All Ball Sports: Dodger brinkmanship, Chargers human, Rams and Mustangs roll on
by Paul Teetor
The Dodgers were 41-0 this season when leading by two runs or more in the eighth inning.
They are now 41-1 thanks to some awful fielding and even worse managing in Sunday night’s stunning 5-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves in game 2 of the National League Division Series.
The mainstream media won’t say it, so we’ll say it for them: Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager should have snagged the game winning hit by Eddie Rosario Sunday night for an easy out at first or second base. And before that, pitcher Kenley Jansen could have and should have caught the same ball as it whizzed by him right up the middle. But Jansen is out there to pitch and didn’t have much time to react after finishing his follow-through, so his whiff on the catch is understandable.
But Seager – one of the best young shortstops in the game, a guy who is rumored to be leaving town as a free agent this winter, a guy who smacked a home run for a 2-0 lead before the first hot dog was sold – was perfectly positioned to pounce on the hard-hit ground ball that came right at him after nearly decapitating Jansen.
Unfortunately for Seager and the Dodgers, he failed to follow the most basic of fielding fundamentals. From Little League tryouts all the way up to big league spring training, infielders are taught one basic rule on ground balls: keep it in front of you. Get down and use your body as a human wall. Even if it takes a crazy bounce and you don’t catch the grounder cleanly, you will still have a chance to throw the runner out if you pick the ball up quickly enough.
The second half of that fundamental rule: do not, under any circumstances, try to scoop it up from the side unless you’re stretched out and it’s the only play you have. That’s how a grounder will get by you.
Yet that’s exactly what Seager did, and the ball squirted under his glove as Dansby Swanson headed for home plate and the Brave fans with their ridiculous and racist Tomahawk Chop went crazy while their team grabbed a 2-0 lead in the National League championship series.
All Ball has always been a big fan of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. Great baseball mind, great character, great leader, great with the media and the public. But even the best at their jobs make mistakes sometimes, and Roberts made a doozy Sunday night when he brought in Julio Urias to pitch the eighth inning. He promptly gave up two runs to lose the lead and set the stage for the ninth inning collapse.
Urias had the best record in Major League Baseball this year at 20-3 – but he did it as a starter, not a reliever. That’s the role he’s most comfortable in, and that’s why he was already scheduled to start game 4 Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, Roberts had two of the best relief pitchers in baseball – Kenley Jansen and Blake Treinen – warmed up and ready to go. After the game he couldn’t explain why he chose to put Urias in such an uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation other than to keep robotically repeating “I thought he was the right choice in that situation,” which tells us nothing more than what we already knew.
Now the Dodgers have to win 4 out of 5 games to advance to the World Series and a chance to defend their title.
That’s the bad news.
The good news: the next three games are at Dodger Stadium Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The even better news: Staff ace Walker Buehler is all set to pitch game 3. Based on past performance, he figures to shut down the Braves and get the Dodgers right back in the series.
Besides, as much as Roberts and the upper-management types like Andrew Friedman who tell him what to do have screwed up the pitching rotation, the real problem has been the hitting, or rather the lack of it.
The Dodgers powerhouse lineup is an unbelievable 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position after the first two games. While the loss of former ace Clayton Kershaw has caused some of the pitching problems, the absence of Max Muncy and his club-leading 36 homers has been even more damaging to the Dodgers chances. They will lose this series if they don’t start getting some clutch hitting from someone besides Chris Taylor, the hero of the wild-card win with a walk-off homer to win that win-or-go-home game. Taylor did it again Sunday night, hitting a two-run double to give the Boys in Blue a 4-2 lead that held up until the eighth inning.
While the Dodgers and their fans look forward now to Tuesday night’s must-win game 3, it’s also appropriate to look back to the epic win over the Giants in the fifth and final, winner-take-all game Thursday night of the NLDS.
So lets’ get one issue out of the way right away.
Yes, Wilmer Flores checked his swing. The replay is crystal clear.
And yes, the first base umpire Gabe Morales blew the call.
And yes, the Giants got screwed out of their last chance, their final strike, to win the climactic game 5 between the two best teams in baseball, record wise: the 106-win Dodgers and the 107-win Giants.
But as my uncle Sam used to tell us kids when we would come whining about all the unfair things happening to us: Life ain’t fair.
Sometimes you get a break, and sometimes you get broken.
The Dodgers got a break and the Giants hearts got broken.
Would the great Max Scherzer eventually have gotten Flores out, stranding the base runner at first and securing one of the greatest wins in Dodgers history?
Probably. Indeed, almost certainly.
But the Giants were entitled to a last chance at a miracle, a walk-off win in their home park, and they didn’t get it.
Whatever happens in these next 3 games over three nights, no matter what crazy things happen to the Dodgers, their fans should remember that they’ve already had a great big break just making it this far.
Be grateful for what you have.
Herbie’s Human After All
Last season he re-wrote the record book for rookie quarterbacks and was named the NFL’s Rookie of the Year.
This season he led the Chargers to their best start in more than a decade.
But Sunday afternoon QB Justin Herbert proved that he is human after all.
He also proved how dependent his newly ascendant team is on his weekly MVP-caliber performances during an ugly, inexplicable, bubble-bursting 34-6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on the Ravens home field.
The battle of 4-1 teams could prove pivotal in the long season: the win pushed the Ravens to the top of the eastern heap with a 5-1 record, while the Chargers fell back into the western pack with a 4-2 record.
Ironically, the embarrassing loss came after a week in which the national mainstream media finally began to talk about the Chargers as legit super Bowl contenders and about Herbert as a legit MVP candidate.
Even Head Coach Brandon Staley, the 38-year-old former Rams Defensive coordinator who moved across town this year, was starting to be talked about as a legit Coach of the Year candidate. His frequent tactic of going for it on fourth-and-short no matter where they were on the field – the Chargers succeeded on fourth down seven times out of the seven times they tried it before Sunday – was being hailed as a revolutionary step forward in offensive tactics and strategy.
But now, with next Sunday off for their bye week, the Chargers can forget about all that heady praise coming their way. Instead they need to figure out what went wrong Sunday and come up with a new scheme for their defense, which was filled with holes gleefully exploited by the Ravens and their own superstar quarterback, Lamar Jackson.
While Jackson will never be quite the passer Herbie is, he is a much more dangerous runner while showing real improvement in his passing game as well. Sunday he totally dominated his duel with Herbert, a duel which had been the focus of all the pre-game hype. Both of them are among a small band of young contenders – including Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Buffalo’s Josh Allen — for the unofficial title of best QB in the game once Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers join former Saints great Drew Brees in retirement.
But it turned out to be a one-sided duel, both statistically and in terms of results on the scoreboard.
Jackson connected on 19 of 27 passes for 179 yards and one touchdown and two interceptions, while Herbert hit on 22 of 39 passes for 195 yards and one touchdown and one interception, numbers that were made to look even worse when normally reliable wide receivers Mike Williams and Keenan Allen dropped some very catchable balls.
Indeed, the first sign that this was not the Chargers day, that there was to be no magical comeback as there had been in prior weeks against Kansas City and Cleveland, came early in the second quarter with the Chargers already trailing by 17-0. Facing a fourth down and three yards to go, Herbie just plain mis-fired on a relatively easy pass to an open Williams, who had to reach back to get his hands on it, juggled the ball and finally dropped it.
But the real killer in terms of foreshadowing the brutal loss came mid-way through the third quarter, when Staley again ordered Herbert to go for it on fourth and short. What made this decision so shocking was the location: the Chargers were pinned deep in their own territory on their 19-yard line. You never see that call made unless the team is out of time and has no other choice. If you don’t get the first down, you are handing the ball over to the other team with an easy path to a score.
This time Herbert read through his options and opted to pass it to rookie Josh Palmer, who was open momentarily on the left sideline. But Herbie just plain missed him on a very makable pass, the Ravens took over, and soon kicked a field goal to build their lead up to 27-6, and the game was effectively over.
Staley knew he was going to get hammered online and in the press for both decisions: to go for it on fourth down so deep in their own territory, and to target a rookie who only had five catches to his credit up to that point in the season.
“I would do it again,” he said. “We weren’t desperate. We just liked the down and the distance. We needed to get something going. I think Josh is a winner and could help us in that situation.”
Herbert, low-key and soft-spoken as always, heaped all the blame on his big shoulders.
“They drew a lot of good things on defense,” Herbert said. “We got outplayed today. We didn’t execute the way we wanted to. We didn’t move the ball. We didn’t convert on third down, and that’s on me.”
But Staley expressed unwavering belief in Herbert, and dismissed the idea that he should have removed him from the game once it turned into a blowout.
“We’re going to continue to trust Justin in that situation,” he said. “In a game like that, where it gets away from you a little bit, I think you can tell a lot about your quarterback. We need to do a better job playing around him. Justin hung tough and gave us a chance.”
After more than a year of uninterrupted success, it will be interesting – and revealing – to see how Herbie responds to his first real dose of adversity.
It says here that after two weeks of rest and recovery and with the help of one of the brightest young coaches in the league, he will soon resume his dominating ways. The Chargers made it through the toughest part of their schedule – Chiefs, Raiders and Ravens in succession – with a 4-2 record. They’ve built the foundation of a Super Bowl contender with Herbie as the main pillar.
Now they just have to fill in the missing pieces.
Rams Keep Rolling
While the Chargers flew 3,000 miles to absorb a painful pounding at the hands and feet of the Ravens, the Rams flew 3,000 miles to pulverize the New York Giants 38-11 in a game that was such a blowout that backup quarterback John Wolford made his first appearance of the season.
Despite being heavily favored, the Rams gave up a 14-play drive and quickly fell behind 3-0 to the hapless 1-4 Giants. They went nowhere on their first 3 possessions before something clicked and the game quickly turned into a blowout.
It started when running back Darrell Henderson – who is starting to resemble the long gone but not forgotten pre-injury Todd Gurley – crashed through the line of scrimmage for a nine-yard gain. Quarterback Matthew Stafford – as streaky as a great quarterback can be – suddenly got hot and hit wide receiver Cooper Kupp up the right sideline for 28 yards into Giants territory. Stafford then connected with tight end Tyler Higbee on the left side for 10 yards.
When the Giants started to focus on stopping the passing attack, Coach Sean McVay called running back Sony Michel’s number and he ran right over a tackler at the end of a 15-yard burst. The always reliable Robert Woods got open over the middle, caught Stafford’s pass at the 10, spun around and scored without a hand being laid on him.
That started the deluge.
The Rams scored on four of their five possessions in the second quarter and their first two in the second half. It was thanks to their smothering defense that produced two interceptions by safety Taylor Rapp and one by cornerback Robert Rochell, who played well after getting burned repeatedly by Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals in the Rams only loss three weeks ago.
Stafford was his usual efficient self, as he completed 22 of 28 passes for 251 yards, four touchdowns and one interception, before giving way to Wolford once the victory was secure.
Cooper Kupp, who is having an All-Pro season, had nine more receptions for 130 yards and his sixth and seventh touchdowns of the year.
The Rams face another cupcake next week when they host Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions. While the Rams are now 5-1, the Lions are – predictably – 0-6 with Goff running the show.
Rams fans who watched Goff regress for the last two seasons after leading the Rams to the Super Bowl three years ago could only shake their heads in sympathy when Lions Coach Dan Campbell was asked about Goff’s leadership and production after Sunday’s sixth consecutive loss.
Campbell, not wanting to throw Goff under the bus the way McVay did at the end of last season before demanding the front office do whatever it took to unload Goff and get Stafford, paused for 20 seconds before finally answering.
“I’ll say this,” he said. “He needs to step up more than he has.”
All Ball suspects Goff will be greeted in SoFi Stadium by some of the loudest boos ever heard there in its very short existence. After all, there’s a case to be made that his unprecedented regression was the main factor in the Rams missing the playoffs entirely in the first year after they made it to the Super Bowl and then falling short in the playoffs last year.
That sort of scornful greeting will make it even tougher for him to, as Campbell demanded, step up more than he has.
And if the Lions fall to 0-7, he could soon be heading for the bench.
Permanently.
Mustang Charlie Fuerbringer applies a soft touch to a high set in her team’s victory of the Redondo Sea Hawks. Photo by Ray Vidal
Mira Costa girls and boys on the March, Redondo not so much
There wasn’t much at stake in the girls volleyball standings when arch-rivals Mira Costa and Redondo met Thursday night. Costa had already clinched the Bay League title while beating Redondo in their earlier league game. So the only outstanding question was simple: would the Mustangs sweep the season series against the Sea Hawks?
The answer turned out to be yes. Costa won in three straight sets to tune up their game for the playoffs. Luckily for local fans who would like to see a rematch, they are on the same side of the playoff bracket, with the Sea Hawks opening play Thursday night by hosting Harvard Westlake at 6.
Costa, which has a bye in the first round thanks to its Bay League title, opens play next Wednesday, Oct. 27, against Village Christian, also at 6.
If Redondo wins its first two games and Mira Costa wins its first, they would then meet in the semifinals Saturday night, October 30.
Meanwhile the Costa football team got back on the winning track by beating Washington Union of Fresno 35-26. The win raised its record to 3-5. Redondo lost yet another game, this time to Palos Verdes by a score of 44-27 to fall to 1-7 on the season.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor ER