Playoff Prospectus: PE... (10/08)
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October 8, 2016 Playoff ProspectusNot a Duel, But Dodgers Grab Game 1Don’t call it a pitchers' duel. The minute you do, it dissolves into long pitch counts and misplaced sliders, double steals and a Corey Seager home run that, until it was lifted at 109 mph over the center-field fence, stood a reasonable chance of landing somewhere in the zone for strike one. We’ve seen this once already, when Madison Bumgarner evicted Noah Syndergaard from the postseason during a complete-game shutout in the Wild Card game. A one-sided pitchers' duel isn’t really a duel at all, by definition, and by the same token, it was difficult to categorize Game 1 of the NLDS as anything but a hot mess. (A sloppy, drunken quarrel among friends, perhaps, but certainly not the duel of two competent and well-rested rivals.) The pitchers in question: Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer. One, a fantastically dominant lefty sidelined by injuries and riding out the last ripples of his late-season resurgence. The other, an ace who’s been solid, if not considerably more consistent than his NL rival, and one whose WARP eclipses even Kershaw’s in 2016. Scherzer opened the game in front of 43,915 fans at Nationals Park, striking out Chase Utley before Corey Seager ripped a first-pitch fastball to deep center field. It was the first postseason home run of the rookie shortstop’s career, and a doozy at that. At 430 feet, it marked Seager’s third-longest homer in the majors. Rattled, Scherzer plunked Justin Turner on the hand during the next plate appearance, but recovered for four consecutive outs through the second inning, catching both Josh Reddick and Yasmani Grandal with a pair of knee-high changeups. Kershaw fended off the Nationals’ offense with a little more success and a little less poise than his rival, laboring through 17 pitches in the first inning and 23 pitches in the second. He attacked Trea Turner with a balanced approach of fastballs and sliders, battled Bryce Harper through eight pitches, seven of them fastballs and most centered within the zone, and polished off the inning with a steady stream of offspeed stuff to retire Jayson Werth. In the second inning, Kershaw settled into an easier rhythm, alternating heaters and breaking balls until he loaded the bases for Scherzer. Against the right-hander, whose career batting line sits at .188/.217/.206, Kershaw fired eight straight fastballs before Scherzer finally popped out to Seager for the inning-ending play (perhaps the most fitting reminder that this was not a duel of Madison Bumgarner proportions).
At the plate, both the Dodgers and Nationals did the most damage in the third inning. Chase Utley unloaded an RBI single, while Justin Turner smacked a first-pitch curveball for his first postseason homer, sore hand and all. In the bottom half of the frame, Harper returned in full force, lining a double into right field, tag-teaming with Jayson Werth on a double steal, and coming around to score on Anthony Rendon’s base hit. Not coincidentally, the third inning was also the most arduous for Kershaw, who expended 26 pitches to get through seven batters and, somewhat remarkably, was only tagged with two runs. Where the pitchers' duel ended, kicking Kershaw out after 101 pitches and five innings and Scherzer after 91 pitches and six innings, the battle of the bullpens began. The Nationals elected Sammy Solis and Mark Melancon, who recorded three scoreless frames despite loading the bases for Dodgers reliever Kenley Jansen in the ninth. (If it was inadvertent retaliation for Scherzer’s bases-loaded strikeout in the second, it worked perfectly.) The Dodgers, on the other hand, rolled with three of their top relievers (Jansen, Joe Blanton, and Grant Dayton) and one of their pretty-good relievers (Pedro Baez) to keep the Nationals from scaling a one-run deficit through the last four innings. Jansen, though rubbish at the plate, delivered 1 ⅔ solid innings on the mound, finishing what Kershaw started in much the same way Kershaw started it: with 15 pitches, zero baserunners, and a devastating, game-ending slider to Werth. Sure, this wasn’t the pitchers' duel that was advertised, but what it lacked in polish it made up for in color and irreverence. There were hits, and flubs, and pitches left where Seager and Turner could pulverize them, but there were also bases-loaded strikeouts and fierce battles between one of the greatest pitchers of the decade and one of the deadliest hitters. For the Dodgers, who have fought tooth and nail to recover their ace and stake their claim in the NL West, it felt like the only appropriate start to the postseason.
Ashley Varela is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @wcoastfangirl
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