“The best retaliation is winning the game”, veteran outfielder Michael Cuddyer said.
Advertisement
For Kershaw however, it is not often that the three-time Cy Young Award victor is so vocal about a controversial topic.
Utley appealed his two-game suspension assessed by Major League Baseball on Sunday night for an illegal slide in Game 2, which broke the right leg of Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada.
Mets manager Terry Collins pulled Harvey after only five innings in which the polarizing star pitcher exhausted 97 pitches. “One major league executive said, “(deGrom) is in the Dodgers’ heads, I guarantee you that. “And said, ‘Look, you gotta go pitch, man. We all know who you are and what you are, but we can’t let this control us”. The TV cameras were still rolling, of course, the fans were still living and dying with every pitch – and still calling for Chase Utley’s neck – but the players had already moved on.
In so many ways, the defining character in this game was a 36-year-old infielder who didn’t even play, Chase Utley of the Dodgers.
Harvey, whether by design or not, brings drama with him whenever he takes the mound in New York, be it his long-debated innings limit a year after elbow surgery, be it his missing a mandatory workout last weekend, or be it the expectation that he would be the one to strike the retaliatory blow for the Utley-Tejada play.
“He worked harder tonight to give us five quality innings than I have seen him work at any time”, Collins said.
“The Players Association and my agent are handling the appeals process”, Utley said in a statement Monday.
Chicago Cubs center fielder Dexter Fowler (24) hits a home run… “Yeah, I got a preference”, Collins said amid laughs. Four straight singles in the bottom of the second cut the deficit to 3-1, and New York loaded the bases with no outs. Travis d’Arnaud added a two-run homer in the third, essentially driving Dodgers starter Brett Anderson from the game.
One inning later, d’Arnaud would open the game up even more with a two-run shot to left. “Just embarrassing on my part”.
Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes rounds the bases after his home run during Game 3 of the NLDS against the Dodgers at Citi Field. The slugger tossed his bat high in the air before beginning his trot around the bases.
At this point, the crowd at Citi was absolutely electric, chanting “We want Utley” and clearly enjoying the first ever postseason game at the ballpark. He has invited eight people to Tuesday night’s game and said he “was definitely thinking about being in [this] spot” when he watched the Mets’ postseason losses in 2000 and 2006. “It reminded me a lot of Shea Stadium when it got loud and insane”. They tagged him with six runs on seven hits. His seventh start also will be his first playoff appearance, and all he’ll have to do is outduel Dodgers lefthander Clayton Kershaw in an attempt to win a postseason game for the team he grew up rooting for (but never saw win a World Series). Manager Don Mattingly said with the Dodgers down six runs, he wanted to save Utley for a situation in which there were multiple runners on base.
Advertisement
Pregame introductions for the Dodgers began at 8:13 p.m. A chorus of boos from the sellout crowd of 44,276 grew deafening two minutes later upon the introduction of second baseman Chase Utley, who is appealing the two-game suspension for the hard slide that broke Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada’s right fibula in Game 2. Utley was booed lustily when he was introduced.
