PHILADELPHIA — A $415 million payroll can buy a team a lot of nice things.
Superstar hitters. Dominant starting pitching. Depth to weather a long season. A level of talent unmatched by any other contender.
This year’s Dodgers have all that, thanks to a payroll (by competitive balance tax calculations) that not only led the majors this season but set an MLB record.
What it also bought them was battle-tested veteran experience.
And in a 4-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the National League Division Series on Monday night, that made the difference as much as anything.
When the Dodgers were getting dominated by Phillies left-hander Jesús Luzardo early, they didn’t lose their approach or start to press in the box. When they got their lone chance to break the score open in the seventh, they snatched it with a four-run rally enabled by ruthless poise and composure.
Even in the ninth inning, when the game started spiraling and a three-run lead was in danger of being squandered by the bullpen, they kept their cool, executed the fundamentals — including on a bunt play that changed the complexion of the inning — and came out of Citizens Bank Park with a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.
“Great ball game, great plays,” manager Dave Roberts said. “The at-bats, taking walks and all of that. The defense, base-running, everything. Just top-notch.”
Now, with one more win, the Dodgers will be one step closer to defending their World Series title.
They haven’t always made it easy on themselves this season. They didn’t always conjure enough focus or intensity in a 93-win regular season that qualified as a disappointment. But when their best has been required this month — including in front of 45,653 crazed Phillies fans on Monday — they’ve been able to deliver.
“We were just sitting at our locker as I was getting dressed, and Kiké [Hernández] said, ‘We just took two here,’” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “To get two in this environment is obviously massive. You can’t understate it. This is a really hard place to play.”
The biggest play came at the end of the game, when what had been a 4-0 Dodgers lead was on the verge of implosion.
After six scoreless, one-hit, nine-strikeout innings from Blake Snell, and two innings of one-run relief from converted starter Emmet Sheehan, Blake Treinen had made a mess of his ninth-inning save opportunity, giving up two runs on a leadoff single and back-to-back doubles.
The score was suddenly 4-3. The Phillies had the tying run at second with no outs.
As left-hander Alex Vesia came on to face Bryson Stott, however, the Dodgers’ infield gathered near the mound and came up with a plan.
Anticipating Stott would bunt, the fielders agreed that “we got to try something different here,” third baseman Max Muncy recounted. “We can’t just play standard.”
It was shortstop Mookie Betts, who has spent so much of this season perfecting his technique at his new defensive position, who insisted on the strategy: A good ol’ fashioned, so-called “wheel play,” in which the corner infielders charge the plate, and a middle infielder (in this case, Betts) sprints to the bag ahead of the runner on base to try and get the more important lead runner.
“I’ve got to give that credit to Miggy Rojas,” Betts said. “We did it earlier in the year in Anaheim, and I remember asking him, ‘When’s a good time to do it?’ He said: In a do or die situation.”
This, obviously, qualified.
And when the players informed Roberts, as he passed the ball off to Vesia, the manager put his faith in their instinct.
“He trusts his guys, man,” Betts said. “We have an idea of what each other can do. We do a pretty good job of putting each other in good spots to be successful. That was one of those times where Doc kind of just called on us and said, ‘You guys figure it out,’ in a very positive way. He trusts us. We did it.”
When Stott directed his bunt toward third, Muncy fielded it, turned to see Betts running a few steps ahead of Nick Castellanos toward the bag, and delivered a perfect throw that Betts caught right before colliding with a sliding Castellanos to apply the tag.
It was a crucial first out that set up the rest of the inning, preventing a run from scoring on Harrison Bader’s single in the next at-bat, and allowing Roki Sasaki to ultimately come in and collect the final out.
“It’s just a really smart baseball play,” Muncy said. “And for [Mookie] to immediately be coming right to me and talking about doing it, it shows his intuition in the game. It’s second to none out there.”
The kind of extra, subtle luxury that comes with a loaded, experienced roster.
“They made it look a lot easier than it was,” Roberts added. “That was our only chance, really, to win that game in that moment.”
The Dodgers were only in position to win, of course, because of the other big plays they’d made in the eight innings before that.
In the sixth inning, the Phillies had the night’s first big chance with two runners aboard and only one out — before Snell and the defense again rose to the moment.
First, the left-hander struck out two-time MVP Bryce Harper on a flurry of sliders that burned the edge of the strike zone, threading the needle between the need to avoid any hard contact while also trying to attack somewhere that could induce a swing.
Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers during the second inning Monday against the Phillies.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I felt confident with the slider,” Snell, the $182-million centerpiece of this past offseason, said after throwing his slider five times in the six-pitch at-bat. “Just kind of rode it out against him and ended up winning.”
Then, Rojas (who had started at third before later being replaced by Muncy) ended the frame on a ground ball up the line, taking the short — albeit risky — way to the base with a headfirst slide that barely beat Trea Turner.
“Great, aggressive, heady play to get Trea at third base on the force play,” Roberts said of Rojas’ decision.
“I think it was the wrong decision,” Rojas himself countered in hindsight. “But after I went to third base, I felt like I needed to give it my 100% effort. I’m glad that I got there and [the inning] didn’t go farther than that.”
That set the stage for the seventh, when the Dodgers opened the scoring by manufacturing a four-spot that silenced the stadium.
Up to that point, Luzardo had retired 17 batters in a row, swamping the Dodgers with low sweepers and changeups. But then Teoscar Hernández got a thigh-high changeup that he hit to center for a single. Freeman followed by adjusting to a sweeper at the knees, hitting a line drive to right that he turned into a hustle double.
With Luzardo knocked out of the game, Teoscar Hernández made a heads-up play on the bases two batters later. After not hustling out of the box on a ground ball earlier in the night, Hernández broke hard for home plate when Kiké Hernández sent a squibber to Turner at shortstop. As Turner fielded the ball and fired to the plate, Teoscar Hernández chugged in with a feet-first slide. Catcher J.T. Realmuto’s tag was a split-second too late.
The Dodgers had opened the scoring, and would keep adding on with a two-run single from Will Smith (who, like in Game 1, entered as a mid-game replacement as he continues to work back from his fractured hand) and an RBI knock from Shohei Ohtani that both came with two outs.
“Obviously some huge two-out hits by Will and then Shohei too,” Freeman said. “Great play by Teo getting his foot in. A lot of good things happened in that seventh inning.”
Roberts’ decision to turn to Treinen initially in the ninth inning — instead of Sasaki, whom Roberts said he was hesitant to use because of his mounting recent workload — almost left it all for naught.
Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki delivers in the ninth inning against the Phillies on Monday in Game 2 of the NLDS.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
For a brief moment, the Dodgers’ faulty bullpen seemed destined to blow what should have been a straightforward win.
But, as they’ve done for most of the last two years, with a team fueled by its star talent but anchored by its veteran experience, the club buckled down, executed a tricky defensive play with flawless execution, and now will take this series back to Los Angeles needing just one more win.
“We can’t let our guard down at all,” Betts said. “If so, they’ll run right through it and we’ll be coming back here for Game 5.”
More veteran wisdom, from a team that has spent big to acquire it.
