He also produced 7.5 Wins Above Replacement, or 16% of the Dodgers’ team total of 46 WAR.
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And then there was Sunday, a game that seemed to follow no script in particular.
Gonzalez had an RBI single and Justin Turner drove in Chase Utley with a groundout to help the Dodgers build a 2-0 lead against Bartolo Colon, who pitched six solid innings in his first outing since turning 43 last Tuesday.
“I’ve said many times that I’ve thought our revenge was beating them that series previous year”, Mets captain David Wright said.
Los Angeles ends the month of May and begins the month of June with two pairs of road games against the Chicago Cubs after Sunday’s game in NY.
Veteran Curtis Granderson was on deck when Kershaw got Michael Conforto to line out for the second out of the eighth inning. (This is where the whole “Kershaw’s second earned run should not count” comes in play because Liberatore should not have been in the game at that point).
A night after things got Utley, the Mets had their Familia fall apart.
Familia is now 17-for-17 in save opportunities and hasn’t blown a regular-season save since last July 30, a span of 33 chances, which is a franchise record. Maeda yielded two hits, both singles in the first, and stopped his three-game losing streak.
“I always want us to compete against the best”, Maddon said.
Granderson crushed a 2-1 pitch to right and Yasiel Puig could not come down with the ball as Plawecki easily rounded the bases to score the tying run.
The Dodgers got away with it because Familia melted down in front of a crowd of 42,287, the third sellout in the three-game series.
Familia allowed a hit on a slider to Enrique Hernandez to start the ninth and with one out he issued back-to-back walks to load the bases for lefty Gonzalez. I’ve never been thrown out of a game before, so it was just kind of a whirlwind of emotions.
“You just try to figure it out”, Familia said. He’s got to go back and make the pitches he knows that he’s capable of doing so that he can get some outs.
The Dodgers doubled up their run total in the fifth inning when Gonzalez continued his clutch hitting at Citi Field with an RBI single to right field that scored Seager. Jose Quintana (5-4, 2.22) pitches for Chicago.
Despite the no-decision, Kershaw was again otherworldly.
Current Mets’ shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera put the Mets on the scoreboard with a solo shot in the bottom of the sixth inning.
“What he does for our bullpen – his ability to go deep into games, to give those guys a much-needed day off – it’s hard to measure that value. It shows who he is as a competitor”. Granderson doubled leading off the game and went 4-for-12 in the series for the Mets (28-21), who fell out of a first-place tie with the Washington Nationals in the National League East.
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Kershaw reached the 300-strikeout mark for the first time last season, finishing the year at 301. Or maybe even one of the best months of all time?
