Dodgers blow lead then drop game five as season ends
- by Grant Boone
- in Sports
- — Oct 11, 2019
The Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a two-run homer by their second batter, Max Muncy, and increased their lead to 3-0 on Kike Hernandez's second-inning homer in the decisive game of the best-of-five series.
St. Louis, however, became the first team to score in the first inning and the first team to do so without hitting any home run.
The Nationals will open the NLCS on Friday at St. Louis, as the Cardinals won Game 5 of their NLDS 13-1 over the Atlanta Braves earlier Wednesday. Joe Kelly took the mound for the Dodgers in the ninth and retired the side in order. Their start reflected that as they got off to a 3-0 lead. But I like how manager Dave Martinez's Nationals - written off by many when Bryce Harper left in the offseason - have come together as a team, including rallying in the NL wild-card games so they can play loose while all the pressure is on the Dodgers.
But they may never understand his actions in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, an inexplicable 7-3 defeat to the Nationals.
Kershaw gave up back-to-back homers to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto, respectively.
There was a moment in the ninth inning of Game 5 where almost everyone thought the game was over. The fans had faith in us.
This year, he gave up a 10th-inning grand slam that prevented the Dodgers from making it back to the World Series for a third-straight year. "We believed in ourselves, everybody came through for us".
The Nationals/Montreal Expos franchise won a postseason series for only the second time, the first since the Expos beat Philadelphia in a 1981 Division Series caused by the midseason players' strike only to lose to the Dodgers in the NLCS. He has a 4.43 ERA in 32 postseason appearances, almost double his superb 2.44 ERA over a dozen regular seasons.
"I'm not going to hang my head", Kershaw said. Everything people say is true right now about the postseason. Roberts didn't second-hesitate to stay with Kershaw in the eighth.
After the game (or in the seventh inning, you never know with Dodgers fans), some upset people chose to run over a Kershaw jersey with their cars.
But he allowed just one earned run in 11 ⅓ innings (0.79 ERA) over nine outings in the 2018 postseason.
