NEW YORK – Dave Roberts will always see elimination games through a unique lens, given his role in the Boston Red Sox’s historic rally from a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 American League Championship Series. It was his stolen base in the ninth inning of Game 4 that set up Bill Mueller’s game-tying single and eventually led to David Ortiz’s walk-off homer in the 12th inning, the 6-4 victory the first of four straight wins over the New York Yankees en route to a World Series title.
As a result, he understands better than most the perils of giving an opponent life, an important perspective with a berth in the World Series feeling inevitable for his Los Angeles Dodgers heading into Game 5 of the National League Championship Series.
“You can see from kind of my demeanour that we’re playing with urgency. You can see that things can happen when a team starts to build momentum. So, yeah, we want to take our momentum and keep it going, put these guys away,” he said beforehand. “Because of my past experiences — and fortunately I was on the good side of the other thing — I feel that. I understand that.”
All of which made what the New York Mets did during a 12-6 rout Friday night that extended the National League Championship Series to at least a sixth game — when David Peterson singlehandedly reversed the Dodgers’ downhill force with a remarkable first-inning escape, Pete Alonso followed that up with a critical three-run homer and the offence kept pounding Jack Flaherty and the other L.A. arms — all the more impressive.
The Dodgers hadn’t just beaten the Mets in amassing a 3-1 series lead in the best-of-seven, they’d dismantled them in all facets of the game.
With Flaherty, so dominant during seven shutout innings in a Game 1 win, starting against Peterson, pulled from the bullpen with Kodai Senga having looked lost in that opener, a total team effort was needed to reverse the series’ course.
That’s precisely what they got and suddenly the path to a seventh game doesn’t seem out of the question. Sean Manaea is available to start Game 6 for the Mets while the Dodgers appear headed for a bullpen day, and Roberts’ warning about what can happen once momentum builds sure seems prescient.
“I can’t say it enough, this group is so special,” said Alonso. “We’ve faced adversity. We’ve bounced back time and time again over the course of the year. Even if you look at the wild card, this group has been so resilient. You look at the path of everything, it’s completely unexplainable, but we’re all just happy to have another opportunity to fight another day.
“And we’ll be ready,” he continued. “We love opportunities. Today was all about figure it out, get to Game 6. We have that opportunity and it’s going to be the same mentality. Figure it out, get to Game 7. That’s what it is. Survive the day. And we did. And we’re really, really excited for the opportunity coming up.”
Peterson’s role, despite only lasting 3.2 innings, can’t be understated, because without his work in the first, this series is probably over.
Shohei Ohtani singled to open the game and Mookie Betts followed with a liner to right that went off a sliding Starling Marte’s glove, turning an out into a cheesy double that put men on second and third. That should have been the start of a romp but instead Peterson turned the direction of both the game and the series.
First, he got Teoscar Hernandez on a grounder to short, then Freddie Freeman on a liner to first and finally Tommy Edman swinging to escape the jam unscathed.
“How Petey held it together and was executing in a big spot – he showed so much guts and so much heart,” said Alonso. “That’s a huge spot. And to keep the game at zeros, that was massive.”
A crowd of 43,841 at Citi Field ate it up and the Mets responded immediately in the bottom half when Francisco Lindor, who sang along during warmups as The Temptations performed his walkup song, My Girl, led off with a single off Flaherty. Brandon Nimmo followed with a walk and after a loud Mark Vientos fly out to left field, Alonso reached down to get a slider and hammered it 432-feet to straightaway centre.
It was precisely the type of sequence a reeling Mets team needed.
“Getting out of (the top of the first) is huge and then capitalizing on that,” said Jesse Winker, who marvelled at the way Alonso hit the ball from “the ground to the apple” out in centre field. “I just saw Will Smith’s glove go down to the ground and I was like, ‘No way.’ He hit it 115 m.p.h. That’s special, special power.”
Kiké Hernández scored on a wild pitch in the second to cut into a three-run lead and the Mets took control of the game during a five-run third that featured a two-run double by Marte, a Francisco Alvarez RBI single, a Lindor RBI triple and Nimmo’s run-scoring base hit.
Flaherty, pitching on a normal four days of rest for only the second time since his acquisition from Detroit at the trade deadline, was left to wear it the whole inning, the Dodgers trying to save arms for Sunday “part of it,” said Roberts.
“It’s not always fun when you’re going through it, certainly from anyone’s chair, certainly my chair,” he added. “But you have to kind of remain steadfast in how you use your pitchers because ultimately, it’s about winning four games in a seven-game series. When you’re careless, then it will show itself at some point, certainly in a long series.”
Despite the 8-1 deficit, L.A. didn’t go away, as Andy Pages hit a solo shot with two out in the fourth before an Ohtani single and walks to Betts and Hernandez loaded the bases. That was it for Peterson, with Reed Garrett coming in to face Freeman, running the count full and then freezing the slugger with an 86.9 m.p.h. sweeper on the outer edge to end the inning.
The Mets tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the fourth on Winker’s RBI triple and Jeff McNeil’s sacrifice fly, but the Dodgers cut into the lead again when Pages, who appeared to trade words with Alvarez after his first homer, went deep again, this time a three-run shot that made it a 10-5 game.
Betts hit a solo shot to open the sixth, McNeil responded with a sacrifice fly in the bottom half, and Marte added an RBI single in the eighth, while Mets closer Edwin Diaz handled the final two innings, manager Carlos Mendoza taking no chances despite the big lead.
“We’ve got a really good team and we trust ourselves,” said Diaz. “We’ve come from a lot of adversity and I think we can beat them. We’ve got Manaea going on Sunday. I like how he pitched last time against them and I like our team.”
The Mets, of course, had their own experience to draw upon in this spot, having been written off in early June when they fell 11 games under .500 only to storm their way to this point. Facing the end of their season, they didn’t flinch.
“The character of this team and the individuals there is impressive,” said Mendoza. “I could sense it. I walk in the hitters meeting and we know where we’re at, backs against the wall, the attitude, people smiling. That’s who we are. We’ve been in this situation before. Nothing new.”
Added Vientos: “Obviously we’re in a position where our backs are against the wall, but, I mean, the season we’ve had, where we’ve had our backs against the wall (for months), this is nothing new to us. We’re going to play hard and see what happens.”
What happens is that there’s now a Game 6 and a suddenly realistic path to what had been a very unlikely Game 7.