LOS ANGELES – After spending all season as one of the best teams in baseball, accumulating 106 wins and acquiring stars like a European soccer club, the Dodgers tussled with the late-starting Cardinals through nine innings waiting to show they could also be better in the moment.
Chris Taylor, an All-Star left out of the starting lineup, hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to tear apart a tense, 1-1 tie and end the Cardinals’ historic run.
Taylor’s bolt into the left-field seats sent the Dodgers to a 3-1 victory and a meeting with their rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in the playoffs for the first time. The Cardinals, still coasting from their 17-game winning streak and blitz upon October, took an early lead in the first inning and held on for a riveting, compelling game that was as much as test of bullpens as it was a clash of managerial philosophies.
The Dodgers went quickly to their bullpen to replace Max Scherzer.
The Cardinals pressed Adam Wainwright an inning further and were rewarded with a 1-1 tie that they got through the eighth, past the past in the ninth, and right to the brink of forcing extra innings. Alex Reyes entered with two outs in the ninth and Taylor at the plate. On the fourth pitch Reyes delivered, the Cardinals’ season ended.
They had put themselves in danger of such a swing by not converting in earlier innings with a chance to extend the lead. The Cardinals finished the game zero-for-12 with runners in scoring position.
The middle of the order, Nos. 3-5, were zero-for-eight.
In the top of the ninth inning, the Cardinals continued to filch bases against the Dodgers – and do little with their success. Tommy Edman got his third hit of the game and promptly stole second, his second steal of the game. The Cardinals had the go-ahead run on base, and for the fourth time in the game the middle of the lineup couldn’t connect.
When Kenley Jansen struck out Tyler O’Neill on a full-count cutter, the Cardinals fell to zero-for-12 with runners in scoring position.
The lineup’s Nos. 3-5 hitters had eight of those dozen at-bats.
That plunged the tie game into the bottom of the ninth with Giovanny Gallegos warming up to handle it. When LA announced Gavin Lux as a pinch-hitter to face Gallegos, the Cardinals countered with lefty T. J. McFarland.
That invited the moment the Dodgers wanted, the one Cardinals’ nation dreaded.
Albert Pujols came up to pinch-hit.
Pujols lashed the ball, hard, loud, like old times – but straight to center fielder Harrison Bader for the out.
Entering the winner-moves-on game, both managers described different approaches when came to engaging their bullpens – and their actions backed their words. An inflection point came in the fifth inning as the Dodgers lifted Scherzer while the Cardinals let Wainwright pitch on, even batting for himself in the top of the sixth inning, while Scherzer glared in the dugout.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts suggested he would be aggressive with the relievers, unleashing the bullpen as in any other elimination game. Shildt talked about “trusting” the pitcher he picked to start.
“We’ve got a starter in Waino who can take down the whole thing,” he said. “And is more than capable and clearly willing to do that.”
In the sixth, Shildt tried to get Yadier Molina’s attention, resting his right hand on the dugout railing and opening and shutting it like a clamshell: “Talk. Talk,” he signaled. The manager wanted Molina to make a trip to the mound and buy time for Luis Garcia to continuing warmup. Trea Turner had just nudged a meek grounder down the third-base line, but the speedster turned that into a single and dilemma for the Cardinals. The hitter coming up, Justin Turner, had stung Wainwright twice Once for a liner the pitcher caught and then produced from his glove like a magician might reveal a rabbit, and the other time for the solo homer that tied the game. That homer in the fourth was the first Wainwright had allowed as a starter on a curveball, according to MLB’s Inside Edge.
Molina had a few moments on the mound before Shildt got there. Wainwright handed over the ball – his evening done on 95 pitches and one full inning more than Scherzer. He left a runner for Luis Garcia deal with, and the righthander did by colling two outs in the sixth and pressing through the seventh to preserve the 1-1 tie.
When Roberts came to the mound to remove him, Scherzer tucked the baseball in his glove and offered his right hand for a shake.
Roberts obliged, and then reached into the glove himself to retrieve the ball.
It appeared like he wasn’t going to get it any other way.
The Cardinals put the Dodgers and their imported ace in that bind by bloating the pitch count early. Wainwright played a part. While trying to drop a sacrifice bunt in the second inning, Wainwright saw six pitches before moving the runner into scoring position. That potential rally, like several others in the game’s first half, fizzled, but not before forcing Scherzer deeper and deeper toward 100 pitches. He had thrown 43 pitches to get six outs.
From the beginning of the game, when Edman led off with a single, Scherzer had to bob and weave around runners on base.
Edman and Goldschmidt, the top two hitters in the Cardinals order, reached base five times in their first six looks at Scherzer. Goldschmitd singled and walked twice. The Cardinals did little with each of the opportunities with runners on base. They were, as a team, zero-for-eight with runners in scoring position through the sixth inning. Six of those fruitless at-bats came from the middle of the order, the run of Tyler O’Neill, Nolan Arenado, and Dylan Carlson immediately after Goldschmidt.
O’Neill hit with a runner on base in each of his first three at-bats. Mookie Betts stole an out from him by reaching over the wall to snare a flyball in foul-territory. O’Neill gave the other opportunities to the Dodgers with strikeouts.
Edman’s second hit and Goldschmidt’s second walk of the game put two runners on in the 1-1 tie with nobody out in the fifth – and Scherzer’s pitch count swelling.
The former Mizzou All-American threw three consecutive sliders to O’Neill. The Cardinals’ left fielder swung and missed two of them, took the third for a ball. Scherzer revved up to a fastball and, on his 94th pitch, threw a 95-mph fastball that O’Neill could not crack. Scherzer’s final pitch got a strikeout. But that was that. The Dodgers’ data said so.
Roberts seized the ball and handed it to Joe Kelly.
The former Cardinals’ reliever got a groundball from Arenado and a full-count strikeout of Carlson to end the inning and keep Scherzer’s line tidy, but not overwhelming.
In 4 1/3 innings, Scherzer struck out four and walked three and allowed the Cardinals a 1-0 lead on a wild pitch. Edman created the run by following his leadoff single with a steal of second. He took third on O’Neill’s fly ball that Betts caught. And during Arenado’s first-inning at-bat, a ball skipped away from catcher Will Smith. Edman scored standing up, and four batters into the wild-card the Cardinals had a lead.
The first significant threat to it came in the third inning as Wainwright sandwiched two walks around an infield single. The Dodgers had the bases loaded and the middle of their order coming up with one out.
Wainwright got the groundball right to the player who shaped the early innings.
Edman gloved the bounced near second, took it to the base himself, and whipped a throw that beat Trea Turner’s dash to first for the inning-ending double play. It was a key escape that informed later decisions as Scherzer watched others, including Wainwright, pitch.
