LOS ANGELES -- After two very different games at Dodger Stadium, the National League Championship Series is all tied up and we've decided ... precisely nothing.
The New York Mets' 7-3 win on Monday more or less reset the series, not just in games won but in less tangible categories. They've stemmed the momentum by which the Los Angeles Dodgers had been propelled since they turned the tide against San Diego in the NLDS and, perhaps, created momentum of their own. Plus, with a travel day on Tuesday, both teams enter Game 3 with fresh bullpens and extra time to heal for key players going through nagging injuries -- good news for Freddie Freeman, Brandon Nimmo and Gavin Lux.
So after two games in 18 hours, we're kind of back where we started? Only now we're looking at a best-of-five matchup with the Mets owning home-field advantage. That last factor might seem huge, but, well, if you've been watching the playoffs the past few years -- it's barely a factor. Neither, really, is the momentum that for now feels like shifted from the Dodgers to the Mets over the course of one nine-inning contest.
"Each game is going to bring a new task," Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts said. "We all have the same mindset. When we lose, we're all saying to flush it. When we win, let's ride the momentum. But there's no secret to it. The game will dictate what happens."
That we know nothing doesn't mean we don't know anything, which might or might not be a paraphrase of something Yogi Berra once said. There are things to be gleaned from these first two contests, little factors that might well loom large in the days to come.
The Mets go big
When the going gets tough, the Mets go deep.
We've seen this play out over and over ever since the Mets adopted resiliency as their defining trait. There was the Francisco Lindor go-ahead shot in Atlanta that clinched New York's shot in the postseason in the first place. There was Pete Alonso poking a season-saving three-run homer off a Devin Williams changeup to lift the Mets past Milwaukee. And Monday, we got a two-fer: Lindor started off the game with a leadoff blast to right, giving the Mets the instant lead, their first run of the series and the first run any Dodgers opponent had scored since Game 3 against the Padres. Then after Dave Roberts ordered up a walk for Lindor to load the bases in the second, Mark Vientos hit a ninth-pitch grand slam off Landon Knack.
One thing in common with each of the blows described is they all came on the road. Maybe it's reading too much into it, but coming up with homer after homer with season-high championship leverage indexes on the board sure seems like a trait of a team with a great deal of mental toughness -- nothing says "we ain't dead yet" better than pounding the ball over a fence, especially when you do it on your opponent's home field.
They've also feasted on relievers: The Mets are hitting .270 with a .426 slugging percentage against them after Monday's win and that doesn't include Lindor's blast off Ryan Brasier, who as an opener was technically a starter. Teams other than the Mets are hitting 270 with a .307 slug against bullpens. New York's six homers against relievers (again, not including the one off Brasier) is twice as many as any of the other surviving teams.
Overall, the Mets offense hasn't been great, though you can say that about all the remaining teams. But it has been great when it's had to be and needed to be. And when the Mets have been backed into a corner, they've coming out swinging -- big.
Mark Vientos is for real
Offense is so hard to come by in the postseason, even for the game's biggest stars. We're seeing it right now from teams that have actually been winning, as both sure-fire league MVPs (Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani) have struggled to sustain production this October.
Vientos, on the other hand, has been unflappable in his first exposure to playoff baseball. After a quiet Game 1, his grand slam gives him three homers and 11 RBI to go with a .378/.410/.676 slash line during the playoffs. His win probability added is 1.18, a country mile ahead of everyone else (Lindor comes in second at 0.68).
Translation: Vientos is not just producing, he's producing in difference-making spots. You might think a rookie under such a spotlight would get too aggressive when someone is walked to face him. But Monday, not only did Vientos go deep, he went deep on the ninth pitch of the at-bat. He saw seven Knack sliders in that sequence, fouling off four of them and laying off the rest. Finally, he hit a four-seamer out to right-center.
"I didn't think he was going to give me a fastball," Vientos said. "That was my approach was to see a heater up, but I wasn't expecting heater."
And yet he hit it out.
The emergence of Vientos is huge for the Mets lineup as it makes opponents' problem of "don't let Lindor beat us" ever more complicated, especially with Nimmo and Alonso looming next. The intentional walk Roberts called for to avoid Lindor wasn't anything out of the box -- but it's going to be increasingly difficult for Mets opponents to treat Vientos as any less of a threat than the veterans around him.
Uh-oh Ohtani
Betts was asked about some weird Shohei Ohtani splits after the game.
"Shohei will be fine," Betts said. He declined to say more.
But those splits, they are weird, Mookie. Ohtani is 6-for-8 with runners on base during the playoffs -- and 0-for-19 with the bases empty. Since Ohtani is the Dodgers' leadoff hitter, that kind of matters. Even for someone who hit 54 homers during the season, getting on base is still part of the job description. (He did walk twice in Game 2.)
This is probably just a really surreal example of small-sample theater, but it merits examination. Is there some magical pitch sequence that neutralizes Ohtani when no one is on base but can't be deployed when there are ducks on the pond?
The answer is: Of course not and even if there were, we wouldn't be able to tell from one postseason data set. With runners on, Ohtani has done damage against hard stuff and breaking stuff alike. With no one on base, he's done no damage against anything. He has struck out six times against slider/sweeper/curve offerings and if anything, perhaps he is just getting a little too big with no one on base.
"Shohei will be fine," Betts said, as a reminder. And you know he's almost certainly right. In fact, if you're a Mets fan, it probably makes you a little nervous that Ohtani has been held down as much as he has to this point.
Walker Buehler's day off
There was chatter before the game about whether the Dodgers should have simply started Buehler in Game 2 rather than opting for a fancy bullpen strategy, which tends not to work when none of your bullpenners put up zeroes.
In a seven-game series, though, the Dodgers were going to have to do this at some point -- and perhaps will have to go this route twice if the series goes long. Doing it in Game 2, in advance of an off-day and a day after the bullpen had a light workload thanks to Jack Flaherty's Game 1 gem, made a lot of sense.
Asked about this before the game, Roberts said, "I like Walker on the road." When asked to expand on that, he added, "Experience. He's done it."
It's an easy response but the fact of the matter is that over 10 career playoff starts at Dodger Stadium, Buehler has a 2.01 ERA, while on the road over six starts, it's 5.81. Because the bullpen game didn't work out, it's easy to nitpick now. Buehler can fend off any further second-guessing by dealing Wednesday.
What did Edwin Diaz unlock?
Diaz was asked to get four outs and did so. He also finished with a flourish, striking out Betts, Teoscar Hernandez and Freeman to end it, with the first two K's coming on fastballs that ranged up toward the 100-mph barrier.
Diaz's slider, when it's on, has always set him apart, but in the ninth inning, he was leaning more on the heater because of the Mets' four-run advantage.
"I got a good lead to challenge them," Diaz said. "That's what I did. I gave up the blooper and then I walked Ohtani. And then trusted my fastball and threw it right in the middle for them."
It's something to watch. Diaz has not been invincible this season, but when he's flashing the kind of stuff he did in Game 2 against the some of the Dodgers' best hitters, you see glimpses of what he was before hurting his knee last year.
If that version of Diaz is around for the rest of the series, it shortens the game for the Mets -- especially important because their bullpen overall is thinner than that of the Dodgers.