We squeezed out Game 1 after a bases-loaded walk in the 10th inning by Alfaro, which cut our magic number down to four. It's still four after the Dodgers silenced our bats for 10 innings. This is playoff baseball, really, when every out, every pitch counts. With the Dodgers, it is always a battle. Beat them one night, and you need to cure the hangover in time to try and beat them again.
Urias, their guy, shut us out for six innings, Musgrove shut out the Dodgers for five. Only this time, Musgrove put on a Snell, 106 pitches in five innings. They made our boy work. Urias, too, would have gone longer, but it was a grind for him as well. Urias is just huge for the Dodgers. He is the anchor, although not necessarily the ace, of that staff. With the Dodgers already losing valuable man hours (Bauer, Buehler, May, most notably) from their pitchers, you have Gonsolin and Anderson stepping up in a big way to fill the void. Kershaw is no longer the dominator he once was, but he is a presence. Urias won 20 games last year, and it's 17 so far this year. That's no accident.
The Dodgers never beat themselves. They snuff out the enemy when it is needed, where it is needed, home or away. They don't give you extra outs, extra bases or commit those base running blunders that might end an inning. That professionalism and talent is hard to match for most ballclubs. When you look at the top of that lineup, Betts-Turner-Freeman, you just have to tip your cap. These guys were already champions before they signed with the Dodgers, it didn't really take much for them to buy into what needed to be done in LA. Betts is a sure fire HOFer, Freeman will get serious ink for it, and Turner is building his credentials as we speak. They know that they will probably need another ring or two to make that happen, and they are well on their way.
Too often, our players get lost in the moment when we beat the Dodgers. How many Game ones have we won, only to lose the series after realizing you need to bring that effort, that A-game every single day? You can't rest with the Dodgers, I think we've lost 15 out of our last 20 to them. The good news is that we would "only" have to win a best-of-five or best-of-seven in the playoffs against them should we advance that far. For all of their bluster, the Dodgers are vulnerable in the postseason. They won the 1920 World Series, and rightfully so, but the results before and after that are puzzling. They lost the World Series against Houston and Boston, then lost against the Braves last year before they could get another shot at winning it all. Even with those division titles and pennants, the Dodgers have won the World Series only once since 1988, which makes them postseason underachievers. And Dodger fans know I'm right.
The Dodgers have already clinched the one seed and the right to Kumbaya for a weekend, but you knew they weren't coming to San Diego without all of their guns. They're going to keep that foot on our throats for as long as they can.
On to the rubber game. Who wants it more?
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