A win that was so much more
By Cary Osborne
This was edge of your seat. Heart in your throat. Sweat on your forehead.
Let’s stop and just put this on paper first.
The Dodgers, with a 9 ½ game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks for first place in their 145th game of the season against a team with the second worst record in baseball. And yet, this felt like a postseason game.
The Dodgers, after nine tense innings where things weren’t easy for even Clayton Kershaw, beat the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park 5–3 on Tuesday, snapping their LA record 11-game losing streak.
Not leaving anything to chance, the Dodgers went to Kenley Jansen in the eighth inning with a 5–3 lead to get a four-out save.
And in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Giants loaded the bases with one out — two batters reaching on infield singles.
In stood Buster Posey, who took Jansen to a 3–2 count.
Jansen reared back on the next pitch and struck Posey out swinging with a 93 mph cutter.
He then struck Nick Hundley out on three pitches, ending the skid and bring the Dodgers’ magic number for clinching the National League West Division title to eight.
“This is a good thing for us,” Jansen told SportsNet LA’s Alanna Rizzo. “It keeps us humble and keeps us in check. it shows you this game is not always going to love you. You love this game and sometimes it’s not going your way. Sometimes you have to be patient and remind you how hard it is to get to the playoffs and how hard it is to win the World Series.”
The Dodgers’ four-run fourth inning was enough.
Chase Utley led off with a homer into McCovey’s Cove. Kershaw followed with a double and reached third base on an outstanding slide to the inside of the bag, beating the throw from shortstop Kelby Tomlinson. Kershaw scored on a sacrifice fly Corey Seager. Three batters later Yasiel Puig doubled in a pair to give the Dodgers a 4–1 lead at the time.
After the Giants scored a run in the sixth and another in the seventh to tighten the game, Justin Turner added an insurance run in the eighth with an RBI double.
But there were battles.
The Dodgers left seven men on base in the first three innings and didn’t score in those frames.
They were 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position.
They trailed 1–0 on a Tomlinson home run in the third inning. Prior to the at-bat, Tomlinson was 0-for-14 in his career against Kershaw.
The Dodgers had the bases loaded with one out in the sixth and didn’t score.
And Kershaw had to battle.
The fourth inning was preventing the dam from breaking. The sixth was plugging it.
Nick Hundley doubled to lead off the fourth inning, jumping on Kershaw’s first pitch of the inning.
Kershaw then got picked up by his defense.
Austin Slater grounded to the right of Justin Turner at third base. Turner backhanded, skidding to his knee. He made a high throw to first base that 6-feet-4-inch Cody Bellinger leaped for and in one motion grabbed and came down to tag Slater out. Hundley remained at second base.
Orlando Calixte then followed with a fly out to Yasiel Puig, who chased it down going to his left. Off-balance, Puig threw a one-hop throw to Justin Turner, keeping Hundley at second again.
Both plays were made even bigger with Tomlinson following with a single to center field. Chris Taylor fielded and threw home, the ball arriving so far in advance of Hundley, attempting to score, that the Giants catcher stopped and was tagged out by Yasmani Grandal, ending the threat.
Kershaw allowed back-to-back singles to Hunter Pence and Buster Posey to begin the sixth.
After Kershaw earned a strikeout on Hundley, Justin Turner made a rare error to load the bases.
Calixte then knocked in a run with a sacrifice fly, cutting the Dodger lead to 4–2.
Kershaw walked Tomlinson, but then struck out pinch hitter Tim Federowicz swinging.
The Dodger ace pounded his glove and let out some emotion after earning the strikeout.
Kershaw went six innings, allowed eight hits, a walk, two earned runs and struck out six. He is now 17–3 this season and 96–0 when receiving at least four runs of support.
“Tonight wasn’t easy,” Kershaw said. “Nothing about these last two weeks have been easy. So we shouldn’t have expected this to be easy. I wasn’t very good at times tonight, and my defense picked me up. Our offense wasn’t good tonight, then they picked it up. It was a full team effort tonight, and that was so cool.”
More history for Bellinger
Cody Bellinger was intentionally walked three times in the game becoming the first Dodger rookie to ever receive that many free passes.
He is the first Dodger to be intentionally walked three times in a game since Jose Hernandez on June 4, 2004.
Wild Card at least, Division next
The Dodgers now lead Arizona by 10 games in the West, after the Diamondbacks lost 4–2 to Colorado.
The Dodgers clinched a playoff berth with the win.
They have a four-game lead over Cleveland for the best record in baseball and a 4 ½ game lead on Washington for the best record in the National League.
