NEW YORK – I really hate to say I told you so. But …
Yes, some folks got carried away with the Dodgers’ victories at Citi Field on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Maybe it was the margins of victory, maybe it was that they made the New York Mets look tired and dispirited.
But no, this series isn’t a lock, as noted in Friday’s paper. And yes, the Mets look very much alive again, taking a substandard Jack Flaherty to the woodshed in the early innings of a resounding 12-6 victory that narrowed the Dodgers’ margin in the National League Championship Series to 3-2.
And maybe these words should have been interpreted as a warning when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts uttered them before Friday’s game, in answer to a question about the need for urgency.
“I think you can see from kind of my demeanor that we’re playing with urgency tonight,” he said. “I think you can see that things can happen when a team starts to build momentum. So, yeah, we want to kind of take our momentum and keep it going, put these guys away.”
As noted previously, he of all people knows what can happen when you don’t. (See: Red Sox, Yankees, stolen base, 2004, etc.)
It seemed like a good idea at the time, sending Flaherty to the mound for the potential clincher five days after he had stopped the Mets on two hits with six strikeouts over seven innings and 99 pitches in Game 1.
But maybe New York had a better idea how to handle him the second time around. And maybe it was a diminished Flaherty. His four-seam fastball, averaging 93.3 mph for the season but dipping a bit toward the end of the regular season, averaged 91.4 Friday.
“He wasn’t sharp, clearly,” Roberts said. “He’s been fighting something. He’s been under the weather a little bit. So I don’t know if that bled into the stuff, the velocity. I’m not sure.”
If there was, Flaherty didn’t acknowledge it when he met the media afterward.
Much of the Mets’ damage came on his other pitches. Pete Alonso’s three-run homer in the first came on a low 84.5 mph slider, and he hit what looked like a majestic 3-iron into a sea of orange clad fans to the right of the batter’s eye.
Starling Marte’s two-run double in the third came on an 88.3 mph sinker. Francisco Alvarez picked on an 82.5 mph slider for an RBI single, and Lindor hit a 78.1 mph knuckle curve for an RBI triple, a five-run third inning and an 8-1 lead.
“They made adjustments, did a good job,” Flaherty said. “I feel like it was the first time in awhile I let the game speed up on me a little bit and I didn’t make the adjustments that I should have made. … They put a couple of good at-bats together. Tip your hat to Pete; he put a good swing on a pitch.
“What makes the postseason so interesting is facing a team two times in the span of five days and getting a chance to go right back at them. You go back and figure some things out and make adjustments. If I could take the ball next game I would, but that’s not the way baseball works.”
What made it sting more was that the Dodgers showed some fight themselves after going down 8-1 after three innings. Andy Pages became the 13th Dodger player to hit two home runs in a postseason game, with a solo homer in the fourth and a three-run shot in the fifth, and Mookie Betts added a solo shot in the sixth to make it a 10-6 game.
Evidently, that concerned Mets manager Carlos Mendoza enough that he had Edwin Diaz pitch the last two innings to make sure nothing else would happen.
All of that, again, is part of the mosaic of a playoff series, where adjustments are critical, bullpen usage is even more critical and overthinking can get you into trouble.
A sense of urgency coming into a potential closeout game was what led Roberts – and his superiors in the front office – to go with Flaherty in Game 5 with the hope of avoiding a bullpen game in Game 6 at home.
But expediency replaced urgency at some point in the bottom of the third. Nobody warmed up in that inning as Flaherty flailed, and after his three innings and 75 pitches Brent Honeywell was asked to take down as many innings as he could. He almost got to the end before Anthony Banda came in to get the final out in the eighth.
“I wish I could predict (in the third that) Andy’s going to hit two homers tonight,” Roberts said. “But if you can kind of think through the game as I do, left with (at least) three innings potentially of low-leverage guys, you’re still in a position and you’re not certain how the game’s going to play out. But you do know that there’s a cost for the ensuing games.
“I think those are bets that I’ve got to make … But it was good to see our guys fight back. Certainly, offensively, we’re in a really good spot.”
So America gets to see the bullpen game anyway on Sunday evening at Dodger Stadium. And yes, all of the leverage guys will be rested and ready.
But, as the sign held up by a Mets fan late in Friday’s game asked: “Believe In Miracles?”
The Dodgers had better hope they haven’t awakened a monster.
jalexander@scng.com