Inside the Mookie Betts play call that won NLDS Game 2 for Dodgers

Philadelphia – Even fans of the dodgers have been imbued with the tradition of Kirk Gibson may not remember the name of Mel Didier.

Didier was the scout that had issued this warning to the 1988 Dodgers: if you are faced with Dennis Eckersley, the powerful closer for Oakland athletics, and the count is full, he will launch a stolen door cursor.

Ecorsley launched it, Gibson hit him for a Home Run and the Dodgers won the World Series.

If these dodgers win the World Series, no one will find it difficult to remember the name of Mookie Betts, of course. On Monday, however, Betts pushed the Dodgers to a victory for the series of national league championships – not with his bat and not with his glove, but with the memory and the ability to compete with Didier.

“His mind has so far been advanced,” said Dodgers coach Dino Ebel about Betts. “It was the ball game right there.”

With the race for tie the second goal and none of the ninth round, he was calm in a crazy house. While the Dodgers Infielders gathered in the mound and Alex Vesia entered the enclosure of the Lights, Betts redesigned in a game in which he had participated once, in a August match against the Angels. Miguel Rojas had taught him the so-called “wheel game”.

“All he had to do was tell me once,” said Betts. “For me, it was like a situation to do or to do.

“I just made a decision and I drove with it.”

On the mound, in the middle of bedlam, Betts put the wheel game. It is a Bunt cover: with a runner on the second goal, the third basic player and the first base player charge at home, with the idea that we would feed the blow and throw the runner in the third.

During any previous decade, the Dodgers would have practiced this game in training in the spring, on several occasions.

“We don’t even really practice the wheels, the launchers no longer hitting,” said third goal player Max Mancy. “There are very few times when you are 100% sure that a guy goes to Bunt.”

It was time. The Phillies had opened the ninth with three consecutive strokes, including a double of two points from Nick Castellanos.

The Dodgers led, 4-3, without any and Castellanos on the second goal. Phillies manager Rob Thomson said he wanted to play for the draw and try his luck to match the enclosure of his team’s lifts against the Dodgers enclosure in additional sleeves.

And for the “Never Bunt” crowd: the chance to score a round is slightly higher with a runner on the third goal with a withdrawal than with a runner on the second goal and none. The phillies had the bottom of the order to come – starting with the interior field player Bryson Stott, which the Dodgers had evaluated as a good loot.

Betts remembered how he asked Rojas when to operate the wheel game.

“In a situation to do or die,” Rojas told him.

Betts therefore took matters into hand and put the game.

“I don’t know if it was very comfortable, but someone should do it,” said Betts.

“I thought that if there was a good time to make a decision and ride with it, it was time.”

Dodgers’ third goal player Max Muncy is launching the third after fueling the second goal of the Phillies, Bryson Stott, during the ninth round of NLDS match 2 on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Muncy took care of himself and, if the ball had been blurred to him, I would put Betts covering the third base. The first goal player, Freddie Freeman, then declared that he would bill and, if the ball was not blurred, would cover the second goal so that Stott could not move forward, because the second goal player Tommy Edman would cover first. Later, on his pitchcom, Vesia said he had heard the order to cover the second goal.

As the Dodgers manager Dave Roberts arrived at the mound, the Infielders said that the game was underway.

“When Doc came out and changed the pitch, we talked to him and he was on board,” said Muncy. “I’m going to credit Mook. It was his idea. “

Betts said: “It was one of the times Doc called and said, you discover it – in a very positive way. And we did it.”

Rojas called Betts “an extension of the manager in the field”.

Rojas said: “I am happy that he called him right on the field. Because it was the right game with the good runner, knowing that the guy was going at the same time.”

It all talks about the intuition and intuition of Betts, but the playoffs are not the time to “trust the process”. The after-season is the moment when the good call is the one that really works.

For Stott or anyone else, said Thomson, a striker who sees the wheel game in motion should forget and swing, given the holes left by two Infielders loading the plate and the other two rushing to cover a base.

Stott Buntena.

The first problem for phillies was that they had no one available to tighten castellanos. Aside from a backup receiver, he had two players left: Harrison Bader, playing with a painful groin, and Weston Wilson, which the phillies had to save to run to play.

The second problem for the phillies was that the dodgers had only run the wheel game once this season, so even the best advanced scouts could not have warned the phillies to get married.

“This is something we have in our round,” said Rojas.

The third most critical problem for phillies was that Betts had retarmed near the second base, Castellanos umbrage. As Stott could have seen Betts take off for the third, it was too late.

“Mookie did an excellent job to disguise the wheel game,” said Thomson.

Muncy aligned the ball proper, and Betts beat Castellanos in the bag by so much that Betts had time to drop the knee and block the bag before scoring Castellanos, holding the ball even when Castellanos overthrew.

“These guys have performed it perfection,” said Roberts. “It was much more difficult – they made it much easier than that. And for me, it was our only chance, really, to win this match at that time. ”

If Muncy did not align the ball properly or did not make a good throw, or if Betts did not beat Castellanos in the bag or scoring it, the Phillies would have had the link to the third goal and the winning race at the first goal without any.

But they did not do it, which meant that the single that followed did not link the scoring. Two strikers later, the dodgers had won.

The game would be quite difficult for life stop for life. Betts is in his first season as a full -time stop.

“It shows his intuition in the game,” said Muncy. “It’s without for nothing.

Said Ebel: “He is obsessed with being a great player. And he always learns. He will always improve. This is the frightening thing on this subject.”

While the Dodgers were heading for a happy flight to return to Los Angeles, Betts offered this game a five -star review.

“I’m going to remove my dodgers hat and put a fan hat,” he said. “I think it was a really dope baseball match.”