Inside Yolk

It’s hard to lose in the MLB Postseason when you get back-to-back starting pitching performances like the ones that the Dodgers got from Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 1 and Game 2 of the NLCS in Milwaukee. On Monday night, Snell allowed just one hit in eight shutout innings with 10 strikeouts and the Dodgers almost blew the game because Dave Roberts decided to let his bullpen handle the ninth inning. After Los Angeles hung on to win 2-1, Yamamoto took the mound on Tuesday night and allowed a leadoff home run to Jackson Chourio. However, the Brewers would reach base just four more times after that as Yamamoto used 111 pitches to throw a complete game in a 5-1 Dodgers victory.

Los Angeles quickly countered Chourio’s solo shot with a pair of runs in the top of the second inning on a Teoscar Hernandez home run and an RBI double by Andy Pages. The Dodgers tacked on a run each in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings, including a solo shot by Max Muncy that made him the franchise’s Postseason home run leader with 14. That’s one more than both Corey Seager and Justin Turner and three more than Duke Snider.

Yamamoto got stronger as the game wore on and retired the last 14 batters he faced. He and Snell became the first pair of teammates to last at least eight innings in back-to-back starts of a single Postseason series since Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum did it in the 2010 World Series. If you only include Dodgers history, you have to go back to Orel Hershiser and Tim Belcher in the 1988 NLCS against my Mets.

You can excuse me for thinking that the Brewers are a team of destiny after they turned a double play on a ball drilled by Max Muncy off of center fielder Sal Frelick’s glove and the center field wall. There was some confusion over whether the ball was caught on the fly or not, and that made Teoscar Hernandez hesitate enough for the Brewers to force him out at home on a relay from Frelick to Joey Ortiz to catcher Williams Contreras. If that wasn’t amazing enough, Will Smith stayed put at second base, allowing Contreras to job down to third base to force him out as well.

That is horrible base running from the Dodgers and also a good job by the umpires to get the play right without assistance from instant replay. How could Los Angeles survive such a horrible twist of fate? Well, it turns out Blake Snell was doing a fine Sandy Koufax impression on the mound. He struck out 10 batters in eight innings and the only batter that reached base against him was Caleb Durbin on a leadoff single in the third inning. Durbin ended up getting picked off, so Snell faced just the minimum 24 batters during his masterclass performance.