And now that we’ve gotten all the nonsense about the Baseball Gods and the Ghosts of Candlestick out of our system, let’s talk about what really matters in October: It’s the little things.Įxcept these aren’t the little things in the traditional baseball sense. It was also a game-ending out, and the Giants hold a 2-1 advantage in the NLDS because of it. It wasn’t a bad pitch from Doval, but it was a better swing from Lux. Brandon Crawford hit a ball with a chance, and so did Mike Yastrzemski. Chris Taylor hit a ball earlier in the game that probably should have been a home run. On a normal night, it absolutely would have been a home run. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Gavin Lux hit a ball with a strong chance of being a game-tying home run. “It’s just part of the game, Mother Nature, and you have to respect that.” “You can’t blame it on the wind that we lost the game tonight,” said Albert Pujols, who recorded two of five Dodger hits in his first postseason start since 2014. Only one swing, theirs, was able to get through. The gusts even knocked Dodgers starter Max Scherzer off the mound mid-delivery on his fourth windup of the night (Scherzer would say the wind was almost pushing him toward home plate) – and served as a backboard above the walls to keep baseballs inside the park. Monday night, the Giants played as if the uncharacteristic winds at Dodger Stadium - powerful enough for the palm trees and foul poles to sway, and to spray empty pizza boxes and debris all over the field throughout. The Giants have been one of the top run-prevention units in the sport this season, with no team in baseball allowing fewer home runs even as the sport has drawn itself toward slug. Now, down 2-1 in the best-of-five series, they will have to play for their season Tuesday night. The Dodgers dropped Game 3 of this NLDS, 1-0. Instead, the scoreboard flashed the score that had just gone final. He thought he’d done it, that he had given the Dodgers their first run and new life on the night and in this series. As he finally came to a stop just past the bag, Lux stopped and glared, mouth agape, as the replay showed on the video board at Dodger Stadium. Lux raised his right arm out of the batter’s box and slowed his trot around first base to watch as the swirling winds halted the ball’s momentum and pushed it down into the glove of Giants center fielder Steven Duggar at the lip of the warning track. But the flight of the ball deadened along with the night. Summoned in the game’s biggest spot, the biggest spot the former top prospect likely has gotten himself into in his short big-league career, he delivered the type of swing that the Dodgers envisioned – balanced, fluid and quick - as he took a fastball near triple digits from San Francisco’s Camilo Doval and drove it toward the gap. (Photo: Richard Mackson/USA TODAY Sports) On a night when Max Scherzer struck out 10 batters in seven innings, the collective effort of the Giants was better. The performance pushed the 106-win Dodgers to the brink and offered yet another example of why San Francisco captured 107 wins of their own. Camilo Doval, the rookie closer, finished the final two innings. And he stuck it to his former employers on Tuesday, with a 4 2/3 inning stint where he scattered two singles and permitted only two additional walks.Ī combination of unprecedented gusts, precise defensive positioning and valiant pitching from the Giants stymied the Dodgers on Tuesday. So he signed with the Giants this past winter. The limbo left him eager for an opportunity elsewhere. There were years he hung out in the bullpen. There were years when the Dodgers deemed him worthy of a spot in the starting rotation. Wood had grown accustomed to pitching in playoff games like the one he started on Monday, a 1-0 windswept gem at Dodger Stadium. It was kind of odd, to tell you the truth.” “Because I really felt like there was going to be more nervous energy or excitement than there was. All evening, he experienced something approaching serenity. He ordered Mexican food from Tocaya, settled into his room at a hotel in Pasadena and prepared to face his former Dodger teammates. He grew to love a place so far removed from his hometown of Charlotte. He spent two seasons in the nearby suburb of Glendale with his wife. One year he rented a house with a few Dodgers in Los Feliz. He spent one summer downtown with fellow former Brave Jim Johnson. On Monday night, the day before the third game of the National League Division Series, Giants pitcher Alex Wood returned to a city he called home for five years.
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