World Series: The Dodgers Game 5 challenge — turning away a tough customer
10/30/2024 06:18 PM
World Series: The Dodgers Game 5 challenge — turning away a tough customer
by Cary Osborne
The next biggest game of their lives is juxtaposed against the next biggest game of his life.
The Dodger offense has the opportunity to help lead the Dodgers to a World Series championship. It faces reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole — who in Game 1 limited the Dodgers to one run over six innings.
Dodger third baseman Max Muncy has said a few times this postseason that the approach is not to concern themselves with the name of the pitcher on the mound. Cole, reputationally, has one of the biggest names.
Cole is pitching a World Series Game 5 for the second time in his career, last doing it for the Houston Astros in 2019 when the ace allowed one run over seven innings.
"With Cole, there's no question about his stuff, the way he pitches. He's one of the best because the stuff that he has and the way that he approaches every hitter, he's not an easy guy to go face," said Dodger left fielder Teoscar Hernández. "He's not going to give a lot of pitches to hit to anybody. You just try to make the adjustment during the games and preparation before the game and just go execute it. "
Hernández has faced Cole 31 times in his career. He is 6-for-29 with two walks and a home run.
Hernández was 1-for-3 against Cole in World Series Game 1 with a single. It was one of four hits Cole allowed. He didn't walk anybody.
"It definitely helps," said shortstop Tommy Edman on facing Cole five days ago. "He's still a great pitcher and does a great job of understanding what he needs to do to get guys out. Having seen him gives a better of idea of how his pitches move. Hopefully it will help us out."
The Dodgers are going to see a strike thrower — 67.2% of the time in the regular season.
They're going to face a pitcher with a clean delivery who hides the ball well and creates more deception by accelerating his arm to sell his secondary pitches. The four-seamer, which accounted for 51% of his pitches in Game 1, is generally 96 mph. He was amped in Game 1, and it averaged nearly 97 mph and touched 99.
And he can vary the spin rate to further deceive.
The four-seamer limited opponents to a .189 average and .365 slugging percentage during the regular season. His curveball, which he threw 11 times in Game 1 and followed his four-seamer seven times, was his next most effective pitch during the regular season. Opponents hit .209 with a .239 slugging percentage against it.
It's been his best pitch against right-handed batters the last two seasons.
He has punished left-handed batters with the four-seamer and slider the last three seasons.
On the Dodgers' side, they're not missing pitches in the strike zone — swinging and missing (in order of World Series games) three, five, five and six times. But the Yankees are doing their best to drag Dodger hitters out of the strikezone, which may explain some of the struggles.
The following batters have seen fewer than 40% of pitches out of the strikezone:
Max Muncy: 30.4%
Shohei Ohtani: 31.3%
Tommy Edman: 36.2%
Mookie Betts: 37.3%
The top two of that group, Muncy and Ohtani are 2-for-27 in this series with four walks.
The Dodgers as a team are batting .206/.287/.452/.739. Freddie Freeman, Tommy Edman and Teoscar Hernández are batting .318/.354/.818/1.172.
It's more than Cole, though, who presents a challenge. The Dodgers have scored one run against the Yankee bullpen over the last three games (16 total bullpen innings).
"I just see us breaking out tonight, I really do," said manager Dave Roberts. "Obviously Gerrit is a tough customer, but we've got to have good at-bats against him. We've seen a lot of these guys many times."
World Series: The Dodgers Game 5 challenge — turning away a tough customer was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
