LOS ANGELES – Yasiel Puig flipped his bat away, in the exultant manner we have come to expect a young player to do these days after a home run swing, except in this case, the ball was sinking toward the grass somewhere in shallow left field. It was the fifth inning of Game 2 of the National League Division Series, and the Los Angeles Dodgers were circling the bases in an orderly, methodical fashion – generally one base at a time, and with mostly modest shows of emotion.
And then there was Puig — flipping his bat at mere singles, arriving at first base with arms waving and fingers pointed, and more or less whipping the Dodger Stadium crowd of 54,726 to a crescendo like some demented maestro.
Strange, silly and amazing things have occurred this weekend at Dodger Stadium, where the best team in baseball this year is once again playing like it, and Puig seemed to be in the middle of most of them. There were times back in September, when the Dodgers were struggling and their riveting right fielder was acting like a wayward teenager, that the Dodgers thought perhaps they needed less Puig. But it turns out, what they needed was more Puig.
An 8-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday night, built on a relentless barrage of hard singles and a ceaseless parade of relievers, gave the Dodgers a commanding two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-five NLDS, as the series shifts to Phoenix. Game 3 is Monday night at Chase Field, with the Dodgers’ Yu Darvish set to face Diamondbacks ace Zack Greinke.
“We talk about winning a championship,” said Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, who collected the last five outs. “[With] the last four teams in the National League, it’s not going to be easy. We have to want it more.”
Virtually alone on a team full of lunchbox grinders and low-key personalities, Puig demands attention and commands eyeballs, both with his immense talents and his what-will-he-do-next antics. On Saturday night, he drove in the Dodgers’ first run and delivered a critical hit during their pivotal four-run fifth; over two games here, he went 5 for 9 with four RBI.
[Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig launches himself tongue-first into October baseball]
And lest we forget: with not one, but two bat-flip singles – combined with the pose he made at home plate on a line-drive double Friday night, followed by the borderline-obscene tongue-wag he directed towards his dugout following a triple — Puig is now a home run shy of pimping for the cycle in this series.
“This is as good as we’ve seen him focus on every single pitch in the game,” Manager Dave Roberts said of Puig, whom he benched for two games last month, essentially for losing focus. “When you combine that with the skill-set that he has, and the energy he brings — he doesn’t only energize 50,000 [fans], he energizes everyone in the clubhouse.”
Over two games here, the Dodgers exacted a significant measure of revenge on some of the Arizona pitchers who had shut them down during a sobering span of six head-to-head games in August and September when the Diamondbacks, in sweeping all six, essentially ended any talk of the Dodgers being remembered as one of the greatest teams in history.
In Friday night’s Game 1, the Dodgers roughed up Taijuan Walker and Zack Godley, both of whom beat them during that awful stretch, and on Saturday night, they took aim at lefty Robbie Ray, who in a pair of starts five days apart in late August and early September, shut them down twice — to the tune of 14 1/3 innings, one earned run and 24 strikeouts.
[It wasn’t Clayton Kershaw’s best night, but the Didgers looked like their old selves]
Here, though, they chased Ray in the fifth inning, by which point nine of the 22 batters he faced had reached base. It was not the best of outings for Ray, a former Washington Nationals farmhand who emerged as an ace and an all-star this season, but who Saturday night gave up four walks, threw three wild pitches and was charged with four earned runs. Of the Dodgers’ 12 hits, all but one— a two-run double by catcher Austin Barnes in the fifth — were singles.
There is something vaguely odd and strangely captivating about the Diamondbacks, as if they were some bizarre species of animal that only lives in the deep desert or the bottom of the ocean. Part of this is undoubtedly the visual effect of their unsightly road uniforms — a sweat-soaked dull gray that looked like camouflage, if the terrain they were trying to blend into happened to be the floor of someone’s suburban garage.
On Saturday night, the Diamondbacks nearly let the game get away from them, falling behind 7-2 after the fifth, but waited for an opening — which they got when Roberts got too cute with his bullpen — and closed the gap to 7-5 on Brandon Drury’s three-run homer that greeted Dodgers set-up man Brandon Morrow, the first homer given up by Morrow all year.
The Diamondbacks had gotten into the Dodgers’ shaky bullpen in the fifth, after dispatching with lefty starter Rich Hill. Right-hander Kenta Maeda, a starter whom the Dodgers are deploying as a reliever in this series, appeared to stabilize the middle of the game by retiring three straight batters with ease, and could have provided some length, but Roberts decided to play matchup games and wound up igniting the Diamondbacks’ offense in the seventh.
Roberts, though, still possessed the ultimate weapon: Jansen, the premier closer in the league. With the off day Sunday, and Jansen’s well-established multi-inning ability — six of his nine appearances over the past two postseasons have gone for four or more outs — Roberts deployed Jansen with one out in the eighth, the crowd rising to its feet at the first notes of “California Love,” Jansen’s entrance music.
Five outs later, as Jansen retired David Peralta to end it, the Dodgers had their second win of the weekend, and they headed to Phoenix looking much as they did the last time they headed there, in late August — unbeatable. It may have been a mirage in the late summer, but here in the fall the mission is simpler, reduced to a single goal: win one more game.
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