LOS ANGELES — Maybe that’s just what it takes, to wait for the other guys to make a mistake. And to be ready to pounce.
The deciding moment, the moment when the Dodgers moved on to the National League Championship Series on Thursday night, was a broken-bat bouncer back to the mound by Andy Pages in the 11th inning of Game 4 against the Philadelphia Phillies. And the move that preceded it in the 11th inning turned out to be the series changer, when Dave Roberts inserted Hyeseong Kim as a pinch-runner after Tommy Edman’s one-out single.
Kim’s speed has been considered a weapon ever since he joined the Dodgers organization this spring. Saturday night, it put his team another step toward repeating as World Series champions, because that two-out nubber to the mound became a game-winning play instead of sending the game to a 12th inning. Phillies pitcher Orion Kerkering momentarily fumbled the ball, then picked it up and sailed a throw past catcher J.T. Realmuto to the backstop, scoring Kim from third to end the game.
And just one pitch before, while Pages swung at a sinker for strike one, Kim bluffed as if he was coming down the line from third. Could that have been on the relief pitcher’s mind?
“No,” Kim quickly answered in English when the question was posed, bypassing his interpreter for the moment.
“I was like, kind of surprised that he threw it home,” he said, through his interpreter. “But that’s not that wasn’t really my thought process. I just knew I had to run hard and just run through home plate. That’s all I was thinking about.”
But consider: If you’re the pitcher, and that guy with that speed is on third base representing the winning run, wouldn’t your heart rate elevate, too?
“He just got caught up in the moment a little bit,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said, adding, “Coming down the stretch there, he pitched so well for us. I feel for him because he’s putting it all on his shoulders.”
Kim was the unexpected hero, Pages the guy who set it in motion and Kerkering the unwilling foil in a taut game that lived up to its status as a series decider, with great pitching on both sides. Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez, his team’s Division Series Game 1 starter, came back in Game 4 with six shutout innings before coming out after a walk and a single started L.A.’s seventh-inning rally.
From the Dodgers’ standpoint, Tyler Glasnow provided six scoreless innings in his first playoff start as a Dodger. And Roki Sasaki contributed three innings of relief, starting the eighth after Emmet Sheehan had given up the lone Phillies run in the seventh (and committed an error himself to put that runner in scoring position).
Sasaki threw 35 pitches in three innings, and maybe this backed up Roberts’ insistence that, rather than being a “closer,” Sasaki will pitch in leverage situations regardless of the inning or the score.
Both sides played this like an elimination game, which is telling. It was literally so for the Phillies, but the Dodgers absolutely did not want to board a plane on Friday morning for a Game 5 in the cauldron that is Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.
For Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy, it was reminiscent of another postseason extra-inning game of note in which he had a hand. When the Phillies went to starter Jesús Luzardo in the 10th, Muncy said he had a flashback to the 18-inning Game 3 in the 2018 World Series against the Boston Red Sox, when starter Nathan Eovaldi entered the game in the 12th and went the rest of the way … and gave up Muncy’s game-winning homer in the 18th.
It “definitely reminded me” of that game, Muncy said. “I thought for sure Lozano was going to go until it was over. But when they made the pitching change (bringing in Kerkering to face Kiké Hernandez after Edman and Muncy had singled in the 11th), it was kind of like, you feel like you have a chance a little bit. And sure enough, we found a way to get it done.”
Muncy had a hand in the tying run in the seventh, walking with one out and ultimately scoring on a bases-loaded walk to Mookie Betts by Jhoan Durán, the Phillies’ closer/leverage guy/break-glass-in-case-of-emergency reliever, who pretty much shattered that glass by giving up the tying run, but stayed in to get the side in order in the eighth.
But that finish in the 11th … that was unexpected enough to be shocking.
“When the ball came back to (Kerkering) on the nubber, I don’t know what was going through his head,” Muncy said, but added, “When you get those extra innings, the heart starts racing really quickly, especially on defense. And when the ball gets hit to you, as a pitcher, you’re so worried about making your pitches, I don’t think you expect the ball to come back to you. And so, you know, I don’t know what was going through his mind, but I think there’s a little bit of panic in there.”
That goes along with what should be another truism of extra-inning baseball. The inclination is to try to end it on one swing, but putting the ball in play and putting pressure on the defense can be equally as effective, and just as dramatic.
“The later that game gets, the more you start feeling it on defense,” Muncy said. “So to find a way to put the ball in play and put the pressure on the defense, that’s everything. I know everyone wants to have the big swing and the walk-off home run, but just putting the ball in play and finding a way to get chances out there and see if they’ll mess up, that’s kind of everything.”
It’s at least good enough to keep a season alive.
jalexander@scng.com