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by Cary Osborne
There are the Dodgers who pounded the Giants in the even games of the National League Division Series. And then there are the Dodgers who were shut out in Games 1 and 3.
There are a few factors (wind included) that separate Game 3, making one game in this series the outlier for the Dodger offense — and that’s Game 1 when the Dodgers were flummoxed by emerging Giants ace Logan Webb. They’ll face Webb again in Game 5.
But trends and familiarity might lead to a Dodger offense that doesn’t resemble the band of hitters who were blanked in Game 1.
Hitting Hard
“Two shutouts happened. We moved on from them,” said Dodger catcher Will Smith. “I feel like overall we’re taking really good at-bats. We’re moving the ball. We’re not striking out a ton, a lot of hard contact. Not all of them are falling, but overall I feel like we’ve taken really good at-bats.”
Exit velocity matters. The Dodgers batted .476 with a .972 slugging percentage on hard-hit balls (95-mph exit velocity or higher) in the regular season. They averaged 8.1 hard-hit balls per game, all numbers according to Statcast.
Here are the numbers from this series:
· Game 1 (The Webb game): 5-for-12, .583 slugging percentage
· Game 2 (9–2 Dodger win): 7-for-10, 1.300 slugging percentage
· Game 3 (The wind game): 3-for-13, .231 slugging percentage
· Game 4 (7–2 Dodger win): 9-for-14 and a sacrifice fly RBI, 1.333 slugging percentage
Betts has 10 hard-hit balls, followed by Smith and Trea Turner with eight each. Betts is 6-for-10 in the series on hard-hit balls, Smith is 5-for-8 and Turner is 3-for-8.
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Trending Up
Speaking of Turner, Tuesday’s Game 4 represented his best at-bats of the series. Coming into the game, he had seven swings and misses on pitches outside of the strike zone. He had zero in Game 4, and went 2-for-5, igniting the Dodger offense with an RBI-double in the first inning.
Cody Bellinger, similarly, piled up the swings and misses before Game 4 — eight total and five on pitches out of the zone. In Game 1, he took six hacks and missed on four of them. In Game 4, he took nine swings — five foul balls and four balls in play. He collected his first multi-hit game since Aug. 25 and nearly had a third hit on a ball he struck with a 97.6 mph exit velocity.
The Lux Effect
Gavin Lux nearly tied the score in the ninth inning of Game 3 with a pinch-hit home run, but the 106.9-mph shot was knocked back by the wind. Then he went out in Game 4 and reached base in all four plate appearances — two singles and two walks. He saw 16 pitches — nine balls, five swings, two balls in play, two foul balls.
“Just basically trying to get on base — that’s the whole key for me at the bottom (of the lineup) is get on base for guys and just try to be a pest and work counts and take your hits when you get them,” Lux said.
It’s working. Since Sept. 11, regular season and postseason combined, he is batting.377/.484/.509/.994 in 64 plate appearances.
Untangling Webb
Webb’s game against the Dodgers in Game 1 is singular. He is the only pitcher to go at least seven innings, strike out 10, walk none and allow no runs against the Dodgers this season. He is the second pitcher to meet those qualifications in postseason history against the Dodgers — the other being Philadelphia’s Cliff Lee in Game 3 of the 2009 National League Championship Series.
How’d Webb do it?
Webb attacked right-handers low and way. Of his 17 two-strike pitches to right-handers, 13 were to that quadrant, and nine were sliders. Four of the at-bats ended in strikeouts. Eight of his 10 strikeouts were on pitches away from the batter.
Webb was consistent with his release point, regardless of pitch, and perhaps was able to tunnel the different types of pitches making them appear to be identical long enough to fool the batter.
He had 11 swinging strikes on changeups, and the Dodgers were 0-for-7 against the pitch with five strikeouts. And he got seven swinging strikes on the slider. The Dodgers were 0-for-6 with four strikeouts on the slider.
Webb’s two-strike attack zone has not varied throughout his four starts this season against the Dodgers.
And the Dodgers are going to get sinker-slider-changeup. From Sept. 1 on, they have batted .274 against right-handed sinkers, .239 vs. RH sliders and .200 vs. RH changeups.
Webb allowed one home run to the Dodgers in 94 plate appearances — regular and postseason. Chris Taylor homered off him July 21 at Dodger Stadium.
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“He’s got really good stuff. The ball has a lot of action. And when he’s right, he has really good command, and even when he’s not, the ball kind of moves a lot,” said manager Dave Roberts. “So I think it’s just the idea of staying short, use of the big part of the field, because most guys really, he doesn’t give up a whole lot of slug. So to kind of play for the slug is just a bad approach.”
Score First and Early
Webb has a 1.89 ERA in innings one through three this season, regular and postseason.
Turner’s RBI-double in the first inning in Game 4 continued a thread for the Dodgers. They have now beaten the Giants 11 times this season. In all 11 victories, they have scored first in the game and done so by the third inning.
Dodger offense trending up as the team looks to solve Webb was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.