Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
On this episode of “Dugout Blues,” Jared and I recap the Dodgers’ National League Division Series sweep of the Diamondbacks after a 3-1 victory on Monday night. Not bad for a 104-win underdog. It’s almost like 4-plus months of game play is more telling than a bad 1-month stretch. Imagine that.
Cody Bellinger drove in two runs, including the first run of the game in the first inning on a ground out. Later on, he hit a massive opposite-field home run off Zack Greinke. Oh, and he was the star of the game with his glove, making three awesome plays.
Speaking of Greinke, the Dodgers made him work. He had thrown 90 pitches through four innings, and wouldn’t last much longer after Bellinger homered and Austin Barnes also homered. Corey Seager had a good plate discipline game and Yasiel Puig may have had some of the best plate appearances against Greinke, even if the results weren’t completely there.
Yu Darvish was flat-out dominant for four innings before struggling a bit with his command in the fifth. He hit pinch-hitter Christian Walker in the sixth, and that ended his night. Still, the dominance was key and this is why the Dodgers made the trade to get him at the end of July.
The bullpen came in and shut down the Arizona offense. Tony Cingrani, Brandon Morrow, Kenta Maeda (!) and Kenley Jansen combined for four scoreless innings. Jansen ended the series by striking out Paul Goldschmidt on a nasty cutter out of the strike zone with a runner on base, because of course it couldn’t end any other way.
The Dodgers have advanced to the National League Championship Series for the fifth time in the last 10 years and, more importantly, the second season in a row. They await their NLCS opponent. It’ll either be the Cubs or Nationals (Cubs lead the series 2-1). I don’t really care who they play, but if you absolutely made me choose, I’d say the Cubs because — as a fan — I’d like for the Dodgers to exact some revenge for last year’s NLCS.
I had to duck out early, so Jared answered a few questions to close the episode.
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