Adams powers Cardinals past LA, into NLCS
Somehow, someway, the Cardinal did it again. (USATSI)
The Cardinals stunned the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLDS in St. Louis by a score of 3-2 (box score). Now let’s have a closer look …
Hero: Matt Adams. Facing the best pitcher in the world and doing so without the platoon advantage in the seventh inning, Adams blasted a three-run homer to put the Cardinals in front for the first time in Game 3 and put the Dodgers on the brink.
In win probability terms, when Adams yanked that 0-1 curveball over the fence, it improved the Cards’ chances of prevailing by almost 45 percent …
Source: FanGraphs
Game-changer, that one. And that’s why Adams, for the Game 4 clincher, wears the handsome and maginificently appointed hero’s cape.
Goat: No chance I’m giving this to Clayton Kershaw, given that he was going on short rest and was dominant until the seventh. I could go Don Mattingly, as his decision to bench his best position player — Yasiel Puig — in an elimination game is worthy of full-throated ridicule (if Puig’s ankle was really that hurt, then why did he pinch-run in the 9th?). Instead, I’ll go with GM Ned Colletti.
Colletti’s utter failure to put together a passable middle-relief unit despite spending millions in the service of doing so loomed large in Game 3. Had Mattingly had any kind of reliable bridge to Kenley Jansen, then he would’ve lifted Kershaw at the first sign of trouble. Mattingly didn’t have that, though. Should he have gone to Jansen in the seventh? Maybe so, but a three-inning, high-leverage save just isn’t a part of today’s game. So the horns go to Colletti for making this vital part of the roster such an expensive and unusable mess.
Turning point: Even though Kershaw had been dominant earlier in the game and had struck out the side in the sixth, the realities were that he showed signs of fatigue in his Game 1 collapse and was pitching on short rest in Game 4. And although he was a pitcher capable of this in prior innings …
… It still felt a bit tenuous. You certainly understand why Mattingly left him in — again, he was excellent in the sixth and The Dodgers’ middle-relief corps is, of course, something of a toilet fire (see above!) — but there was risk. When Kershaw yielded back-to-back singles to Matt Holliday and Jhonny Peralta to start the home half of the seventh, you got the feeling something was afoot.
As it turns out, something was indeed afoot, and that something was …
Cardinals Devil MagicTM.
It was over when: Even after Adams’s unlikely blast, it was still a one-run game and thus still in peril. It wasn’t over until the occasionally shaky Rosenthal, who issued a one-out walk to A.J. Ellis and then put on the potential go-ahead run in the person of Dee Gordon, notched the final out of the NLDS. Then and only then was Game 4 over.
Unused in St. Louis? The Dodgers’ celebratory bubble machine, which made the trip for no reason, as it turned out …
(Image via Ken Rosenthal)
Next: The Cardinals advance to the NLCS for the fourth straight season. They’ll face either the Nationals or Giants. As for the Dodgers, they’re headed home for the winter, eliminated by the Cardinals for a second straight postseason.
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