TORONTO — The Dodgers performed 162 video games in 193 days in the course of the common season. Then they performed 10 extra occasions in 18 days within the first three rounds of the playoffs.
It was a grind that gave strategy to a routine as comfy as an previous shoe.
That routine was upended when the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers within the Nationwide League Championship Sequence, giving them per week off earlier than the beginning of the World Sequence, the crew’s longest break since February. And the Dodgers appeared something however rested and refreshed in Friday’s 11-4 shellacking by the Toronto Blue Jays, which left them trailing a postseason sequence for the primary time since final fall’s NLDS.
“I’m fairly certain the blokes type of felt the rate just a little bit extra,” mentioned Miguel Rojas, one in every of only a handful of Dodgers who spoke to the media after the loss. “However there’s nothing that we will do. That’s not going to be an excuse for us to underperform.”
It will not be an excuse. However it might be an omen.
This World Sequence is the fifth during which a crew that swept its best-of-seven LCS, because the Dodgers did, confronted a crew that wanted to go seven video games to win its sequence, as Toronto did. The crew that swept and obtained the break misplaced every of the 4 earlier World Sequence, successful simply two of 18 video games.
Dodger supervisor Dave Roberts dismissed that historical past Friday.
“I actually don’t suppose the week layoff had something to do with tonight,” he mentioned. “We had been rested. I believed we had been in a great place. We had a 2-0 lead. So I don’t suppose that had something to do with it.”
Blake Snell, the pitcher who gave up that lead, dismissed the break as effectively.
“There’s no excuses. I should be higher,” mentioned Snell, who went 10 days between begins, his longest break since coming off the injured record in August. “I don’t care if it’s a month off. Discover a strategy to be prepared.”
He wasn’t in opposition to the Blue Jays. After averaging 16 pitches an inning in 14 earlier begins, he wanted 29 to get by means of the primary inning Friday. And after giving up two runs and 6 hits in 21 innings this postseason, he gave up 5 runs and eight hits in simply five-plus innings in Toronto, with two of these runs approaching Dalton Varsho’s fourth-inning residence run, the one homer Snell has conceded to a left-handed hitter this yr.
Emmet Sheehan, who adopted Snell to the mound, hadn’t pitched in two weeks. He had his worst outing of the yr, dealing with 4 batters and watching three of them rating.
“I felt good going into the sport. I felt the identical as I’ve been,” he mentioned. “I believed I made some good pitches, they usually made some actually good swings.
“It’s not an excellent feeling.”
A protracted break can have an effect on pitchers greater than hitters as a result of after throwing with a barely fatigued arm all season, they abruptly really feel recent and robust and their pitches lose a few of their motion.
“You don’t need to really feel too good. You are feeling too good, you attempt to throw too onerous since you really feel good. And it doesn’t go the place you need it,” mentioned Will Klein, who mopped up for the Dodgers, pitching a scoreless eighth inning. “[The ball] doesn’t go the place you need it to since you’re used to pitching just a little down, like 90 or 95%. You’re by no means actually at 100.
‘There’s such a factor [as] too recent.”
Klein’s final look in a big-league sport was a month in the past; since then he’s been figuring out on the Dodgers’ facility in Arizona. He mentioned the crew tried to maintain the remainder of their pitchers of their acquainted routine with bullpen periods or simulated video games, however it’s not the identical as throwing in high-leverage conditions in opposition to opposing hitters in a World Sequence sport earlier than 44,353 followers, as Snell, Sheehan and Klein needed to do Friday.
And the historical past exhibits the Dodgers aren’t the primary crew who’ve been damaged by the break.
However that they had lower than 24 hours to attend for Sport 2, which implies they’re again into the comfy — if exhausting — routine that obtained them to the World Sequence within the first place.
“There’s one other one tomorrow,” Klein mentioned. “We are able to’t go and unlose right now, as a lot as we’d prefer to. Fascinated about right now isn’t going that can assist you win tomorrow.”
