Before the NLCS started, I had an idea in my mind of how it would look if the Braves managed to pull off this upset. Sort of a road map to the pennant, if you will. It obviously wasn’t set in stone or the only way to get it done, but it looked something like this:
- Two wins with the bats. Just games where the two best offenses in baseball both live up to their regular season numbers, and the final score is something in the range of 7–6 or 10–8. In my mind these came in the middle games of the series, because both teams will be in the back of their rotations and the Braves will have the benefit of batting last in games 3–5.
- One win with the bullpen. A game where the starting pitcher only gets through three or four innings and a parade of relievers comes in to just shut the Dodgers down. Again I had an idea of where this might fall, and I was thinking in one of Anderson or Wright’s starts.
- One win that fills in the “other” box. Just something else outside of that. Maybe it’s a game where the Dodgers beat themselves with a couple errors or bad managerial moves, maybe it’s a fortuitous bounce of the ball or a lucky umpiring decision. Just something outside the obvious realm of how the Braves might pull this off; sort of stealing a win in an unconventional way if you will.
There’s your stolen win.
I guess you could make an argument that the 5–1 win in game one more fits the bill of the bullpen win considering Atlanta’s bullpen was lights out, and there is a case to be made that this was one of the “shootout wins” because the Braves picked up four runs in the ninth.
Or you could argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, there is no exact blueprint to winning a series, and every win counts the same no matter what the score is or how it happens. I can’t argue it.
But as far as I’m concerned, that’s a game the Braves stole. So much went wrong, and there were so many moments where it looked like the Jenga tower was about to collapse. Moments where the Jenga tower probably would’ve collapsed with most other Braves teams.
Adam Duvall picked up an oblique injury while fouling a ball off. The Braves had to turn to a 21-year-old with four career plate appearances to take over in the middle of an NLCS game. That alone was an early kick in the teeth that depleted the bench and made things a lot tougher in crunch time.
Speaking of tougher in crunch time, Pablo Sandoval played. In a postseason game. In the year 2020. The man who played in one regular season game all season was called on to pinch hit in a tie game and play defense from there. Charlie Culberson — who has pitched more recently (Sep. 4) than he has hit (Aug. 21) — was brought on to take an at-bat with the bases loaded in a tie game. The Braves had to dip into their entire bench outside of backup catcher Tyler Flowers, and had three players play in this game with a combined 15 plate appearances all season.
That was almost like a little league game where the league rules mandate that the manager lets every player get in the game for at least an inning, and somehow the Braves found a way anyway.
And how many moments tonight were you bracing for the worst? Max Fried walked the №9 hitter to put two on base for Mookie Betts in the second inning. It feels like forever ago because of everything that happened later, but that could’ve been a kill shot right there. The Braves went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position in this game. They left 10 on base; just doing everything possible to make it tougher and tougher to pull out a win.
There were points in the game where they were practically begging the Dodgers to grab a stranglehold on it. The blown opportunities in the sixth and eighth immediately come to mind as points where it looked like the game was going to fall apart. The most important half inning of the entire night was Max Fried’s 1–2–3 effort in the bottom of the sixth; it bridged the game to the bullpen and swung some momentum back into the Atlanta dugout after a brutal missed scoring opportunity. Austin Riley had an error (somehow, it was scored a hit), and that opened the door for a potential Dodger rally.
That wasn’t just stepping into a cage to fight a lion. That was stepping in to fight the lion, locking all the doors, throwing the keys away, telling everyone else at the zoo to go home so you can’t ask for help and finally covering yourself in steak juice right before the lion showed up.
I don’t know if the Braves will play better baseball for the rest of the series, but I know they are capable of playing a lot better baseball than tonight. Of course, so are the Dodgers. That lion is still there trying to rip your heads off, and it’s going to be a pretty angry one tomorrow.
The angry lion starting off tomorrow’s battle will be Clayton Kershaw.
Kershaw has a 0.43 postseason ERA against the Braves… and a 4.75 postseason ERA against everyone else in baseball.
He has pitched against 11 different teams in the postseason, and the Braves are the only one he has never surrendered a home run to. Heck, forget home runs. In 21 innings against Kershaw in October, the Braves only have one extra base hit of any kind.
It is beyond time for the Braves to do what everyone else has done at least once against Kershaw in the playoffs, or, you know, at least do something resembling hitting.
But it was also beyond time to win a playoff series, and it was beyond time to advance to the NLCS.
Better late than never.
