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MILWAUKEE – Game 7. The right way to say it is with solemnity and slightly tilting your head in appreciation of the benevolence of the baseball gods. Today is a gift, a day that comes less often than the Perseids, Christmas or your birthday.
Tonight, the Dodgers and Brewers will choose the National League pennant with the 58th decisive game of the 7th in the last 115 years of the World Series. The NL championship series distils seven months of baseball – 345 games played between the two teams – in a single-night baseball win / win for the league.
We are here not only because Milwaukee defeated Los Angeles in Game 6, 7-2, but also because Brewers manager Craig Counsell managed alliances around the baseball convention.
The Dodgers really do not care about Counsell's plans. After a series of seven games, they sneered. Fatigue and familiarity would condemn Counsell's maneuvers of relief. They were completely wrong.
The Brewers reached the seventh game. Corbin Burnes, the star of the sixth game, is not in play. The most important is Josh Hader, who has two days off, is available for three rounds tonight.
With at least two days off this year, Hader is 5-0 with a 2.07 ERA and 120 strikeouts in 65.1.
Why the Dodgers or anyone who should be surprised at this development is a mystery. That's how Milwaukee did it all year. The Brewers asked for 614 innings of their counter during the regular season; no team has ever made so much progress with so much use. And their starters have pitched five or fewer innings 91 times, tying the 2016 Dodgers for the most abbreviated starts of all playoff teams in history, including the nine games played.
Still, the center of Milwaukee is so deep and its deployment so clever that its use during this series or even the year is not a problem.
In Game 6, Counsell asked his office to protect a three-point lead on 14 outs. The relievers not only sealed the contract, but they also did not allow a hit, and none of them was named Hader. Corey Knebel, Jeremy Jeffress and Burnes were so good that they gave the evening to Hader. Counsell promised before the series that for her team to qualify for the World Series, she should win a match without using Hader. He had it on Friday night.
"We are in good shape," said Counsell. "Right where we want to be."
Few men are as intimately aware of the importance of the seventh game as Counsell. He was in the middle of two World Series 7 rallies 7: 1997 with the Marlins of Florida and 2001 with the Diamondbacks of Arizona. He is one of the 20 men in baseball history to play up to 10 games with a plate in Game 7.
I asked him if he thought the pitch at home created an advantage in a game.
"Well, I thought it mattered tonight [in Game 6], "he said," so yes. "
Above all, I reminded him, if the game is near. The advantage of beating last is that once the match is tied in the ninth inning, the home team does not have to defend a lead.
"True, true," he says.
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The starting pitch was for match 6 because of Manny Machado, who was injured in Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar's game in Match 4, making him a bad guy. The Brewers were late in Game 6 when David Freese opened the scoring with a home run, the kind of shot in the mouth that can deflate a nervous crowd when his team faces elimination. But three batters later, the mere announcement of Machado's name for his at-batte brought life – and malevolence – back into the building.
"When they booed Manny, oh, man, it did not look like anything I'd heard before," said Milwaukee starting pitcher Wade Miley. "There was so much noise standing on the mound. The noise was so loud that your heartbeat was shaken.
Miley hummed Machado and the crowd responded with as much joy as the contempt that had greeted her. Machado had been fined MLB $ 10,000 for his unsportsmanlike behavior, but the Dodgers also paid for it in Game 6. With the return of the crowd, the Brewers escaped four times. their first to beat against Hyun-Jin Ryu, more than they had scored in their previous 22 rounds at the bat.
The four points were scored on three consecutive shots: a two-point double by Aguilar in a change of outside direction and a double by Mike Moustakas and a single by Eric Kratz, both on the first-throw curves.
"We did a good job taking what they gave us," said Aguilar, who had three hits, all on the opposite pitch. "They threw me the whole series. I just took what they gave me. "
Ryu had thrown 83 balls in the first pitch this year and had only granted one hit. Yet, Moustakas and Kratz have doubled it for a higher number of shots in the first pitch than it has allowed throughout the year. The first step curve in a loop is designed to get a first step called hit. The Brewers hit Ryu as if they knew what was coming.
"Maybe you're right," Kratz said with a smile. "Maybe we knew what was going to happen. We do homework. "
It also helped the Brewers get Ryu's curveball out of his hand, an early sign that a curve is coming soon. Braun then hit another curve for a 1-2.
"I was sitting on a heater," said Moustakas. "I saw curveball from his hand and I had time to react."
The first run was a snowball downhill. The Dodgers could not stop the Brewers crowd or rush. The game was actually over.
Nevertheless, every match in Milwaukee, because there are many branches in Counsell's "decision tree", has a critical point, and it was played in the seventh inning. He gave Jeffress a 5-2 lead, which was fragile in the playoffs.
"If the training at that time was originally left-handed, it would be Hader," Counsell said.
Jeffress instead started with Brian Dozier, a right-handed batter, because the Dodgers' manager, Dave Roberts, let him in after pinching the pitcher instead. Roberts moved the pitcher's spot only one place at the cost of Freese's kidnapping, an expensive move.
Jeffress then started a 1-2-3 run.
"It was huge," said Counsell. "That was the key to the whole game."
And if a runner had reached the base?
"Hader is in the game," he said.
Similarly, Counsell avoided using Hader when the Dodgers reliever, Kenta Maeda, fired a foolishness in 7th place, scoring a 6-2 score. This allowed more room for maneuver.
Still, Counsell said, if Burnes had allowed a runner on, he would have brought Hader. Still, Jeffress and Burnes were perfect, which means that Hader had his evening off, which means the Brewers are at their best in Game 7.
15 years ago, a game that nobody paid attention to, but which has become more important nowadays. On September 17, 2003, the Diamondbacks played against the Dodgers. The game is remarkable now because Counsell started in third for Arizona, Roberts in the center of the Dodgers and Alex Cora, who now leads the American League champion Red Sox, took the second goal of the Dodgers.
The following year, at the trading deadline, Theo Epstein, chief executive of Boston, was busy sending Nomar Garciaparra back to town when he asked one of his statistical analysts, Zach Scott , draw up a list of four names that the Red Sox could name. to be able to acquire as a pinch specialist.
Scott came with a list. Epstein handed it to one of his assistants, Josh Byrnes, and said, "Start making calls."
Byrnes called Paul DePodesta of the Dodgers about Roberts, one of the names on Scott's list. DePodesta returned with four names in the Boston Farm system that he loved. Epstein went through the list, refusing to give up the first, second and third names on the DePodesta list. The fourth name was Henri Stanley, a minor league player who had been part of the Red Sox system for two months and was part of his third organization.
"Do it," said Epstein.
The Red Sox traded Stanley against the Dodgers against Roberts.
Roberts stole the base against the Yankees in 2004, ALCS which kicked off the Red Sox's return after three unprecedented defeats – crowned by a win in the seventh game. Stanley never won the honors. Byrnes is now working for the Dodgers.
Counsell has prepared all his life for this game. He was born in South Bend, Indiana, where his father, John, played and was trained at Notre Dame in the 1960s and 70s. Craig grew up in Whitefish, Wisconsin, following John's involvement in the Brewers Community Relations Department. One of Craig's jobs was managing Robin Yount's fan mail.
Pat Murphy, then second-year coach at Notre Dame, recruited Craig there. He offered him a partial scholarship. Very partial: $ 750. Craig was named captain of the team, thus making the Counsells the only father-son couple to captain the Notre Dame baseball team.
"Coaches are often credited for developing players," Murphy said. "In this case, Craig has developed me."
Murphy is now the Counsell Bench Coach.
Counsell played 16 years and retired at age 40. Like Roberts, he has already played for the Dodgers, a short run that ended during spring training in 2000. One day, he stole a tube by the black singer, Garth Brooks ; the next day the Dodgers cut him off. (He swears the events are not related.)
Five days later, he was signed by Arizona general manager Joe Garagiola Jr., who had already played baseball at Notre Dame for … John Counsell. Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenley would call Craig the smartest player in the world.
A baseball life for Craig is usually reduced to two days: the seventh game in 1997, as he played the sacrifice with a sacrificial fly and scored the winning round, and the seventh game in 2001, when Mariano Rivera hit him base with two outs. Counsell was in first place when Luis Gonzalez grabbed the winning record.
Counsell returns to that great day of baseball called the seventh game for the first time since that night in the desert. Walker Buehler will debut for the Dodgers and Jhoulys Chacin for the Brewers, which means that Los Angeles has the advantage, and that Milwaukee has the experience. And Clayton Kershaw, as he did in Game 7 of the World Series last year, plans to exit the market for the Dodgers.
But this game is more about Counsell against Roberts than Buehler versus Chacin. These games are more like those of the managers, because all the usual rules of engagement are ignored – if they have not already done so for these Brewers.
Counsell compromised the fifth game because he knew that "it would always be the hardest match for us", because it's the only time in the series that clubs play three days in a row, which can impose a marker . When the fourth game was played in 13 innings and set up an even higher tax, Counsell cleverly played the lure starter game in the fifth game, shooting Miley after a batter.
His decision was to play hard with his forces at games 6 and 7 rather than exhausting his best arms in game 5. He put his chips on playing at home, leaving Miley and Chacin in complete rest and a free day to enter this pair of matches. Until here everything is fine. Already 2-0 in Game 7, Counsell pushed the series to the limit, arriving here with everything he could have wished for in his debut.
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