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Magic was in the air, and so much on the line for both teams playing in game 5 of the NLDS. Those teams of course, are the LA Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. The winner would be going straight to the NLCS, one step from the World Series. One step from history. Who are we kidding? This was history in the making, and of the most endearing kind. It’s high stakes playoff baseball!
The game itself wasn’t a high scoring affair. Part of the magic was in the storylines. Serve those up with a nice batch of win or go home game 5. Some of those will be memories that won’t need to be called on too often due to the amount of replay airtime they’ll command.
Coming into the game, Dodgers’ pitchers had already done a number on the Padres’ hitters recently. Even not so recently. Afterall, it had been about 15 innings since they’d last seen a hit.
Yoshinobu vs. Yu
Who better than the 38 year-old walking legend of Yu Darvish to try and fend off Dem Bums? And for the Dodgers, they were showcasing rookie sensation, Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Darvish was impressive all night, only coughing up three hits. The problem was two of those were home runs. One to each of the Dodgers’ Hernandez’s. He was particularly clever against Shohei Ohtani, as usual. To be pitching so well late in his career is something special to watch.
Freddie Freeman was in his first game back after his injury. Yamamoto had to scramble to cover first on more than one occasion to aid him. Still, Freeman managed a hit. He would otherwise be limping around the whole game. There was something of a 1988 Kirk Gibson vibe that never really materialized.
Did Dodger’s pitching dominate or did the Padres hitters go flat?
Dodgers’ pitching was nothing short of perfect, yet again. They were the real star of the show. Yamamoto set them up and several guys knocked them down.
One of those guys was Michael Kopech, firing lasers and striking people out at 102 mph. We didn’t even know if he was going to be ready. He was ready. You can’t hit what you can’t see. The body’s ability to recover from injury played a big part in this game.
But it took the work of nine different pitchers for the recent stretch of hitless innings. The roaring crowd echoed into the night as the catalogue of continuous outs for the Padres was too much to overcome. When it was said and done, the hitless inning stretch amounted to a staggering 24 in a row.
The Padres seemed in total control before they fell apart. The last time they got a hit was in game 3 when Tatis Jr. hit a home run early on. Ironically, he was the last batter of their season as well. His grounder to third was the end of an amazing game and another amazing night of Dodgers’ pitchers firing at will. They will try to create more magic in the NLCS.
