Winning when he couldn’t afford to lose, that was the problem. Big hits, especially early on will be key. I don’t have any logical or statistical reason to back my prediction, but I’ll take the NL East champions in a pitchers’ duel. “But we have an opportunity at least to extend”. After appealing the suspension, however, Utley was available to play, and Mets fans were furious. He was better at home (1.46) than on the road (1.88), though he was great pretty much every year. Greinke logged seven innings in the game, allowing the two runs on a pair of second-inning solo shots, by Yoenis Cespedes and Michael Conforto.
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Dodgers third baseman/Leprechaun Justin Turner is batting. The decisive Game 5 will be played Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, where Los Angeles right-hander and Cy Young Award contender Zack Greinke will face the Mets’ ace, All-Star right-hander Jacob deGrom. I could have told him he was pitching today. I mean, this kid is tremendous.
“It comes down to, when you have runners on, can you capitalize with them on and it’s a matter of if he makes any mistakes and gives you pitches to hit”, he said. DeGrom didn’t exactly pitch to contact, tying the franchise record set by Tom Seaver in Game 1 of the 1973 NLCS for most strikeouts in a postseason game. Kershaw has been on the mound with three days rest the last two years the Dodgers were eliminated.
But this time, Kershaw was just as dominant as he normally is during the regular season. “Just got to get through the seventh”. Besides that, he was in near-complete command of his surroundings in front of a raucous and, at times, desperate Citi Field crowd. He threw 13 pitches in the second and 10 in the third before his no-hit bid was broken up by Murphy’s one-out homer to right in the fourth. He has allowed two or fewer runs 27 times. If the Mets get that kind of performance from deGrom again, they likely win the game, no matter what Greinke is doing on the other side. But they were both on in the 2001 playoffs, combining for a 9-1 record with a minuscule 1.30 ERA in 89 2/3 innings. We didn’t give ourselves a lot of chances.
Collins said he did not have any trepidation about starting Matz despite the long layoff, and pointed to Matz’s strong showing each of the past two seasons in his minor-league team’s championship-clinching games.
Kershaw jump-started a three-run rally in the third, when he singled to left for the first hit by either team.
The Mets won the regular season series 4-3 and they’ve split the first four games of the NLDS. “As good as Zack is and has been the whole year, deGrom has been the same”.
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Given all the twists and turns this NLDS between the Mets and Dodgers already had before Game 4, it should have been obvious that this thing was going to a do-or-die Game 5. “Probably if he’d want one pitch back, it’s probably the hanging slider he threw Kershaw”. “We’ve got all the confidence in the world that if we get to the next round, he’s going to be a part of that rotation”. But Kenley Jansen got Murphy, the go-ahead run, to fly out to right to end the inning, and in their last licks in the ninth, the Mets went down quietly in order. Greinke is 3-2 with a 3.48 ERA in eight career postseason starts.
