NLCS Off Day

Now that the Dodgers and the Phillies have the day off, I have some time to take a deep breath and look at what happened those first two games in Los Angeles. What a whirlwind National League Championship Series (NLCS), eh? Summary: Phillies won a slugfest 8-6 Thursday night, and Dodgers won a 2-1 pitchers' duel Friday afternoon. The series will recommence Sunday in Philadelphia. I'll look at the key plays, how each team's projected strengths and weaknesses ended up influencing the victory, and the big picture for both the rest of this round and through the playoffs.

I was able to sit down and watch both NLCS games, partly at the expense of keeping abreast of both Championship Serieses - after 7+ hours of baseball over two days, I had neither the time nor the mental capacity to watch game 1 of the ALCS. I still don't have a team to root for in that series, despite familial ties to the Yankees. My desire for a Freeway Series is tempered by my desire that the Angels never win another ballgame. I'd rather not see the Yankees win title number 27, just in the interest of league parity, but if it came down (goffabid) to Phils-Yanks, I'd route for New York to stop Philadelphia from becoming the first NL team to repeat as champions since 1975-76. I realize that's kind of ironic, seeing as the Yankees have repeated as champions twice since then and three times before that, but I just don't feel the need to see Jimmy Rollins, and Shane Victorino, and Cole Hamels spraying each other with champagne two years in a row. Especially not when it would both times be at the expense of my Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yes, for the playoffs, all attempts at unbiased reporting have flown out the window. It's very hard when there are only four teams left and you (along with most everyone in your hometown) want one of those teams to win more than the others. But, hey, it's October, and it's my blog and I'll root if I want to.

I watched game one with four close friends and enough beer to go around, so emotions were running high. Everyone was excited for a rematch of last year's NLCS, the Phillies hungry for a second title, the Dodgers eager for some revenge. We expected the Phillies to hit plenty of dingers (seeing as they led the league in that category in '09). We expected the Dodgers' bullpen to be lights out, as it had been all season. We expected some inside pitches and we expected Shane Victorino to have some words with whichever Dodger was closest to him at the time.

No one knew what to expect out of either team's starting pitchers. Cole Hamels dominated the Dodgers last year in two starts, earning the series MVP, but he's been a decidedly different pitcher this year: compare 2,253 (68.3) 2008 swp with 1,344 (42.0) 2009 swp. Meanwhile, Clayton Kershaw, the youngest ever pitcher to start an NLCS opener, had a tremendous season for a 21-year-old, and his left-handedness set him up nicely for facing the Phillies' three lefty big boppers (Utley, Howard, Ibanez).

Neither pitcher had a great performance, with Hamels pitching into the 6th and allowing two home runs, and Kershaw walking five with three wild pitches over less than five innings. In all seriousness, Kershaw should have pitched less than he did. In the Phillies' 5th, still with no outs, Kershaw gave up a three-run home run to secret weapon Carlos Ruiz, then walked the pitcher Cole Hamels. That should have been it for the youngster, but he was allowed to pitch for two more outs, allowing a walk, two wild pitches, and a two-run double to Ryan Howard.

According to baseball-reference.com's Winning Team Win Probability Added (which measures how much any one play influences the eventual outcome of the game), the game was even until Ruiz's shot: one pitch increased the Phillies' odds of winning from 49% to 75%. Howard's two-out double made the Phillies' chances 89%.

Manny shaved a lot of that off in the very next inning, with his clutch home run bringing the Phillies down to a 64% win chance. At one point in the Dodgers' 6th, with Russell Martin up with two on and one out, the Phillies were as low as 54%. But when George Sherrill came in for the 8th, he sealed the Dodgers' fate with a three-run home run to Raul Ibanez that bumped the Phillies all the way up to a 96% probability. What's this? A Dodger bullpen meltdown? Unheard of! An ugly save for Brad Lidge later, and the Phightin Phils wrapped up game one with a bang.

Missed opportunities for the Dodgers' offense, an uncharacteristically bad inning from playoff rookie George Sherrill, and an uncharacteristically good game from the Phillies' pen marked game one. Game two saw two veteran midseason acquisitions go at it: Vicente Padilla for the Dodgers and Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. There were some who second guessed starting Padilla after only seven starts for the Dodgers, rather than handing game two (and possibly game 5) to his ace during the season lefty Randy Wolf. But Padilla didn't disappoint, allowing one run (on really just one bad pitch to Ryan Howard) over 7 1/3 innings. He was matched pitch for pitch by the legendary Pedro Martinez, who looked like his old self, minus a few mph on his fastball.

It wasn't until Pedro was out of the game and former Dodger Chan Ho Park came into the game that the Dodgers began to rally. In an 8th inning that took five Phillies pitchers to finish, the Dodgers eked out two runs from a Chase Utley throwing error and a bases loaded walk to Andre Ethier. As Chip Caray remarked over and over for TBS, the Dodgers are a team who play all 9 innings, as they are among the tops in the league in come-from-behind wins.

So who, if anyone, has the advantage going into tomorrow's game? Games are even at one apiece, but we're heading into the Phillies' home turf. Another midseason acquisition, Cliff Lee, is pitching for the home team against Hiroki Kuroda for the Dodgers, who had a scary season. My bias is keeping me from coming up with a truly accurate prediction, but I like the Phillies for this next game, if only because the Dodgers seem to play slightly better as underdogs. Wait until game four, with Randy Wolf pitching in a familiar ballpark against a lefty-heavy lineup and we'll see what happens.

The commercials say you can't script October. But you can look back on what happened and write a script about that. And in the interest of that pursuit, I think it's important to keep as detailed notes as possible at the time.