Dodgers roll a six

Phil Gurnee ♦ October 18, 2017 ♦ Leave a comment

Beating the Cubs 6 – 1 and winning their 6th straight postseason game to remain undefeated in October.  Dating back to the regular season the Dodgers have now won eight games in a row.

Yu Darvish gave up a home run in the first to Schwarber, add in a couple more hard-hit singles and things were looking dicey in the 1st inning, but he recovered to pitch out of trouble. Twitter was alarmed with many saying he simply didn’t have it. Los Angeles beat writer Andy McCullough awas one of them

Yu Darvish does not have The Smell tonight. Lots of hard contact in the first.

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughTimes) October 18, 2017

Sixteen outs later Yu would leave the game having given up only three more singles and to Dodger fans, he smelled like a double delight rose. In total Yu got 19 outs, and has now pitched two of the three best games by a Dodger this postseason.

Player                  Date Series Gm#  Rslt  IP H ER BB SO HR GSc
Yu Darvish        2017-10-09   NLDS   3 W 3-1 5.0 2  1  0  7  1  66
Rich Hill         2017-10-15   NLCS   2 W 4-1 5.0 3  1  1  8  1  64
Yu Darvish        2017-10-17   NLCS   3 W 6-1 6.1 6  1  1  7  1  63
Clayton Kershaw   2017-10-14   NLCS   1 W 5-2 5.0 4  2  1  4  1  54
Clayton Kershaw   2017-10-06   NLDS   1 W 9-5 6.1 5  4  3  7  4  51
Rich Hill         2017-10-07   NLDS   2 W 8-5 4.0 3  2  3  4  1  49

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 10/18/2017.
The new Dodger lineup made Dave Roberts look good once again with each of the players inserted into a new starting position making an offensive contribution to the victory.

•  Andre Ethier made his first start in the postseason in left field and got the Dodger offense going with a bomb to right field tying the game at 1.
• One inning later Chris Taylor making his first start at SS in the postseason hit the longest home run of the postseason with his 444-foot blast to dead center field.
• Joc Pederson made his first start in CF and started the fifth with a double down the right-field line. He would score on a triple by Taylor down the left field line.

The Dodgers would later score on a series of mishaps and bad pitching to make the final score 6 – 1.  Included in those mishaps were:

• Walking Yu Darvish with the bases loaded
• Dropping a fly ball in CF after it was caught, though that didn’t cost them any runs.
• A crazy strike three swing that hit the catchers shoulder and bounded away allowing a run to score and the batter to make 1st base.  I had never seen a missed swing hit the catchers shoulder before.

Lest not forget the bullpen came in and cleaned up again, and in the process threw a bullpen no-hitter over the three game span against the Cubs. No Dodger relief pitcher allowed a hit over 27 outs.

The Cubs finally broke the bullpen hold on them when Ross Stripling gave up two hits to start the 9th.  This was the first appearance needed by Ross in the postseason and probably his last.

All in all, you couldn’t have asked for a better script for the Dodger for the first three games.