Bat dropped to the side, Yasiel Puig stretched his arms high toward the pitch-black sky. He knew immediately upon contact that with one crack of the bat, his Los Angeles Dodgers were about to even this World Series at two games a piece. After all, his three-run homer off Eduardo Rodriguez in the sixth inning lifted the Dodgers to a 4-0 lead, and when the Dodgers led by that much this season (including the playoffs), they had won all 54 contests. Not this time though.
The Boston Red Sox responded with a Mitch Moreland pinch-hit three-run blast the very next inning, and Steve Pearce took care of the rest. The journeyman denied Kenley Jansen’s six-out save attempt with a solo shot in the eighth (Jansen allowed a game-tying one-run homer to Jackie Bradley Jr in the same spot during Game 3.) After Rafael Devers drove Brock Holt home from second to break the stalemate, Pearce inflicted damage again, this time with a bases-clearing three-run double off the center-field wall as silence washed over Dodger Stadium.
SportsCenter (@SportsCenter)
Mitch Moreland hits a NO-DOUBTER to bring the Red Sox within 1.
(via @MLB)pic.twitter.com/HZZKcJemLA
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Now, the Dodgers face elimination after falling 9-6 in Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday, and they’re down 3-1 entering Sunday’s contest at home. It’s the second consecutive year the Dodgers have collapsed during a 4-0 advantage in the World Series. They blew the same lead in Game 5 against the Houston Astros before losing in seven.
The Dodgers bullpen wasted a brilliant outing from Rich Hill, who allowed only one hit through 6.1 innings. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts curiously turned to his tired bullpen with Hill rolling, and two batters after he exited, Moreland sent Scott Alexander’s pitch into the back of the right-field bleachers with a 437-foot blast.
Roberts said after the game that he had decided to pull Hill after a conversation with the pitcher. “It was a long sixth [inning] for us,” said Roberts. “And I had a conversation with Rich, and we talked about it. He said, ‘Keep an eye on me. I’m going to give it everything I have. Let’s go hitter to hitter and just keep an eye on me.’ So right there, I know Rich did everything he could, competed, left everything out there.”
Roberts also found himself in the awkward position of having to answer to criticism from the US president. “Watching the final innings it is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who was loose and dominating through almost seven innings, Rich Hill, and brings in nervous hitters who get shellacked. Managers do it all the time, big mistake,” wrote Donald Trump on Twitter after the game.
“I’m happy he was tuning in and watching the game,” said Roberts. “I don’t know how many Dodger games he’s watched. I don’t think he is privy to the conversation. That’s one man’s opinion.”
After Pearce broke the game wide open in the ninth inning, the Sox padded the lead with a Xander Bogaerts RBI-single.
Nothing has come easy for the Dodgers this series, or even during these playoffs. So one night after the Dodgers bested the Red Sox in a marathon contest that spanned 18 innings over seven hours and twenty minutes, they’re left to soul search after an epic collapse that leaves them on the brink of World Series defeats in back-to-back years.
It only took three hours and fifty-seven minutes during this encounter, a contest the Dodgers wished they could extend. They threatened in the final inning with two runs but the five-run deficit was a bridge too far.
Really, it shouldn’t have come to this. Puig, a player with a flair for the dramatic, did enough for the Dodgers to win, it seemed. But the shaky bullpen, led by Jansen, was too tired; too unreliable.
Jansen is just the second pitcher in World Series history to allow game-tying homers in back-to-back matchups, the other being Byung-hyun Kim with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001.
The burly Jansen was excellent most of the season, and he’s regarded as one of the best closers in the game. Still, he was forced to miss an extended period of time this summer after learning he would require another heart surgery at season’s end, a procedure he delayed because of the Fall Classic. When Jansen returned from the disabled list in August, he was shaky on the mound, struggles he attributed to heart medication he is now required to take.
The Dodgers will need Jansen to regain his confidence if they’re going to somehow tie this series up. And they’ll also need their ace, Clayton Kershaw, to deliver his best stuff from the mound on Sunday. Another dud like the one Kershaw dropped in Game 1, and the Dodgers will once again come up just short on the grandest stage in baseball.