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Friday’s matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres had all the makings of an instant classic.
The NL West rivals, and 2022 playoff foes, entered the showdown evenly matched in the NLDS, with the Dodgers outscoring the Padres 22-21 before Game 5. There was also historical significance to the winner-take-all game because it was the first time two Japanese-born starters faced each other in MLB post-season history.
Whether it lived up to the billing is a matter of taste as the Dodgers won 2-0 with home runs from Enrique Hernández and Teoscar Hernández providing the night’s only runs.
Yu Darvish and Yoshinobu Yamamoto did not disappoint, at least, providing 11.2 innings of two-run ball while their bullpens closed it down behind them.
Here are a few takeaways from the NLDS finale:
PADRES OFFENCE GOES ICE COLD
While no one seems to be able to agree on what the key to post-season success is, conventional wisdom indicates that scoring some runs is helpful.
After grabbing a 6-1 lead in the second inning of Game 3 on Tuesday, the Padres failed to put another run on the board. The club was able to hold on that night and win 6-5, but the team’s inability to find any success with the bats for 24 straight innings cost them the series.
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The Padres probably don’t need to fall prey to an off-season doom spiral over an offence that ranked seventh in the majors in scoring during the regular season — and produced 30 runs in their first five playoff games — but it’s a sour note for this lineup to end the season on.
YAMAMOTO BROUGHT THE HEAT
Dodgers fans had reason to be nervous about what Yamamoto could provide in Game 5 before he stepped onto the mound Friday.
The 26-year-old allowed five earned runs in three innings in Game 1, had a 9.00 ERA in his previous three starts, and hadn’t topped five innings in an outing since returning from a rotator cuff injury on September 10.
Yamamoto’s Game 5 performance shattered all reasonable expectations as he gave his team five shutout innings, allowing just two singles and a walk. The right-hander’s fastball velocity sat at 96.7 m.p.h. — 0.9 m.p.h. up from Game 1 — and he threw it more than half of the time, pounding the zone against the Padres.
The Dodgers bullpen’s stellar finish allowed Yamamoto to earn the first playoff win of his MLB playoff career. It seems likely that there will be plenty more to come for the starter, who is signed with the perennial-contender Dodgers through 2035.
PLAYOFF KIKÉ STRIKES AGAIN
Enrique Hernández has suited up for the Dodgers in nine different MLB seasons and he’s generally been a quiet contributor on star-studded squads.
His combination of defensive versatility and success against left-handed pitching has made him a valuable complementary player, but his numbers don’t tend to jump off the page. In 2,452 regular-season plate appearances as a Dodger his OPS+ sits at a below-average 95.
The playoffs have been a different story.
Hernández entered Friday night’s game with a .276/.351/.535 line in 74 career playoff games. For a reference point on that line, Bryce Harper hit .285/.373/.525 this season. Hernández added to his impressive October track record with a critical home run in the second inning off Darvish that was all the offence the Dodgers needed on Friday.
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Whether Hernández has figured out something about playoff baseball that the rest of the league hasn’t is unclear — and for what it’s worth, he ended the season on a high note with an .801 OPS from Aug. 1 on — but the Dodgers are certainly happy to have him in their lineup as they progress to the NLCS.
MORE PLAYOFF HEARTBREAK FOR DARVISH
After posting a 5.81 ERA in his first six playoff starts, including a pair of World Series duds in 2017, Darvish has reversed the narrative about his ability to thrive in the post-season in recent years.
The 38-year-old entered Friday with a 2.56 ERA in his last six playoff outings, providing at least five innings each time out, and never conceding more than three runs.
Even though Darvish has quashed any notions that he can’t handle big games, he’s indisputably been on the wrong side of quite a few of them — often through no fault of his own.
This is the sixth time the veteran has appeared in the playoffs and he’s now pitched in the game his team was eliminated five times. Only one of those appearances was ugly (Game 7 of the aforementioned 2017 Fall Classic). In the other four, including Friday, he lasted six or more innings and allowed precisely two earned runs each time.
In most cases, that’s good enough to win, but for Darvish, it hasn’t been.
