The Phillies looked rattled. The Dodgers looked confident. And the Chavez Ravine crowd was seemingly smelling blood.
Early in Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Wednesday, the Dodgers had all the momentum. They’d already taken each of the first two games of this best-of-five set in Philadelphia. Their best pitcher this season, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, had started his night with three scoreless innings.
Then, after a questionable pitching change from Phillies manager Rob Thomson in the bottom of the third, Tommy Edman greeted newly inserted left-hander Ranger Suárez with a leadoff home run to open the scoring.
Prior to first pitch, the Dodgers had emphasized the importance of finishing the Phillies off now.
And as Edman rounded the bases, and Dodger Stadium erupted around him, they seemingly had their chance.
In postseason baseball, however, momentum can be a fickle thing. Every new inning brings the potential for a plot twist. Every at-bat carries the threat of a turning point. And every single pitch can prove to be the difference.
“You never know in the playoffs,” Kiké Hernández said pregame, “which pitch is going to win you a game.”
On Wednesday, in the Phillies’ come-from-behind, elimination-staving 8-2 win, the pitch that lost the Dodgers the game came with no outs in the fourth.
Just moments after Edman had put the Dodgers in front, slumping Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber answered with a statement — clobbering an elevated Yamamoto fastball for a staggering 455-foot home run, bouncing his blast off the roof of the right-field pavilion.
The moon shot tied the score 1-1. It also opened the floodgates for the Phillies’ previous dormant offense. Before Schwarber’s blast, Yamamoto had retired nine of his first 10 batters on just 36 pitches. After it, he gave up five more hits and two more runs, putting the Dodgers in a hole from which they wouldn’t recover — especially not after Clayton Kershaw gave up five more runs in the top of the eighth.
Now, the dynamics of this series have shifted. The Phillies need just one more win to return to home soil, and could have their ace, Cristopher Sánchez, ready to pitch Game 4 in an effort to get there.
“When you talk about momentum, if you don’t finish it tonight, you feel like it’s slipping away,” Max Muncy said before the game. “That’s definitely not something you want to have happen.”
On Wednesday, however, it was something the Dodgers couldn’t avoid.
This one served as a reversal from Games 1 and 2 of this series, and not only because it was the Phillies’ turn to play spoiler in a road ballpark.
For the first time in this NLDS, the Phillies’ star hitters outshone their Dodger counterparts. Schwarber’s game-altering home run was his first hit of the series (snapping an 0-for-nine skid beforehand), and his first of two home runs on the night. Trea Turner tripled his NLDS hit total in a three-for-five, two-RBI showing. Bryce Harper also reached base twice while drawing a walk.
Ohtani, meanwhile, went hitless in five at-bats to fall to one for 14 in the series. And while Betts had two hits, including a first-inning triple, the duo behind him couldn’t take advantage, with Teoscar Hernández and Freddie Freeman going a combined 0 for 7.
In an unexpected development, the Phillies’ pitching plan also proved to be better.
Entering the game, the Dodgers seemed to have the edge with Yamamoto, over the Phillies’ pre-determined piggyback of Aaron Nola (who had a career-worst 6.01 ERA this season) and Suárez.
But Nola pitched two scoreless innings to begin the game. And though Suárez’s night started with the home run by Edman (the switch-hitter who was able to flip to his stronger right-handed side with the southpaw on the mound), he settled down for 15 scoreless outs after that, working around four more hits and a walk to get through the seventh.
Yamamoto, on the other hand, lost control after Schwarber’s titanic home run led off the fourth.
Harper immediately followed with a single on a hanging splitter. Alec Bohm did the same on an inside sinker, sending a ground ball up the middle. Pages fielded that ball, but short-hopped his throw to third base in an effort to gun down Harper. When Max Muncy couldn’t block it, it bounced into the dugout to allow Harper to score and Bohm to advance to third. Brandon Marsh added insult to injury with a sacrifice fly in the next at-bat.
Things didn’t get much better for Yamamoto from there. He gave up a double to J.T. Realmuto later in the fourth. Back-to-back singles to begin the fifth chased him from the game.
Yamamoto’s final line: Four-plus innings, three runs, six hits, one walk and only two strikeouts. It was the shortest start from the Dodgers’ rotation this postseason, tied Ohtani’s Game 1 outing in this series for the most runs allowed, and was Yamamoto’s first time with more hits allowed than strikeouts since July 7.
The Dodgers’ slim hopes of a comeback were officially dashed in the eighth, when Kershaw (making his first appearance of the postseason) was sent back to the mound for a second inning of work.
Instead of keeping the game close, and forcing the Phillies to potentially use closer Jhoan Durán for a six-out save, Kershaw was ambushed, giving up a two-run single to Turner and a two-run homer to Schwarber that bounced off the top of the right-field wall.
With that, a crowd that was anticipating a sweep in the early innings of Wednesday’s game filed toward the exits — trudging away with the Dodgers still leading this series, but having lost all the momentum.
The post Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Dodgers quickly lose control in NLDS Game 3 loss to Phillies appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
