-hander Joakim Soria – both of whom won the Chicago White Sox this season – had two outs but also scored goals.
Jam has undoubtedly fueled opponents of tyranny, the kind of situation that old high school students point out when they denounce strategy. In other words, if you continue to turn the marker dial, you will eventually trigger an alarm.
To quell the threat, Counsell summoned Jeremy Jeffress, who dominated the entire season, largely at the Milwaukee approach. He quickly spewed a two-point single for Machado and an RBI title for Matt Kemp. Lead was reduced to two.
"I thought there was some kind of scenario after Josh had three innings where we could avoid [using] Corey [Knebel] Tonight he'll be available for something more tomorrow, but that did not work out, "Counsell said," They fought back and made it difficult for us, as we expected. They had a very good eighth round with big success. So we could not get through and we had to use our guys. "
The former and apparent current nearest Knebel got the ninth. The fact that he was in the end-of-game role made sense – he had not dropped a heat since September 2 during 19 outings.
Again, it was a simple backup situation. The bullpenning had been designed to lead to this point. And as the Brewers went through the script in the eighth, they returned. Given the two-point cushion, Knebel got two quick exits, led Joc Pederson and gave up a triple dagger to Chris Taylor's right-hand wall. The advance was reduced to one point.
Everything worked. Knebel blew Justin Turner, who spent a frightful night for the Dodgers, scoring a goal for five with four strikeouts and also making a mistake. The fact that he was the last to do was in order and Knebel celebrated with his teammates. The Brewers won their 12th consecutive game on September 22 and took their first steps into the NLCS.
"It was a good feeling," said Knebel. "A win is a win, we are 1-0 in the heat so far, let's keep our heads on our shoulders and get ready for tomorrow."
But while Knebel and his teammates exchanged handshakes and praised the pitch, the challenge ahead was clear. Hader and Woodruff had been perfect, and the back of the stand had been just enough. It took a village – the Lilliputians – to do it. Now they have to capture three more Gullivers.
Hader will not play in the second game after 46 shots, a high in the season. Everyone, including pencil-player star Jhoulys Chacin, will be available on Saturday, when Counsell will attempt to restore everything, while the Dodgers hope for another long and dominant left-wing Hyun-Jin Ryu exit.
For the moment, the Brewers can bask for at least one night.
"We won the match," said Hader. "It's the final achievement here – get that win, that first game of the playoffs in the championship series – so it's huge, especially against this team."
The center of Milwaukee not only dominated the Dodgers' offense for five innings, it also set the pattern for defeating the wealthier, more famous, and more established Dodgers. Stay close to you early and let the best tools of the game go to work. It's the Milwaukee formula all season long.
But at no time did the Brewers have to extend their stints in this kind of crucible – high pressure, important stakes and intense program with little rest. As the Dodgers have shown when returning late in the first game, they will continue to follow you with deep waves. They curl up because they can, but most of their players are regular in first division. Your match winnings are therefore marginal.
"I thought we played a whole game of baseball," said Roberts. "That's what I did." "So that they use Hader for three shifts tonight and we can look well at their arms in the pen, I thought we had good attackers up to ############################################################################# 39 at the end. "
The drama at the beginning of the series now raises the question: can the Brewers support this for the other three victories they need to return to the World Series for the first time since 1982?
We will have a preview of this answer in the second game of Saturday, with Hader. Counsell will have to open his doors without at least one of his toughest bulls. However, Hader has rarely been used in consecutive outings during the season. So this is a scenario that Counsell knows well. He thinks his pen is in good condition.
"You will not see Josh tomorrow," Counsell said. "I mean, he has two days off (including Sunday's travel day) and then he'll be ready to leave.
"We are good with everyone else and we are in shape tomorrow." Corbin Burnes did not launch today and was not up to par. So we are in good shape. We have opportunities, lots of opportunities for tomorrow, so good things. "
If Counsell is right, it could be up to the Dodgers to suspend some twisted numbers on the board at the start of the round. The Brewers may not have invented bullpenning, but they are trying to master one of the newest baseball arts.
If they succeed, we may have to start calling it Brewpenning. And as we continue to hear from Milwaukee's emerging members, these guys can rake. At least Woodruff can, as we have seen.
"This literally caused not only everyone in the dugout, but everyone in the stadium," said Gonzalez. "It was just an eruption of excitement.Everybody was going crazy.I am pretty sure we hit him several times in the headphones.I just hope that I'm sure it's a good thing. he will remember his name. "
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