All Ball: Dodger dilemma, Bruins eclipse Trojans, Costa wins 56-0!
By Paul Teetor
by Paul Teetor
The Dodgers’ problem in the National League Championship series against the Milwaukee Brewers is not complicated. It’s the same problem they had in the divisional series against the Atlanta Braves and the same problem that plagued them the second half of the season: the offense is struggling to scratch out runs.
Whenever they get a man on base, their bats go cold. In the four games against Atlanta, they scored a grand total of 15 runs. But as bad as their hitting was, that’s how good their pitching was. They won game one 5-3, lost game two 3-2, won game three 3-1, and won game four 4-1.
They won that NLDS with great pitching, but it’s not fair or reasonable to put all the burden on the pitching staff game after game. And now they’re starting to pay the price of their continued futility at the plate.
Losing game two Monday afternoon put them in a hole, down 2-0, that they may never recover from.
Their game one loss Sunday night by a score of 2-1 was another case of offensive struggles whenever they had the opportunity to score some runs and relieve the pressure on starter Tarik Skubal to pitch a near perfect game.
The Dodgers big guns – mainly the core four of Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith – know they’re shooting blanks with men on base.
“I think, for us, obviously it sucks,” Betts said. “But it’s encouraging just because we keep applying pressure. That’s all you can really do and hope that somebody gets that hit. They got it. They got their hit. At some point we’ve got to get ours. But we’ve got to keep getting opportunities first.”
The Dodgers hit into three double plays in those first five innings and went 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position in the game.
When you look at the big picture, it gets even worse. In their first five games this postseason, they are a pathetic 2 for 21 with runners in scoring position. Andy Pages has both of the run-scoring hits. Twelve of the 15 runs the Dodgers have scored this postseason have come via home runs.
“I don’t think guys are going up there trying to hit home runs. I think guys are going up there just trying to have good at-bats,” Betts said. “Sometimes you get them. Sometimes you don’t. We’re playing against a really good team so we’ve got to put this behind us, come out and play Dodger baseball tomorrow.”
But they didn’t score enough runs once again Monday night and lost 7-4. Now their season is on life-support. They have to win four of the five remaining games to take the series, and even with the next three at home at Dodger Stadium that’s a huge ask against the team that had the best record in all of baseball this season.
UCLA on the Rise
It’s official now: the UCLA football program is the hot, happening college football team in LA.
That’s because this weekend Coach Bob Chesney’s team was able to do something that USC and Coach Lincoln Riley failed at just a couple of weeks ago: beat a highly ranked Oregon team.
The Trojans couldn’t do it in front of a packed house at the Coliseum; the Bruins did it on the road at Autzen Stadium.
The tight, two-point win thrust the Bruins into the conversation of the College football playoffs that are still a couple of months away.
UCLA defeated number 13 Oregon 17-15 in a game that had Bruins fans on edge all day as they overcame crisis after crisis, potential pitfall after potential pitfall.
But whereas recent UCLA teams coached by Jim Mora Jr. and Chip Kelley would have found a way to lose this game, Chesnay and his new-look Bruins found a way to win it.
It was the greatest win of the Bob Chesney era. Which, admittedly, is all of five games, but still it’s clear that there has been a sea change in attitude and execution at Westwood.
Chesney became the first UCLA coach ever to start 5-0 in his first season as UCLA moved up from No. 21 to No. 12 in the Associated Press poll released Sunday.
The Bruins (5-0 overall, 3-0 in the Big Ten) took down the same Ducks team that had beaten number 19 USC in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum just two weeks ago. It was a by-any-means victory that, by all means, solidified UCLA’s place in the College Football Playoff conversation.
Chesney’s influence was felt in every aspect of this white-knuckle game.
UCLA made fewer mistakes. The Bruins turned it over only three times, to the Ducks’ seven. The Bruins kicked field goals and extra points. The Ducks did not. All those factors come directly from the coaching the players receive.
It was UCLA’s best game yet of what has been an extraordinary season so far.
The Bruins were never going to match their season-average 281.5 rushing yards per game — although Wayne Knight did surpass the century-mark for the third straight game — against Oregon’s defensive line. Therefore, the game would fall on the signal-callers’ decision-making ability.
For one half, Bruins quarterback Nico Iamaleava didn’t pass the test. He threw for 162 yards, with two interceptions and had a fumble on his own 1-yard line that turned into Oregon’s only score in the first 55 minutes. After Iamaleava’s leg injury, Cal Poly transfer Ty Dieffenbach threw for 43 yards and found Knight for a 9-yard touchdown.
“When someone goes down and someone has to step up, I say it all the time, ‘you’re either exposed or you’re revealed,’” Chesney said in the postgame press conference. “Ty stepped up in that moment when Nico couldn’t go, and put himself in a spot where he was revealed for knowing the run game, knowing what to get us into.”
Dieffenbach, an Agoura High alum, explained he did not enter Saturday knowing he was next in line if Iamaleava went down. That news was relayed at halftime. He stepped up, operating the offense well enough to earn a few first downs and put punter Curtis Gerrand in a spot where he could pin Oregon’s offense deep in their own territory time and again.
“I’ve just been waiting for this moment,” Dieffenbach said. “I’m ready.”
So was UCLA.
And so now, for the first time in All Ball’s memory, UCLA is ranked higher than USC.
And it looks like it’s going to stay that way for a while – at least until Riley is fired.
Mira Costa breaks out, Redondo rests
The Mira Costa football team, dogged all season by close losses, made sure there would be no danger of that Friday night when they destroyed Leuzinger by a can-you-believe-this score of 56-0.
The satisfying win gave the Mustangs a 2-6 record and kept them alive in the Bay League with a 1-1 record. Costa will host Palos Verdes next week in another league game.
Redondo, meanwhile, had the week off with a bye week and will return to Bay League action Friday night with a game against Inglewood.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER
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