On to the World Series! 2021 Braves Beat Dodgers

Eddie Rosario hits a huge 3-run homer in Game Six as Freddie Freeman watches from the on-deck circle.  The stadium crowd, already on its feet as you can see here, erupted.  He was god in a baseball uniform throughout the 2021 NLCS.

 

I was seized by fear and trepidation going into the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers.  They were a superstar team.  Their line-up was filled with talent.  Their batting order was daunting.  Their pitching was excellent.  They had won 106 ball games on 2021.  By comparison, the Atlanta Braves had won only 88.  The Braves had played great baseball since August 1 and especially since September 1 but I simply didn't think we had what it took.  Playing “good enough” might not cut it against the juggernaut Dodgers.

One thing in Atlanta's favor is that the Dodgers had to throw everything they had in the NLDS against the San Francisco Giants.  By taking that series in five games, they had used up all their starting pitchers and would have to start the Championship Series with a “bullpen game.”  Their bullpen staff would have to pitch Game One.  That's never an ideal situation.  Also, despite winning 106 ballgames, the Dodgers finished second to the Giants (with 107 wins) which made them a wildcard team.  Though the Braves won far fewer games, they would have the home field advantage in the NLCS because they won their division and the Dodgers did not.

So while the Dodgers opened up with a relief pitcher (and would use eight[!] such pitchers during the game) we started Max Fried who had been superb the last few weeks of the season.  As it turned out, Fried did not have his best stuff.  But he held the powerful Dodgers to two runs over six innings.  Our bullpen shut them down the rest of the way.  Meanwhile, Austin Riley delivered a home run and drove in the winning run with a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth.  It was Riley's first walk-off RBI of his young career.  The Braves took Game One by the skin of their teeth 3-2.

The Dodgers played badly.  They could not get a clutch hit with runners in scoring position and they ran themselves out of an inning with terrible base running.  Once again, the Braves played “good enough” to win.  Of concern was the fact that Freddie Freeman struck-out four times in the game.  The bottom line is the win felt like the Dodgers had beat themselves and the Braves did not beat themselves.  We certainly weren't dominant.

The Braves won Game Two 5-4 in another bottom of the ninth walk-off.  This time Eddie Rosario (who had 4 hits in the game) scorched a single up the middle that was probably a playable ball but it just got past the infielder for the win (another example of the Dodgers not playing up to their potential).  Joc Pederson hit a monster 2-run homer to help fuel the Braves win.  Almost unbelievably, Freeman struck-out three more times in this game.  Ian Anderson did not have it and only lasted 3 innings, giving up 2 runs.  The Braves bullpen pitched pretty well.  Will Smith looked really sharp in the ninth to record his second consecutive win in the series.

We were up 2 games to none when the series switched to LA.  But my fear and trepidation had not abated in the least.  We were up 2-0 last year in the series and the Dodgers came back to win 4 of the next 5 to go on to the World Series, eventually becoming world champions.  They were certainly capable of doing that again.  In fact, going in to Game Three the Braves had lost nine games in a row in Dodger Stadium!  I felt we could easily get swept out there.  Baseball is a strange game, where certain teams just don't play well in certain stadiums.  It makes little sense statistically.

Make that ten games in a row.  The Braves lost Game Three 6-5.  After a bad first inning, Charlie Morton pitched good enough to win, backed by a solid offensive effort that chased Dodger ace Walker Buehler after 3.2 innings.  Freeman finally found the ball and had three hits in the game.  But this time the Braves bullpen did not have it.  Going into the 8th inning leading 5-2, Luke Jackson was awful, giving up a disastrous 4 runs.  Of course, the Dodgers got plenty of clutch hitting in that inning and, as it was reported, the Braves let the game “slip away.”  

I feared those words.  Slip away.  I felt that the Braves garnered very little momentum from winning the first two games and now what little they had was lost.  I could feel the whole series start to slip away.  Oh god, how awful.  The same nightmare of being so close yet so far two years in a row.  A horrible eternal recurrence!  Playing “good enough” didn't feel good enough to me going into Game Four.

But this one was better than good enough.  The Braves dominated the Dodgers in almighty Dodger Stadium with a powerful 9-2 win.  Rosario became the first player since the great Robin Yount back in 1982 to have two four-hit games in a postseason series.  His 3-run homer in the top of ninth inning sent Dodger fans scurrying to fight the traffic home.  It was his second homer of the game.

Rosario was batting a phenomenal .588 for the series.  Ozzie Albies (.294) was playing solidly.  Freeman was ripping the ball again, hitting .313 after seven K's in the first two games.  Adam Duvall, our unlikely center fielder (being without the usual range and glove quality you look for there), made a great catch, added a homer and was batting a robust .286 in the series.  All this made up for the fact that Riley had gone cold in LA and was only at .188.

The Braves defense had not made an error all series.  Except for Morton's start, our pitchers had not walked many batters.  The combination of great defense, no free passes, and the Dodgers not able to drive their base runners in (due in no small part to Braves pitching) was better than good enough, especially with several players contributing timely base hits and power.  We were playing like champions in Game Four.

It was supposed to be our “bullpen game.”  Which is a fairly new term for baseball.  Traditionally, teams have had four or five starting pitchers.  The four pitchers pitch in rotation and then, depending on how much rest the four starters get between starts, a fifth pitcher is thrown out there to give the top starter an extra day of rest or to pitch one game in a double-header.

More and more in recent seasons the “fifth starter” has become just another long-reliever out of the bullpen.  You use the rest of your bullpen to finish out the game and give your starters an extra day's rest.  That is the way the Dodgers pitched the Braves on Game One of this series.  One of our promising young pitchers, Ynoa Huascar was slated to start Game Four but was scratched due to shoulder inflammation.

Instead, Braves manger Brain Snitker turned to setup reliever Jesse Chavez to start the game.  He would then bring in the veteran lefty Drew Smyly to go deeper into the game.  Snitker had done this successfully several times late in the season.  Smyly started this season as our fourth starter.  But he lost a lot of velocity on his pitches and started getting rocked.  Snitker pulled him but he managed to use him another way.

The fireballer Chavez would start the games and throw maybe 2 innings; get through the top of the lineup and the power hitters.  Then Smyly would come in to face the bottom of the order before going through their top hitters.  From the perspective of those hitters Smyly's fastball was a change-up compared to Chavez.  Plus Smyly could work the ball at even lower speeds.  So the hitters were swinging early and over or under the ball.  

The Chavez/Smyly combo won several ballgames in September.  Having pitched more innings, Smyly received the W.  He came up with 10 wins on the season and he was the winning pitcher in Game Four.  Through four innings, the combo had a no-hitter going.  Rock solid and the Braves were scoring runs.

The Dodgers caught up to Smyly the third time through the order and two runs scored after he'd been chased from the game.  A.J. Minter added two solid innings.  Unlike the game before, the Braves bullpen gave up nothing in the late innings.  Will Smith finished things off after the Braves added 4 runs in top of the ninth.

We were up 3 games to 1.  Again, just like last year.  Even though we totally owned the Dodgers in Game Four, fear and trepidation was creeping back into my momentary baseball bliss.  Up 3 to 1, I had already lived through the Dodgers coming back to win the next three games.  Oh god.  It could happen again.  We were 1-10 in our last 11 games in Dodger Stadium and Game Five was played there.  
 
Max Fried was fully rested and ready to finish the Dodgers off to send Atlanta to the World Series for the first time in the 21st century.  But that's not what happened.  Fried was awful and gone after allowing 5 runs in 4.2 innings.  Chris Taylor had a historic three home run night for the Dodgers and LA re-dominated the Braves 11-2 in Game Five. Rosario was leading off for the first time in the series.  He had two of Atlanta's five meager hits.  Freeman drove in both our runs on a homer in the first.  Things went downhill from that 2-0 lead, to say the least.

To the neutral but knowledgeable baseball fan, this was a classic wrestling match for the National League Pennant.  Just like last year.  Only this one was played before stadiums filled with mostly maskless screaming people in the middle of a pandemic.  The series was headed back to a live crowd in Atlanta.  We were now 1-11 over our last dozen games in Dodger Stadium.  If we ended up somehow winning this thing, we would thank god they didn't have home field advantage...and that we managed to win that one game at all.

I slept fitfully and had an impending sense of doom going in to Game Six.  I felt we were good enough to win but we needed momentum.  I felt the game would go to the team with the greater momentum and, in my mind, there was a slight edge to Los Angeles after thrashing us in Game Five.  But I also knew the Atlanta crowd would be into it if the Braves could score some early runs.  Momentum could easily swing our way.  It all seemed so fragile and precarious to me.  That's why I'm a Braves fan, right?  To experience existential angst over a team and a game.

Scheduled Dodger starter Max Scherzer was scratched when he said his arm was “dead.”  That forced LA's ace Walker Buehler to start on just three-day's rest.  With Scherzer out the Dodgers had little choice.  Future Hall-of-Famer Clayton Kershaw was not able to pitch in the NLCS at all due to previous arm injury.  For Dodger fans, his absence was felt especially right now.  The Braves had them making moves they'd rather not make and that was a ray of hope in my otherwise gloomy demeanor.  

Riley hit a two-out double in the first off Buehler, driving in Albies for a 1-0 Braves lead.  I learned that Riley had 75 hits with two-outs in 2021, best in the league.  The Dodgers tied it off Anderson in the fourth but our 23-year-old pitcher managed to finish the inning.  The game didn't stay tied for long.  In the bottom of the fourth, Rosario hit a huge 3-run homer to right field and the Atlanta crowd erupted.  For the first time, I felt we might win the game.

Minter entered the game and was masterful through two innings with no hits, no walks, and four strikeouts.  Luke Jackson was terrible in the seventh surrendering a walk, two hits, and a run before being pulled for Matzek with nobody out and Dodgers on second and third.  A base hit could have tied the game.  But that's not what happened.

Tyler Matzek strikes out superstar Mookie Betts on three pitches to end the Dodger threat in Game Six.  Notice everyone is standing.  I believe the live Braves crowd was factor in the game.  This is definitely one of the greatest pitching moments I've ever seen.

In an absolutely dominating pitching performance Matzek struck out the next three batters including All-Star Mookie Betts and left those runners in scoring position. Once more, I got the feeling that we might win the game.  Matzek pitched a perfect eighth adding another strikeout.  TBS announcer Brian Anderson called it: "The biggest six outs you will ever see."  Matzek would deservedly get the win as Smith came in and was also dominating, notching two strikeouts to seal the 4-2 win.

The Braves win the Pennant!  The Braves win the Pennant! For the first time since 1999 the Braves win the Pennant!  It seemed surreal in two ways.  First, that it had been that long (had it really been 22 years?).  Second, that it was happening at all since it had been so long.  Literally out of nowhere, Eddie Rosario has carried the Braves to the World Series.  He batted a ridiculous .560 for the series with an incredible 1.647 OPS and easily won the MVP for the series.

Today I am in baseball bliss.  That rare time when the fan is totally contented with the team.  I have no complaints.  We did not commit an error for the whole series.  We got good enough play from most of the team.  In the end, we got domination out of the bullpen and total domination by Rosario.  Ah, the sweet, sweet taste of victory.  There's nothing like it.  

We go on now to play the Houston Astros in the 2021 World Series starting Tuesday night.  I'm smiling inside and out today.  I'll start worrying again tomorrow.

Go Braves!!