LOS ANGELES — For their first 24 innings in the warm California air, the Boston hitters stayed almost completely frozen.
The Red Sox managed only two meager runs in the 18-inning Game 3 marathon — a potentially devastating 3-2 loss that prevented them from claiming a 3-0 stranglehold in the 2018 World Series — and then were held scoreless through the first six innings in Game 4.
This is an offense that led baseball in runs scored and averaged 6.6 runs in its first 11 playoff games this season. Managing just two tallies against the Dodgers in almost three games worth of innings was a bit disconcerting.
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“We were waiting,” Boston hitting coach Tim Hyers told Sporting News.
They just needed a catalyst. Something to break the dam open, to help the runners flow freely across home plate. And then, finally, it happened.
Yasiel Puig hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning, and Boston’s offense woke up from its hazy (smoggy?) state.
Huh? Puig plays for the Dodgers, of course. And that home run gave L.A. a 4-0 lead in the sixth inning. But J.D. Martinez, Boston’s designated slugger, says that was the key.
“It’s just one of those weird things,” he told a group of writers after the game. “You play baseball enough, you kinda see stuff like that happen. When you have two teams that just can’t score a run, and then one team starts scoring and all of a sudden the other team starts scoring. That’s just baseball, just kinda how it is.”
Motivation comes in strange packages.
“I don’t think we were waiting for them to score. We were waiting for us to score,” Martinez said with a laugh. “You’re hoping one of us is who starts it, gets it going.”
But whatever works, right?
To win a World Series, games like this have to be won. It doesn’t matter that the offense has gone missing for a bewildering stretch of time. It doesn’t matter than you’re suddenly down four runs in the seventh inning.
You want to be champs? Focus on what’s next, not what happened in the past — even if it’s an epic defeat, in the longest game in World Series history — and get the job done.
“It was just a loss,” manager Alex Cora said. “I think for everybody else it's a crushing loss, but after the game we were up 2-1.”
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The Red Sox are pretty good at that approach.
“I’ve never been on a team that can just get punched right in the face and then come back tomorrow and act like they’re totally fine,” Martinez said. “It’s impressive. I saw that the first month I was here. It’s a really cool, really special team.
“Starts at the top. Starts with AC, goes down to the coaches, and starts with our veteran guys. Everyone’s just kind of positive, like nothing ever happened.”
Here’s something else the Red Sox are good at: scoring runs. It just took a while.
They couldn’t do anything with Dodgers lefty Rich Hill — who was brilliant — but once he was out of the game and they got a crack at the Los Angeles bullpen, there was a newfound level of familiarity the Boston hitters took advantage of.
“We had started to see (the bullpen) a little bit more, and so I thought that was a favor on our side,” Hyers told SN. “A lot of them, we hadn’t seen those arms. A lot of guys haven’t faced (Kenta) Maeda, hadn’t faced some of their guys. Third game, just started having more at-bats with them, game plan was a little more sharp. Knew what to expect, guys were talking within each other. That’s what I was hoping, get into the bullpen so we could see some of those pitchers again.”
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Boston scored three times in the seventh — a three-run blast by Mitch Moreland, off Ryan Madson — and then Steve Pearce hit a solo homer in the eighth, off closer Kenley Jansen, to knot the game at 4. In the ninth, they scored five runs off three different Dodgers pitchers — all of whom they’d seen in the Game 3 marathon.
“That’s what this team has done most of the year. They communicate within themselves,” Hyers said. “It’s not just me or Andy (Barkett, the assistant hitting coach) doing all the preparing. You have the experience with Mitch (Moreland) and Brock (Holt) and J.D. and a number of guys who talk hitting. I think that’s part of the success against the bullpens, they come back to the dugout — if needed, or if asked — they talk about fastball quality or they talk about how they were pitched. You see them a little bit more, and especially in this series, you see them over and over, so quick. And, they’re talented, too. You’ve got to have talent. But it helps when you take talented guys and they’re prepared and they’ve got the experience. That’s the part we’ve succeeded at.”
Winning is another thing they’ve succeeded at. They won 108 times in the regular season, then seven more times to roll through the ALDS and ALCS to reach the World Series. Now, with a 3-1 lead, one more gives them the championship.
“We've got three shots, I guess,” Cora said. “… We'll be ready to play tomorrow. We're very excited to come here and try to finish it.”
