LOS ANGELES — What can we say? It’s baseball.
One evening, the Dodgers run it up against the Yankees, 18-2, and look like World Series champions. The next night, with their ace on the mound and with a series sweep over last October’s opponents within reach, they go down meekly, about as futilely as superagent Scott Boras looked when he attempted to snag a foul popup that landed near his front row seat late in Sunday’s game.
A couple of crooked numbers on the linescore did the trick for the Yankees Sunday, three runs in the third and two in the fifth off of Yoshinobu Yamamoto contributing to a 7-3 New York victory that prevented a weekend sweep, in the same manner – though not as grisly – as a bullpen blowup Wednesday in Cleveland derailed a potential sweep there.
Still, the Dodgers are 36-23, a half-game worse than the 36-22 Yankees, and after kind of a muddled stretch, they’ve won seven of 11 and remain two games ahead of San Diego and three ahead of San Francisco in the National League West.
“This wasn’t as bad as the third game in Cleveland,” manager Dave Roberts said, understating things considerably, but then he got to the heart of how success is measured over 162 games:
“I think at the end of the day, you just keep winning series and it’ll take care of itself.”
So, in those terms, the Dodgers are 13-6-1 in series victories. Then again, they were 10-4-1 before they played the Angels two weeks ago.
Another development to come out of Sunday evening: Ryan Yarbrough made out like a bandit. Friday, he received his World Series ring for being part of last year’s Dodgers roster, although by the time they were pouring champagne, he’d been a Toronto Blue Jay for four months. (And hopefully his new teammates have gotten over their sour memories of last October).
Sunday, he limited the Dodgers to four hits and Tommy Edman’s ninth home run in his six innings, getting 17 swings and misses while never breaking 90 and throwing mostly cutters (82.2 mph average) and sweepers (70.8).
The Dodgers likely knew what to expect, but that’s not always a solution.
“I mean, I have a good feel for what he likes to do,” catcher Will Smith said. “Just didn’t work out per se.”
Roberts joked before the game that he hoped Yarbrough would receive his ring Sunday, maybe to distract him a bit. No such luck.
One positive for the Dodgers was the continued re-emergence of Max Muncy. After a two-homer, seven RBI day in Saturday’s rout, he added a single in the fifth and his seventh homer in the seventh. In a 10-game stretch that began with a 1-for-3 day against Arizona May 20, Muncy is hitting .363 with four homers, 14 RBI and a 1.153 OPS. Before that stretch began, he was hitting .205 with three homers and a .661 OPS.
Yes, he said, the glasses he started wearing a few weeks ago probably have helped. Maybe.
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “Definitely can’t deny it. I always say you don’t really take coincidence in baseball. If you feel like something’s helping you out, then you keep doing it. And, you know, for me, that’s kind of been the case that it’s hard to deny since I started wearing them, I’ve been hitting the ball better, and seeing the ball better. Ever since I started wearing them, I feel like I’ve cut my strikeout rate by a lot. And, you know, that was a big thing for me.”
(So if I change the prescription on my glasses … nah. I could never hit anyway.)
Consider: In this 10-game stretch, Muncy has fanned five times in 33 at-bats. Before that, he’d struck out 46 times in 143.
Earlier, Edman hit his ninth home run, but his first in 18 games. Meanwhile, Andy Pages hit his 11th homer in the seventh, two batters before Muncy hit his, and was 2 for 4 to raise his average to .278. He continues to prove that he belongs in the big leagues, though the airmailed throw from left field that allowed the Yankees’ first run to score in the first and enabled two other runners to move up was a reminder that there’s still growing to do.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto struggled: Seven hits, four earned runs, three walks and 96 pitches in 3⅔ innings, unusual considering the 1.97 ERA and three wins in a row he carried into Sunday’s start. Which is another reminder not to take things for granted in this game, or to cling to expectations on any particular day. I’m guessing some who were following along noted that Landon Knack was pitching Saturday and figured, “OK, but Yamamoto’s pitching the rubber game of the series Sunday.”
Oops.
But the trick is for the larger trends to hold up, and that seems to be happening. A graphic on Sunday’s ESPN broadcast noted that this was the third time in 50 years that both of the previous year’s World Series teams were playing at a .600 pace going into June. So those who billed this weekend as a potential World Series preview are still looking good, for now.
“Like I said (Saturday), we were playing sort of middling baseball,” Roberts said. “And when these guys came to town, I think that we ramped up our focus.”
So, as Muncy noted, “We just took two of three from a really, really good team. We’re obviously upset that we didn’t get this one, but we played two really good games. You know from the offensive standpoint we battled back today. And we put together good at bats, just the result wasn’t there. So you try to focus on the positives and move forward.”
And is the best explanation, simply, that’s baseball?
“Sometimes,” Muncy said.
jalexander@scng.com
