LOS ANGELES — The final stat line doesn’t look pretty. His final pitch was a meatball that Yasiel Puig crushed 439 feet into the left-field…
LOS ANGELES — The final stat line doesn’t look pretty.
His final pitch was a meatball that Yasiel Puig crushed 439 feet into the left-field grandstand at Dodger Stadium.
But if and when the Boston Red Sox finish off the Los Angeles Dodgers and win the World Series, Eduardo Rodriguez’s staff-saving effort in Game 4 should not be forgotten.
Rodriguez was not supposed to start on Saturday. He wasn’t supposed to start in the postseason at all.
If scheduled Game 4 starter Nathan Eovaldi hadn’t thrown six innings out of the bullpen in the Dodgers’ 18-inning marathon win Friday, Rodriguez might well have finished the postseason with only a few scant, unmemorable outings out of the bullpen. The left-hander entered Game 4 having faced only two batters in the World Series — one in Game 1 and another in Game 3.
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“I was working out and doing everything as a starter,” Rodriguez said after the Red Sox’s 9-6 comeback win. “I was thinking all the time that I was going to get the opportunity.”
With no more compelling options available, Red Sox manager Alex Cora tapped Rodriguez to open Game 4, his first start in over a month. And on a night when his team’s bullpen was obviously taxed, while pitching on zero days’ rest, Rodriguez began the game by holding the Dodgers scoreless for five innings, matching zeroes with Los Angeles starter Rich Hill.
“He was amazing,” Cora said after the game. “From pitch one, his stuff was there. 95-96 (mph), good changeup, good command, able to elevate pitches. He was in command. Probably his best outing of the season.”
“Obviously, he’s a guy that hadn’t started in a while,” reliever Joe Kelly said. “Eddie is one of those guys who, no matter how big the situation is, he’s always calm, and he’s always collected. But for him to go that deep in the game was really impressive.”
Things unraveled for Rodriguez at the start of the sixth, when he plunked David Freese to lead off the inning. A batter later, Justin Turner squibbed a ball out of the reach of Eduardo Nunez at third base and down the line for a double that pushed Freese to third.
The Red Sox intentionally walked Manny Machado to load the bases for Cody Bellinger, and Rodriguez got seemingly exactly the result he wanted: A hard-hit grounder right at infielder. But after Steve Pearce fielded it and fired home for the second out of the inning, catcher Christian Vazquez threw the ball away while trying to double up Bellinger at first. Turner scored from second on the overthrow, giving the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.
Yasiel Puig followed Bellinger. On a 3-1 pitch, Rodriguez left a fastball in the middle of the plate, and Puig slaughtered it. By the time it came down, Puig was circling the bases with his arms aloft and the Dodgers had a four-run lead. Rodriguez slammed his glove to the ground in frustration.
“I pushed him too hard,” Cora said.
“Since I was a little kid, I never felt that emotion right there,” Rodriguez said. “Never in my life, that emotion that I felt in that moment. My reaction was to throw my glove down. You ever get mad because you got beat? That’s what happens.
« As a pitcher, you know when you throw a pitch and you know it’s going to be out of the ballpark. You know right away. Right when I threw the ball, as soon as he hit the ball, I knew it was going to be out. The only thing that came to my mind — I don’t know, it just blew my mind right there. I got mad.”
Cora pulled Rodriguez for reliever Matt Barnes after Puig’s homer. After Barnes got the final out of the sixth, Rodriguez said, several of his teammates came to him in the clubhouse with a message: We’ll pick you up.
“They all came inside and told me, ‘Bro, you did your best; that was the best game we ever saw you pitching, and we’re going to get your back,’ » the pitcher said. “‘Thanks for doing what you do, and we’re going to win this game.’”
That they did: Mitch Moreland hit a three-run homer in the seventh to draw the Red Sox close, then Steve Pearce hit a solo shot in the eighth to tie it, and a five-run rally in the ninth put Boston ahead for good.
“I’m happy like I’ve never been before,” Rodriguez said, when asked about the comeback win. “I’ve never had that feeling in my life — feeling that happy like it was in that moment. Especially when you win a game like that, you’ve got to get your emotions together.”
The night’s wild highs and dreary lows come with the territory, Rodriguez explained.
“This is the World Series, man,” he said. “Things happen quickly. He hit the homer. I got mad, went inside, came back out, then we start scoring runs…. The good part is we won the game.”
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