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Daily Clips

October 10, 2015

LOS ANGELES DODGERS CLIPS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2015

DODGERS.COM: Kershaw fans 11 but LA falls short in Game 1 – Anthony DiComo and Ken Gurnick Dodgers make deGrom work, but can't cash in – Chris Haft No support sends Kershaw to hard-luck loss – Ken Gurnick deGrom-Kershaw duel exceeds hype – Lyle Spencer Could Game 1 loss lead to lineup changes? – Steve Bourbon Dodgers lean on Greinke to even NLDS at home – AJ Cassavell Greinke plans to stick with what works vs. Mets – Chris Haft deGrom, Kershaw K-fest makes MLB history – AJ Cassavell NYM-LAD Game 1 duel filled with cool facts – Joe Trezza Seager doubles on ball he thought was foul – Michael Clair Kershaw and deGrom make batters sad with 24 K's – Michael Clair Dodgers, Mets open series with grand pregame – David Adler All-4-One delivers national anthem before NLDS Game 1 – Matt Monagan Reactions, dancing and a fall top LDS GIFs – Chad Thornburg Oct. 9 Don Mattingly postgame interview – MLB.com Cards cool Cubs, Mets deFeat LA; Game 2's at 5:30, 9 ET – Chad Thornburg Through criticism, Mattingly has LA in position – Ken Gurnick Puig, Peralta on Dodgers' Division Series roster – Ken Gurnick LA TIMES: Dodgers Dugout: Dodgers vs. Mets Game 1 thoughts, Game 2 preview – Houston Mitchell Despite road struggles, Mets' Noah Syndergaard will start Game 2 – Zach Helfand How did the seventh inning become Clayton Kershaw's postseason blackhole? – Steve Dilbeck Mets' Jacob deGrom unlikely to face Dodgers in Game 4 of NLDS – Dylan Hernandez Corey Seager starts for Dodgers, manages one hit against Mets – Zach Helfand Dodgers' Don Mattingly makes right call to pull Clayton Kershaw – Bill Plaschke David Wright delivers for Mets after Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw leaves the mound – Dylan Hernandez Left-handers give Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw problems – Bill Shaikin There was something familiar in Dodgers' 3-1, Game 1 loss to Mets – Steve Dilbeck Inning by inning: Dodgers drop NLDS opener to New York Mets, 3-1 – Zach Helfand 'Matt Harvey gave his arm already for the New York Mets,' agent says – Bill Shaikin Mark Walter, Cubs season-ticket holder, rooting hard for the Dodgers – Bill Shaikin Dodger Stadium is slowly filling up for postseason opener – Steve Dilbeck Dodgers' Corey Seager says he feels no extra pressure batting third – Zach Helfand Mets Manager Terry Collins: 'Heat is on the home team' to win – Steve Dilbeck Don Mattingly explains Dodgers lineup and roster decisions – Dylan Hernandez Vin Scully: Voice of the Dodgers, soundtrack to a California childhood – Cathleen Decker OC REGISTER: Familiar frustration for Dodgers as Clayton Kershaw is outpitched by Jacob deGrom in 3-1 loss – Bill Plunkett Miller: Mets' Jacob deGrom beats Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw at his game – Jeff Miller Moura: Dodgers had better options than Pedro Baez in critical seventh inning – Pedro Moura Against odds, Mets left-handed hitters do the damage against Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw – Ryan Kartje Dodgers' NLDS roster includes late bloomers – Bill Plunkett NLDS Game 2: Mets at Dodgers, Saturday, 6 p.m. – Pedro Moura Dodgers announce NLDS roster for Mets series that begins tonight – Pedro Moura LA DAILY NEWS: Whicker: Kershaw, deGrom turn game 1 into a showdown of arms – Mark Whicker Kershaw’s postseason frustration continues in Game 1 of NLDS – JP Hoornstra

Hoffarth: It’s a Blue October with no Vin Scully – Tom Hoffarth Los Angeles Dodgers’ Game 1 loss, the morning after – Mark Whicker Keeping the book: Dodgers fans keep art of scorekeeping alive – David Montero Daniel Murphy made Clayton Kershaw pay for location mistake – Jaime A. Cardenas Live box score from NLDS Game 1: Mets at Dodgers – LA Daily News Photos: NLDS Game 1 - Dodgers vs. Mets – Staff Does Dodger Stadium have a beer equality problem? – David Montero Corey Seager is youngest LA Dodgers position player to start in postseason – JP Hoornstra TRUEBLUELA.COM: Dodgers offense struggles again in Game 1 loss to Mets – Eric Stephen Jacob deGrom dominates, Clayton Kershaw suffers another defeat – Eric Stephen Dodger Stadium NLDS pregame info, national anthems, first pitches, gate times – Eric Stephen Dodgers finalize NLDS roster vs. Mets – Eric Stephen Dodgers regular season numbers vs. Mets – Eric Stephen Corey Seager bats 3rd for Dodgers in his first playoff game – Eric Stephen Mets regular season numbers vs. Dodgers – Eric Stephen If this video doesn't get you jacked up for Dodgers playoffs, nothing will – Ryan Walton ESPN LA: Mets' deGrom too much for the Dodgers; plus DS notes, highlights – Buster Olney The mastery and mystery of Zack Greinke – Steve Wulf One of these days, Dodgers might have to win a Clayton Kershaw postseason start – Mark Saxon Friday's Top 5: Mets' Jacob deGrom (13 K's) outduels Clayton Kershaw – David Schoenfield How deGrom dominated the Dodgers – ESPN Stats & Information Seventh-inning woes come back for Dodgers, Clayton Kershaw – Mark Saxon Jacob deGrom outduels Clayton Kershaw with 13 K's as Mets top Dodgers – Associated Press How Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke have made each other better – Mark Saxon Friday's Mets-Dodgers Game 1 lineups – Adam Rubin Yasiel Puig officially makes Dodgers' NLDS roster – Mark Saxon Five things you need to know about the 2015 Dodgers – Mark Saxon DODGER INSIDER: Meet frontier doctor Walter O’Malley – Jon Weisman Remembering ’65: World Series Game 4 – Jon Weisman Heat is on Dodgers after NLDS Game 1 defeat – Jon Weisman Corey Seager batting third in playoff debut – Jon Weisman Will playoffs take Dodgers over the moon? – Jon Weisman Dodgers announce NLDS roster – Jon Weisman Zach Greinke is the bridge over troubled water – Cary Osborne Emotional reward: Ella Annear’s first pitch – Jon Weisman DODGERS PHOTO BLOG: 10/9/15-Something Current-NLDS Game 1-LAD-1, Mets-3 - Jon SooHoo and Jill Weisleder YAHOO SPORTS: Kershaw doesn't fight Mattingly's fateful move in another playoff defeat – 'I put myself in that spot' – Tim Brown NBC LA: Dodgers Wilt Under Postseason Pressure, Fall to Mets 3-1 in Game 1 of NLDS – Michael Duarte Getting to Dodger Stadium for the National League Division Series – NBCLA FOX SPORTS: OCTOBER MOMENT: MATTINGLY YANKS KERSHAW – Rob Neyer

Historic hurlers: Kershaw, deGrom set record in Game 1 of NLDS – FOX Sports Mets' Duda broke a sign at Dodger Stadium during BP before NLDS – FOX Sports USA Today: Mets take command of NLDS series, beat Dodgers in Game 1 – Jorge Ortiz KTLA: President Obama Visit, Along With Dodgers Playoff Game and US-Mexico Soccer Match, to Create Traffic Mess for L.A. Drivers – Tracy Bloom THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: Letter of Recommendation: Vin Scully – Jacob Silverman SI.COM: Mets’ deGrom outduels Kershaw in Game 1 to leave Dodgers in tough spot – Ben Reiter NEWSDAY.COM: Tale of two franchises: One rich, one prudent – David Lennon NEW YORK TIMES: Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw Takes the Loss, but Don Mattingly Takes the Criticism – Karen Crouse ESPNDEPORTES: Jacob deGrom se impuso a Clayton Kershaw – ESPNDeportes.com Dodgers y Mets abren la contienda – Rigo Cervantez

LOS ANGELES DODGERS DAILY CLIPS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2015

DODGERS.COM

Kershaw fans 11 but LA falls short in Game 1

By Anthony DiComo and Ken Gurnick

LOS ANGELES -- The roar from the Mets' postgame clubhouse was audible through a concrete wall,

seeming to threaten Dodger Stadium's very foundation. The Mets had just upended the Dodgers, 3-1, in

Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Friday, behind seven shutout innings from Jacob

deGrom and key hits by David Wright and Daniel Murphy. In doing so, they had beaten Clayton Kershaw

and grabbed home-field advantage back from their hosts -- proving that they are not, as a reporter

suggested to general manager Sandy Alderson last month, simply "happy to be here."

"This is a good start for a team that hasn't been in the postseason for a long time," Mets manager Terry

Collins said. "We needed a confidence boost and Jake gave it to us."

Noah Syndergaard will square off tonight against Zack Greinke in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium, scheduled

for 9 ET/6 PT on TBS. The winner of Game 1 has gone on to win the NLDS 34 of 40 times.

By outpitching Kershaw, whose October struggles continued in the loss, deGrom delivered the Mets

their first postseason win since 2006. Only Wright, who capped the victory with a two-run single off

Pedro Baez in the seventh inning, was on both that Mets team and this one. Murphy, who opened the

scoring off Kershaw with a solo homer in the fourth, arrived two years later.

deGrom matched Tom Seaver's franchise record with 13 strikeouts in a postseason game. He and

Kershaw combined for the second-most ever in a playoff game while also becoming the first pitchers to

record at least 11 strikeouts in the same game in postseason history. Though two inherited runs made

Kershaw's final line look worse than his performance was, deGrom ensured that the NL's reigning MVP

would fall to 1-6 in nine career postseason starts.

"I got outpitched, basically that's the moral of the story," Kershaw said. "Jacob pitched an amazing

game. We battled him, got his pitch count up there, but he outpitched me, plain and simple."

MOMENTS THAT MATTERED

Captain clutch: This was what Wright envisioned during his long summer months, rehabbing his spinal

stenosis condition at a facility not far from Dodger Stadium. Wright ripped a 3-2 Baez pitch back up the

middle with two outs in the seventh, plating two runs to extend the Mets' margin to 3-0. Both runs went

on the line of Kershaw, who walked the bases loaded before giving way to Baez.

"That's just who he is," Collins said of Wright. "I have no other way to describe it. He's a big-time player

and when you need him, he seems to get the big hit."

Lost in left: Michael Cuddyer gave the Dodgers two early scoring opportunities, but they went wasted.

He misplayed Justin Turner's leadoff liner in the second inning into a double off his glove and took a bad

route on Corey Seager's two-out, opposite-field fly in the third inning that dropped just inside the foul

line for a ground-rule double. deGrom struck out the side in the second and fanned Gonzalez to end the

third.

"You've got an ace on the mound making tough pitches," Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis said. "You can't take

anything for granted just because you catch a break. We got guys out there and deGrom was

phenomenal."

Cracking Kershaw: Coming into the game with 12 homers off left-handed pitchers in his seven-year big

league career, Murphy crushed a 2-0 Kershaw fastball into the visiting bullpen to lead off the fourth. The

Mets totaled four hits in 6 2/3 innings against the National League's reigning MVP and Cy Young Award

winner, all of them from lefty batters.

"My first at-bat he chewed me up and spit me out," Murphy said. "The next at-bat I was able to get my

foot down just a little earlier. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes and I felt really fortunate to put a good

swing on the ball he threw me."

Rookies under pressure: The Dodgers started rookies Joc Pederson in center field and Seager at

shortstop. Pederson went 0-for-2 with an intentional walk and strikeout, Seager had a misplayed

double, two strikeouts and a popup batting third in the lineup.

SOUND SMART WITH YOUR FRIENDS

With 13 strikeouts, deGrom matched the franchise postseason record that Seaver set in Game 1 of the

1973 NL Championship Series. DeGrom's record-tying whiff came on his 121st and final pitch of the

night (one shy of his career high), an 86-mph changeup to pinch-hitter Chase Utley to end the seventh.

He and Kershaw combined for 24 strikeouts, one shy of Randy Johnson and Kevin Brown in 1998 NLDS

Game 1.

"If you love a pitchers' duel, that's about as good as it gets," Wright said. "You've got Jacob deGrom,

who came in maybe as a little bit of an unknown, going up against the great Clayton Kershaw, and he

matched him pitch for pitch."

WHAT'S NEXT

Mets: Syndergaard will make his postseason debut in Game 2, a 9 p.m. ET affair on TBS. The Mets chose

to slot Syndergaard second in their playoff rotation in part to limit Matt Harvey's innings, but also

because of what he has done in his first big league season. The hardest-throwing member of the NL's

hardest-throwing rotation, Syndergaard struck out 21 batters with one walk over his final two regular-

season starts, a span of 14 2/3 innings.

Dodgers: All Greinke did in his final regular-season tuneup was limit the Padres to one run on four hits in

eight innings. He won 14 of his last 15 decisions with a seven-inning no-decision in his only start against

the Mets in New York after the birth of his first baby. The game begins at 6 p.m. PT.

Dodgers make deGrom work, but can't cash in

By Chris Haft

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers' struggles to hit with men on base in Friday's opener of their

National League Division Series against the New York Mets guaranteed that a low-scoring game, which

was widely anticipated, would indeed occur.

That might be an unfair assessment of New York's 3-1 victory, given the overpowering excellence of

Mets starter Jacob deGrom. But the outcome might have been different had the Dodgers, who outhit

New York, 7-5, converted just one of their several early scoring opportunities.

The Dodgers went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, including 0-for-6 off deGrom. Yet they

actually executed their intended strategy against the mop-haired right-hander by frequently working

deep counts. deGrom threw 45 pitches in the first two innings, a dangerously high rate. However,

instead of forcing deGrom to weaken by throwing ball four or something hittable, the Dodgers set

themselves up for strikeouts, enabling deGrom to reach his historic total of 13.

"We got to deep counts," Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said. "But we weren't able to do much

after that."

Said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, "I thought we did a pretty good job with him of not chasing the

changeup or the breaking ball down, but with that you end up chasing some elevated fastballs, and I

think he beat us with that a little bit."

deGrom treated the Dodgers' initial scoring bid as if it were a minor nuisance. Justin Turner lined a

second-inning leadoff double off left fielder Michael Cuddyer's glove. deGrom responded by striking out

Andre Ethier and A.J. Ellis. Then, after intentionally walking Joc Pederson, deGrom fanned Clayton

Kershaw.

Turner's liner appeared catchable, leaving the impression that the Dodgers squandered a gift

opportunity. But, as Ellis said, "You've an ace [deGrom] out there on the mound making big pitches. You

can't take it for granted just because you catch a break."

The Dodgers continued to pressure deGrom. Corey Seager bounced an opposite-field, ground-rule

double to left with two outs in the third inning before deGrom struck out Gonzalez on a 3-2 pitch.

Turner singled to begin the fourth and, one out later, so did Ellis, who matched a franchise record by

lengthening his postseason hitting streak to 11 games. deGrom had a narrow escape as Kershaw ended

the inning by hoisting another full-count delivery to the left-center-field warning track. There, Yoenis

Cespedes hauled in the ball, which was one of Los Angeles' most promising-looking drives of the

evening.

"[Cespedes] was playing really shallow, so I thought I might have a chance there," Kershaw said. "But he

made it look pretty easy. He went back on it really well. I didn't think it was going to go out, but I

thought I might have gotten the double."

No support sends Kershaw to hard-luck loss

By Ken Gurnick

LOS ANGELES -- When Clayton Kershaw is asked after Game 1 of a postseason series about coming back

to pitch Game 4 on short rest, it's been a bad night for the Dodgers.

Kershaw struck out 11, had all of his pitches working and still was answering questions after another

October loss Friday night, 3-1 to the Mets, in the opener of the National League Division Series at

Dodger Stadium.

His teammates didn't score during his 6 2/3 innings, striking out 13 times against flame-throwing Jacob

deGrom and leaving Kershaw no margin for mistake. He allowed a solo home run to Daniel Murphy in

the fourth inning, walked the bases loaded in the seventh to force his departure and watched two of

those runners score on David Wright's two-run single off Pedro Baez.

"I got outpitched, basically that's the moral of the story," said Kershaw. "Jacob pitched an amazing

game. We battled him, got his pitch count up there, but he outpitched me, plain and simple."

All four hits Kershaw allowed were to left-handed hitters.

"Lefties had a good approach," he said. "I felt a little more comfortable against righties tonight. I don't

face that many lefties usually. Basically, tip your cap to them, that's the best thing to do."

So Kershaw is 1-6 in the postseason with a club-record five-game postseason losing streak, even if he

pitched well enough in this game to win with some run support. But a Dodgers lineup that included

rookies Corey Seager batting third and Joc Pederson (1-for-7 combined) couldn't solve deGrom, even

when left fielder Michael Cuddyer got lost on a pair of catchable fly balls that went for doubles.

"We'll find out," Kershaw said when asked if he could return on short rest after throwing 113 pitches.

"Hopefully, we'll push to four or five games, absolutely."

Kershaw returned on short rest in the 2013 NLDS after throwing 124 pitches and in the 2014 NLDS after

throwing 110 pitches.

"We've been in this spot before," said catcher A.J. Ellis. "Zack [Greinke, Saturday night's starter] came

back and tied things up last year. All we can do is focus on that and get to New York even."

The seventh inning for Kershaw proved decisive, as it did twice last year in the postseason against the

Cardinals. This time he walked Lucas Duda leading off, Ruben Tejada with one out and Curtis Granderson

with two outs to bring up Wright.

"They put good at-bats up that inning," said Ellis. "Duda did a good job making him bring the ball up,

laying off some tough pitches. Tejada had a good at-bat after being down, 0-1, and we didn't put him

away, so give him credit. Granderson makes you throw the ball over the plate. He did a really good job

laying off a tough 3-2 pitch. That inning steamrolled and Wright cashed it in. That was the separator."

Mattingly defended turning over a one-run game to a Baez vs. Wright matchup because of Baez's triple-

digit velocity. They had never faced each other previously and Baez had allowed only 15 of 40 inherited

runners to score this year.

Wright had a 12-pitch walk and two strikeouts against Kershaw, who said he couldn't argue being lifted

after issuing the three walks.

"Going into that inning we kind of looked at what his pitch count was, and kind of thought through

Granderson, if we got back to Wright, the fourth time through, David pumps on lefties pretty good," said

Mattingly. "Felt like that was going to be a spot if we got to that point, thought we were going to make a

move there."

Wright, who worked Kershaw for a 12-pitch walk in the first inning, jumped ahead in the count, 2-0,

before lining a 99 mph 3-2 pitch to center field.

"Baez did a good job driving that ball in there," said Ellis. "We were kind of in a box there. He got back in

the count to make it 3-2, but David stayed through the ball up the middle. I like that Petey was

aggressive."

deGrom-Kershaw duel exceeds hype

By Lyle Spencer

LOS ANGELES -- With Sandy Koufax in attendance, Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom delivered a

performance on Friday night worthy of the Brooklyn native and greatest living Dodger.

Kershaw was dominant with 11 strikeouts across 6 2/3 innings, but deGrom -- pick No. 272 overall by

the Mets in the ninth round of the 2010 Draft -- was better. Stetson University grads should be proud of

their fellow alum, deGrom.

The Mets' slender right-hander with the overpowering fastball tied Tom Seaver's postseason franchise

record with 13 strikeouts in a 3-1 victory in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. It will be in

Zack Greinke's hands to get the Dodgers even tonight when he faces Noah Syndergaard at 9:30 ET/6:30

PT on TBS

A capacity crowd numbering 54,428 watched Kershaw and deGrom stage an old-fashioned gunslinger's

duel through six innings, each racking up 11 punchouts -- a first in postseason history. Two whiffs in the

seventh brought deGrom to 13.

Daniel Murphy's fourth-inning home run into the Mets' bullpen was the only run before Kershaw lost

precise command of his high-octane stuff in the seventh.

Three walks -- the third, to Curtis Granderson, inches off the plate -- ended Kershaw's night with two

down. In came flamethrower Pedro Baez to face David Wright, who slammed a fastball to center for a

single and two runs, charged to the great lefty.

"I got outpitched," Kershaw said, flatly. "That's the moral of the story. Jake pitched an amazing game.

We battled and got deep in some counts, got his pitch count up there, but he outpitched me. Plain and

simple."

The difference was control -- and damage control. While deGrom's only walk was intentional, Kershaw

issued four passes. Two of the recipients, Lucas Duda and Ruben Tejada in the seventh, found their way

home.

The Cardinals in past Octobers have made Kershaw look very mortal. He's 1-6 in postseason play and at

times has lost his way. But this wasn't one of those times.

He left with two outs and a one-run deficit in the seventh. For six innings, apart from the one fastball

Murphy lifted, he was vintage Kershaw.

"Nobody stood up and cheered," Mets manager Terry Collins said when asked about his team's reaction

to Kershaw's departure and Baez's entry. "But it's nice to see him walk off the field. There were a lot of

great cheers when David got the hit up the middle."

Collins, who doesn't hide his admiration of Kershaw, is watching his guy, deGrom, evolve into that kind

of elite pitcher. This was his biggest step yet in the process.

"It's all about believing in yourself," Collins said, "and knowing that even if things aren't good that you

can still succeed. To have him go out there against Clayton tonight and win the game is a huge lift for us.

This was a big start for a team that hasn't been in the postseason for a long time."

Downplaying the showdown, deGrom said he "tried not to get caught up in it too much." His focus, he

added, was on mixing his pitches and getting ahead in counts. Mission accomplished.

Having stolen home-field advantage, the Mets know they can win the series by taking care of business at

Citi Field in Games 3 and 4, if it is required, on Monday and Tuesday.

This edge should allow Collins' troupe to play with freedom engaging Greinke as the Dodgers face

Syndergaard, a rocket-launcher in the mold of deGrom.

deGrom's 121 pitches were more than Collins would have liked, but deGrom maintained his 96-98 mph

fastball throughout.

"He had an electric fastball, for sure," said Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis, who extended his postseason

hitting streak to a franchise-record-tying 11 games with a single. "The adrenaline was definitely flowing.

We got some guys out there [on base], and deGrom was phenomenal."

The Dodgers left runners in scoring position in the second, third and fourth innings.

After Justin Turner's leadoff double fooled left fielder Michael Cuddyer for a leadoff double in the

second, deGrom struck out Andre Ethier, Ellis and Kershaw. In the third, rookie Corey Seager lofted a

ground-rule double to left, but deGrom snuffed Adrian Gonzalez, the Dodgers' most dangerous hitter,

on strikes.

Following singles by Turner and Ellis in the fourth, Kershaw launched a two-out drive to the track in

center. Yoenis Cespedes ran it down full-tilt, his spikes making contact with the wall Bo Jackson style.

Heaving a sigh of relief, deGrom retired the last nine batters he faced, striking out five. He ended his

night unleashing third strikes past rookie Joc Pederson and pinch-hitter Chase Utley.

It was the kind of act Koufax, looking about half his 79 years old on the field before the game, used to

perform this time of year with regularity. Kershaw's search for that October magic -- and good fortune --

continues.

Could Game 1 loss lead to lineup changes?

By Steve Bourbon

LOS ANGELES -- Dodgers manager Don Mattingly has held the mantra that he puts out the best lineup

for that day, each day. After the Dodgers dropped Game 1 of the National League Division Series in a 3-1

loss to the Mets, speculation began on how that lineup could change for Game 2.

Runs were hard to come by on Friday night as starters Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw dueled at

Dodger Stadium with the Mets seizing a 1-0 series lead. Los Angeles was shut out through seven innings

while deGrom was on the mound and its lone run came on an RBI single by Adrian Gonzalez in the

eighth.

"Both starting pitchers lived up to advance billing and it was tough to find the barrel for a lot of guys out

there today," catcher A.J. Ellis said.

Mattingly surprised many by starting the slumping Pederson in center field over utilityman Kiké

Hernandez in Game 1. While he provides elite defense in center, Pederson saw his offensive production

decline as the season progressed: after hitting .298 in April, the rookie hit no better than .236 in a

month and is hitting .178 since the All-Star break.

"It's kind of what we thought was best for today. Same old story. Trying to match up, and thought that

was best," Mattingly said.

Pederson was 0-for-3 including the final out of the game, a slow roller back to Mets closer Jeurys

Familia. If Hernandez, who is hitting .307 this season, replaced Pederson on Saturday, it could provide

flexibility in the lineup, as Hernandez has hit in every spot in the lineup except third this season.

Things don't get any easier for the Dodgers as the Mets roll out another flamethrowing right-hander in

Noah Syndergaard for Game 2 (9 p.m. ET/6 PT on TBS). While Mattingly wouldn't commit to lineup

changes, he said that Syndergaard presented a different threat than deGrom.

"Each day is individual. Syndergaard's a little different than deGrom," Mattingly said. "He just mixes a

little bit different. We'll just look at it and put the best lineup out there for tomorrow."

Another surprise was rookie phenom Corey Seager in the No. 3 spot of the lineup. Seager was the

youngest position player to start in a playoff game in Dodgers history and Game 1 was only his third

start of the season hitting third. He finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts -- his lone hit was a slicing

double in the left-field corner that Michael Cuddyer misplayed for a ground-rule double.

If Hernandez slid into the lineup near the top, it could bump second baseman Howie Kendrick back to

No. 3 and slide Seager down the lineup to No. 6 and add more length to the Dodgers' order.

And the wild card, as always, is Yasiel Puig. Puig has looked rusty to Mattingly after playing in just two

games in September in a return from a hamstring injury, but he has the ability to provide a spark when

healthy.

Dodgers lean on Greinke to even NLDS at home

By AJ Cassavell

LOS ANGELES -- The conventional school of thought suggests that teams opening a postseason series

away from home simply try to "steal one on the road." The Mets, however, already have their "one on

the road." It's time for them to get greedy.

New York will be looking to take a commanding 2-0 lead when their best-of-five National League

Division Series against the Dodgers continues on Saturday night. First pitch is slated for 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m.

PT on TBS. Only one team -- the 2012 Giants -- has ever come back from an 0-2 deficit in the NLDS

(although it has happened four times in the American League.)

After winning their first postseason game since 2006 on Friday, the Mets give the ball to rookie Noah

Syndergaard. At 23 years and 43 days old, he will become the fourth youngest to start a postseason

game in franchise history -- and the youngest since Dwight Gooden in the 1986 World Series.

Syndergaard has faced the Dodgers once this season, allowing a run on two hits in six innings. The only

real damage done against him that day came in the form of an Adrian Gonzalez solo homer.

That start came in Dodger Stadium on July 3 in what Syndergaard called "an electric atmosphere" -- an

atmosphere that will surely be amped up a notch on Saturday night. And while Syndergaard has

struggled a bit this season on the road (4.23 ERA compared with a 2.46 mark at home), he's coming off a

pair of very good outings away from Citi Field.

"To me, it's just all about getting comfortable out there on the mound, on the road," Syndergaard said.

"I feel like in the last couple starts I had on the road, I had a lot of success, lot of comfort."

Syndergaard's opposite number is another right-hander with flowing blond locks -- albeit one with a bit

more postseason experience.

Cy Young candidate Zack Greinke owns a career 3.63 ERA in the postseason, but he's been much better

for the Dodgers in October than he was with Milwaukee in 2011. Greinke is 1-1 with a 1.93 ERA and a

0.72 WHIP in two postseason runs for Los Angeles.

"Experience kind of helps, being in the playoffs, because I do sort of treat it similar to just a regular game

-- or I try to as much as possible -- where the first time in the playoffs is a little bit different," said

Greinke, whose 1.66 ERA this season was the best in 20 years. "I feel it's helped out, just trying to keep it

similar to just any other game."

Greinke faced New York twice this season, allowing two runs in 14 innings. (Although both of those

starts came before the Mets' flurry of moves at the Trade Deadline.)

Coming off their third straight division title, the Dodgers remain in search of their first World Series since

1988. Greinke said he wouldn't consider the season a success with anything short of that.

"I've felt that way the last couple years, and I think that's how people in the clubhouse feel," Greinke

said. "We should have done better the last couple years. But this year, our team is really good also."

Things to know about this game

• In 24 starts this season, Syndergaard recorded 166 strikeouts -- the third most by any Mets pitcher in

his first 24 games. Only Gooden (193) and Matt Harvey (172) recorded more. In the process,

Syndergaard walked only 31 hitters -- giving him a 5.35 strikeout-to-walk ratio, the best by a Mets

rookie.

• Among active players, only Jhonny Peralta has more career at-bats against Greinke than Mets

outfielder Curtis Granderson. In 52 ABs, Granderson is hitting just .192 with one homer. There are a few

Mets who have had some success against Granderson, including Daniel Murphy (4-for-13), David Wright

(3-for-9) and Wilmer Flores (3-for-8).

• If the series goes the distance, there's a chance Greinke or Syndergaard -- or both -- could make

another start. Neither manager ruled out the possibility of bringing back his Game 1 starter on short rest

in Game 4. If that were to happen, both Greinke and Syndergaard would be available to start a potential

Game 5 on normal rest, with a scheduled off-day on Wednesday.

Greinke plans to stick with what works vs. Mets

By Chris Haft

LOS ANGELES -- Zack Greinke typically doesn't receive a live scouting report such as the one the New

York Mets essentially handed him in Friday night's National League Division Series opener at Dodger

Stadium.

From the Mets' perspective, that probably was the last thing Greinke needed, given his considerable

skills.

"I think we're capable of bouncing back because we've got Zack Greinke pitching tomorrow," Dodgers

catcher A.J. Ellis said after New York's 3-1 triumph in Friday's Game 1.

Greinke, who's scheduled to start tonight's Game 2 for Los Angeles (9 p.m. ET on TBS), usually spends

the night before he starts watching left-hander Clayton Kershaw dominate lineups filled with right-

handed batters in often-futile attempts by opponents hoping to gain a platoon edge. In fact, Kershaw

faced 688 righties compared to 202 lefty swingers during the regular season. This does little for Greinke,

who as a right-hander faces a much higher percentage of left-handed batters than Kershaw does.

This time was different. Greinke, who'll oppose Noah Syndergaard, had the privilege of watching three

left-handed hitters who'll probably start Game 2 for the Mets: Curtis Granderson, Daniel Murphy and

Lucas Duda. Seeing them swing should prove more valuable for Greinke than any analytics-stuffed

report that the well-meaning folks in the Dodgers' baseball operations department offer him.

"They have more. I guess I don't even know how much more they have," Greinke said Friday, referring to

the pregame information heaped upon him. "We had a bunch last year, too, and I've kind of just stuck

with the same type of stuff I've always used."

Most of the time, Greinke's personal touch suffices.

Along with Kershaw and Chicago Cubs right-hander Jake Arrieta, Greinke is a top candidate to win the

National League Cy Young Award, an honor he captured in 2009 in the American League while pitching

for Kansas City. As impressive as Greinke's basic statistics are -- a 19-3 record that generated a Majors-

best .864 winning percentage, as well as leading MLB with a 1.66 ERA -- the story behind the numbers,

as well as the numbers behind the numbers, are even more compelling.

Consider, for example, Greinke's ERA. It was the lowest by a qualified starter (minimum 162 innings)

since Atlanta's Greg Maddux fashioned a 1.63 ERA in 1995. Moreover, Greinke's ERA never reached or

exceeded 2.00 all season. He joined an elite trio of hurlers who have accomplished that since the end of

the Deadball Era in 1920: Maddux (1994), Pedro Martinez (1997 with Montreal and 2000 with Boston)

and Roger Clemens (Houston, 2005).

Greinke, who turns 32 on Oct. 21, recorded 26 starts in which he allowed two or fewer runs, earned or

unearned. That's the highest number of such games since Houston's Mike Scott had 27 in 1986.

However, Scott totaled 37 starts that year, five more than Greinke in 2015.

Also, Greinke's 0.844 WHIP was the lowest by a qualified starter since Martinez's 0.737 in 2000.

As it turns out, Greinke has learned plenty from watching Kershaw from the vantage point of the

Dodgers dugout since he joined the club in 2013.

"If your pitches are that good, they can't do anything with them," Greinke said. "And that's what

Kershaw has done ever since I've been here. So I've probably stopped trying to trick guys as much as I

used to, and try to make my pitches as good as possible."

deGrom, Kershaw K-fest makes MLB history

By AJ Cassavell

LOS ANGELES -- Friday's pitching matchup between the Mets' Jacob deGrom and the Dodgers' Clayton

Kershaw certainly had a lot of potential for swings and misses. The two aces didn't disappoint, making

history as the Mets defeated the Dodgers, 3-1, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at

Dodger Stadium.

When deGrom fanned Adrian Gonzalez in the bottom of the sixth, he and Kershaw became the first

pitchers to record 11 strikeouts in the same game in postseason history. Mort Cooper and Denny

Galehouse recorded 12 and 10 K's, respectively, in Game 5 of the 1944 World Series between the St.

Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, marking the only previous time that two pitchers had reached

double figures.

Kershaw finished with 11 strikeouts and allowed three earned runs over 6 2/3 frames. deGrom racked

up a couple more K's in the seventh, giving him 13 over seven shutout frames.

With 24 combined strikeouts, the pair fell one shy of matching the record set by Kevin Brown and Randy

Johnson in Game 1 of the 1998 NLDS.

"I wouldn't say I get caught up in it," deGrom said of his duel against Kershaw. "I know what he's doing,

but my game plan stays the same, and let's go up and put up zeros and keep us in a position to win. So I

try not to get caught up in it too much."

With his 13-strikeout performance, deGrom tied Tom Seaver for most strikeouts in a postseason game

in Mets history. Seaver fanned 13 in Game 1 of the 1973 NLCS against the Reds. Baltimore's Jim Palmer

also fanned 11 A's hitters that day -- the only other time in history that two pitchers fanned 11+ on the

same day in the postseason.

deGrom was making his first postseason start and fell one K shy of matching the strikeout record for a

pitcher in his debut. Tim Lincecum was the last playoff newcomer to reach 14 in the 2010 NLDS against

Atlanta.

"It was a tremendous game," said Mets third baseman David Wright, whose two-run single in the

seventh proved to be the difference. "If you love a pitcher's duel, that's about as good as it gets."

Noah Syndergaard will square off on Saturday against Zack Greinke in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium,

scheduled for 9 p.m. ET/6 PT on TBS.

NYM-LAD Game 1 duel filled with cool facts

By Joe Trezza

Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw didn't just live up to the hype in New York's 3-1 Game 1 victory

Friday night in the NLDS. The two aces combined for one of the most dominant pitching duels in

postseason history. How dominant were they? Glad you asked ….

The record for combined strikeouts in a nine-inning postseason game is 28, set by the Astros and Padres

in Game 1 of the 1998 NLDS.

• The Dodgers and Mets combined for 27 total strikeouts.

• For Kershaw, it was his third career double-digit strikeout game in the postseason. That tied him with

Sandy Koufax (and three others) for 7th most all-time.

• deGrom became the first pitcher to strike out six over the first two innings of his postseason debut. His

13 total strikeouts tied a Mets postseason record, set in Game 1 of the 1973 NLCS by Tom Seaver.

• Seaver needed 8 1/3 innings to get his 13. deGrom did it in seven innings. He became the third pitcher

in postseason history with 13 or more strikeouts in seven innings or less (Max Scherzer, 2013; Mike

Mussina, 1997).

• The record for strikeouts in a playoff game comes from the 1968 World Series, when Bob Gibson sent

down 17 batters.

• All of deGrom's 13 strikeouts came swinging. Six came off fastballs, seven on off-speed pitches. Eight

of Kershaw's 11 came swinging. One came on his fastball, compared to 10 on off-speed pitches.

• Los Angeles had been 24-3 when Kershaw strikes out 11 or more batters. The last such loss came on

Aug. 16, 2014. The other two were both in 2010.

• As a starter, Kershaw now has a 3.02 career postseason ERA (50.2 IP, 17 ER) before the seventh inning.

He has a 36.00 ERA (3 IP, 12 ER) from the seventh inning onward.

Now to some offense….

• Four of the Mets five hits came from left-handed batters against the lefty Kershaw. Lefties hit .203

against Kershaw this year, compared to .192 average from righties.

• The Mets hadn't been to the postseason in a while. We know that. They know that. But still, some of

the facts are eye-opening. Lucas Duda's second-inning single made him the first Mets player to record a

postseason hit since Endy Chavez.

• Daniel Murphy's fourth-inning homer provided the early difference, and also made him the first Mets

player to hit a postseason long ball since Jose Reyes.

• In the regular season, Kershaw allowed only eight homers to left-handed hitters in 483 at-bats since

the start of 2013. Murphy's homer made it three off Kershaw over his last three postseason starts.

• Kershaw also struck Murphy out. Kershaw led the Majors in strikeouts with 301. Murphy, meanwhile,

was baseball's hardest man to strike out, whiffing just once every 13.1 at bats.

• Kershaw threw more pitches to David Wright (12) in their first-inning battle than he did in six of nine

innings he completed against the Mets on July 23.

• Curtis Granderson went 2-for-3 against Kershaw, after hitting .183 against lefties during the regular

season.

• Granderson came into the game 1-for-10 against Kershaw, so he knew he had to jump on the lefty

early in the count. When he swung at Kershaw's first pitch of the game, it was the first time in 72 plate

appearances Granderson swung at the first pitch.

• Dodgers manager Don Mattingly started Corey Seager at shortstop after the rookie played just 27

games in his rookie season. Corey's brother, Kyle Seager, has played 688 Major League games and has

never played in the postseason.

Dodgers, Mets open series with grand pregame

By David Adler

LOS ANGELES -- The 2015 National League Division Series between the Dodgers and Mets kicked off

Friday with multiple rounds of pregame fireworks at Dodger Stadium, the national anthem performed

by Grammy-winning group All-4-One and a ceremonial first pitch thrown out by 4-year-old cancer

survivor Ella Mason Annear -- who was escorted to the field by Magic Johnson.

Before the first pitch of the Mets' 3-1 win over the Dodgers, players lined up along the two foul lines,

and the rosters, coaches and staffs were announced. The Game 1 starting lineups came last, as the

players jogged out of their dugouts.

About an hour earlier, the Dodger Stadium video boards played an oral history of the 1988 National

League Championship Series between the two teams, in which the Dodgers memorably upset the

favored Mets in seven games en route to winning the World Series.

Game 1 of this year's NLDS falls exactly 17 years after one of the pivotal moments in the '88 NLCS --

Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia's game-tying, two-run homer off Mets ace Dwight Gooden in the ninth

inning of Game 4.

Reactions, dancing and a fall top LDS GIFs

By Chad Thornburg

Here's a look at some of the top moments, courtesy of @MLBGIFs, from a full day of Division Series

action that saw the Rangers take a 2-0 Series lead over the Blue Jays with a 6-4, 14-inning victory; the

Royals even their series with the Astros with a 5-4 win in Game 2; the Cardinals open with a 4-0 shutout

of the Cubs; and the Mets beat the Dodgers, 3-1, in Game 1 of their Series.

1. Alberto's Reaction

The unlikely hero of Game 2, Hanser Alberto, celebrates upon driving in the go-ahead run for the

Rangers in the 14th inning. It was a moment of redemption for the rookie infielder, whose second-inning

error led to two Toronto runs.

2. Stroman slow-mo scream

A fired up Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman lets loose after a big defensive play. The right-hander

allowed four runs (three earned) in seven innings vs. the Rangers in his postseason debut.

3. Seager face

Much to his disbelief, Dodgers rookie Corey Seager knocks his first career postseason hit, a two-out

double off Mets starter Jacob deGrom that just barely landed in fair territory.

4. Watch Wong Whip

Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong breaks out his dance moves after his two-out double in the

second inning of St. Louis' win over the rival Cubs.

5. Fielder tumbling over railing

Rangers DH Prince Fielder runs into some trouble vaulting the dugout railing as he attempts to join his

teammates on the field to celebrate their Game 2 victory over the Blue Jays.

6. Bautista reacts to review

An incredulous Jose Bautista reacts to a 14th-inning replay review that ruled the Rangers' Rougned Odor

safe at second. Odor would eventually come around to score the go-ahead run as Texas won, 6-4.

7. A moment nine years in the making

With two outs in the seventh inning of a one-run game vs. the Dodgers, Mets captain David Wright came

through big, driving in a pair of runs with a single in his first playoff action since 2006.

Oct. 9 Don Mattingly postgame interview

By MLB.com

Q. I know this is sort of part of the postseason exercise and everything, but the decision to pull Clayton

at that point, what had you seen through that inning, and what was going through your mind as it was

unfolding?

DON MATTINGLY: Going into that inning we kind of looked at what his pitch count was, and kind of

thought through Granderson, if we got back to Wright, the fourth time through, David pumps on lefties

pretty good. Felt like that was going to be a spot if we got to that point, thought we were going to make

a move there.

Q. How good was deGrom against you guys?

DON MATTINGLY: Yeah, pretty good. Obviously a lot of just velocity, he beat us with that a lot. I thought

we did a pretty good job with him of not chasing the change or the breaking ball down, but with that

you end up chasing some elevated fastballs, and I think he beat us with that a little bit. We had a few

chances. We got some runners, JT got on a couple times. They had a little rally going. We just weren't

able to get that hit early. So I thought he was pretty good.

Q. The early at-bats they had against Clayton early in the game, how much did that help to get him in

the situation he ended up in in that inning?

DON MATTINGLY: David's at-bat, second inning of the game, he got an out on the first pitch, and I think

we're at 10 or 11 after him, so he kind of pushed it. He gets Cespedes in three, but there were different

at-bats that I thought were pretty good. But his pitch count wasn't really that, in general wasn't that

bad. I think he was at 50 or 49 after three, which is basically just a few over. If you're looking at 15 an

inning. So but I thought they did a good job battling. I think that's what happens in the playoffs. You get

more and more battle at-bats, there is no giving at-bats. I think the same really with us with our guys. So

I thought we did a pretty good job, we just weren't able to crack it.

Q. Last year similar situations with Clayton. You left him in against Carpenter, and he got beat. You left

him in against Adams, and he got beat. Any factor in those performances in your decision to take him

out tonight?

DON MATTINGLY: No, it was more of just we felt like David's really good -- his numbers against lefties

are really good. Again, kind of getting back to it fourth time. He had walked three guys in an inning. He

couldn't put -- Duda was just kind of out of sync a little bit. Then I think we get Cuddyer there. Tejada, he

got 0-2, he just couldn't put him away. And then curtis at-bat, he's battling, battling, and ends up

walking him. At that point I got to feel like he'll go right-handed there against David.

Q. You had Baez warming, I believe, to start the 7th inning as it developed?

DON MATTINGLY: Say it again, I couldn't hear it.

Q. You had Baez warming I think as it started the 7th inning. As it developed into a high leverage

situation, did you consider using another arm or were you committed to him?

DON MATTINGLY: I didn't have him at the beginning of the inning. I didn't have him until he was kind of

into that. We counted on David in that spot. He's one of our two righties that we felt the power with

David. We weren't really at that point for one out.

Q. Facing another really good pitcher tomorrow, do you feel like you need to change the lineup or is that

kind of just moving furniture around?

DON MATTINGLY: Each day is individual. Syndergaard's a little different than deGrom. He just mixes a

little bit different. We'll just look at it and put the best lineup out there for tomorrow.

Cards cool Cubs, Mets deFeat LA; Game 2's at 5:30, 9 ET

By Chad Thornburg

It took four days, but a road team finally lost a postseason game, and that was just one of the many

compelling storylines on Friday, an intense day of Division Series action that featured all eight remaining

playoff teams.

For the first time since 1906, road teams won the first five games of the postseason, and that fifth

straight road victory belonged to the Rangers, who began the day with a 6-4 win in a 14-inning

marathon against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Texas now returns to Arlington needing just one win to

advance to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2011.

"We have put ourselves in a perfect position, but we have to stay on top of them," Rangers reliever

Shawn Tolleson said. "We can't let up. There is no time for that."

The Royals became the first home team to win, narrowly beating the Astros at Kauffman Stadium to

even the series at 1-1. Kansas City overcame an early 3-0 deficit, steadily pushing runs across for an

eventual 5-4 victory.

And those two ALDS games served as the perfect appetizer for a Friday night of National League Division

Series drama that saw two epic matchups decided in the late innings, with Game 2 of both NL series on

tap for later today on TBS.

In St. Louis, one of the longest rivalries in sports was on display as the Cardinals and Cubs met for the

first time ever in the playoffs. John Lackey outdueled former Red Sox teammate Jon Lester, pitching 7

1/3 scoreless innings. Lackey didn't allow a hit until the sixth as the Cardinals shut out Chicago 4-0.

The full day of playoff baseball concluded with yet another road team on top. The Mets beat Clayton

Kershaw and the Dodgers in the NLDS opener, 3-1. Both Kershaw and New York's Jacob deGrom reached

double-digit strikeout totals, making it the first game in Major League postseason history in which each

starter fanned at least 11 batters.

Whatever your weekend plans may be, don't stray far from a TV, because today promises another day of

thrilling playoff drama. Here's a look at what's on the docket:

Cubs at Cardinals, Game 2, 5:30 p.m. ET (TBS)

Kyle Hendricks (8-7, 3.95 ERA) vs. Jaime Garcia (10-6, 2.43 ERA)

The Cubs will take another crack at solving the Cardinals' pitching, this time with southpaw Garcia on the

mound for St. Louis. Garcia has been tough at Busch Stadium this year, posting a 1.70 ERA in 10 home

starts compared with a 3.25 mark in 10 road tilts. For Chicago, Hendricks gets the start. He ended the

regular season on a high note, tossing 12 consecutive shutout innings. Hendricks has a 3.97 ERA in four

career starts against St. Louis.

With Friday's victory, history is now on the Cardinals' side. The winner of Game 1 in the Division Series

round has advanced 58 of 70 times.

"It's a race, it's not a sprint," Cubs rookie Kyle Schwarber said. "The Pittsburgh [Wild Card Game] was a

sprint. This is a nice little jog that we need to pace ourselves. If we go out there and win the next game,

we put ourselves in a pretty good situation and go back home to our crowd. We're not too worried. We

are frustrated that we lost, but it happens."

Mets at Dodgers, Game 2, 9 p.m. ET (TBS)

Noah Syndergaard (9-7, 3.24 ERA) vs. Zack Greinke (19-3, 1.66 ERA)

The Mets will try to continue to road team trend and go up 2-0 on the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine. They'll

have to do so against yet another formidable Los Angeles starter in Greinke. A Cy Young candidate,

Greinke has been at the top of his game all year, winning a career-best 19 games and posting a 1.66 ERA.

New York will counter with rookie hurler Syndergaard, who will be making his postseason debut.

Syndergaard faced the Dodgers once this season, and he limited them to just one run in six innings.

"This is a game that's all about confidence," Mets manager Terry Collins said. "It's all about believing in

yourself and knowing that even if things aren't good that you can still succeed. ... This is a good start for

a team that hadn't been in the postseason for a long time."

Through criticism, Mattingly has LA in position

By Ken Gurnick

LOS ANGELES -- Don Mattingly has managed the Dodgers into the postseason three consecutive years,

something that Hall of Famers Walt Alston, Tom Lasorda, Joe Torre, Leo Durocher, Ned Hanlon and

Wilbert Robinson never did.

Yet, critics are already speculating heading into tonight's National League Division Series opener vs. the

Mets (6:30 p.m. PT on TBS) that Mattingly's job is on the line if the Dodgers don't reach the World Series

this month.

That "noise," as Mattingly refers to outside distractions, comes with the territory. Especially when a

Dream Team front office takes over, hires one former manager (Ron Roenicke, as third-base coach) and

has dismissed dozens of scouts, coaches and Minor League managers in recent weeks.

First-year general manager Farhan Zaidi in the past week praised Mattingly's handling of the ballclub this

year.

"I think he's done a great job," Zaidi said. "One of the biggest themes we've had is roster turnover with

the injuries and having a lot of young players with options and trying to make maximum use of the 25-

man roster, that definitely puts added stress on a manager and staff, not just to deal with the logistics of

those moves, but also to deal with managing personnel turnover. From an on-field standpoint, every

time you move a player in or out, you have to sort of recalibrate yourself on how to use everybody.

"So, I think he's done a real nice job with that and mixed and matched in some platoon situations, tried

to navigate through some of the issues we've had in our bullpen. There certainly have been challenges

with our roster that he's had to navigate and I think he's done a nice job.

Mattingly, in his fifth season, doesn't scream or flip over buffet tables. But he prepares intensely and

treats his players as grown-ups as long as they act that way. He expects the professional work ethic to

which he adhered as a player. But he also knows that the ultimate judgment of MLB success is a ring,

which he hasn't won as player or manager.

"You can have a good career, a great career and feel good about what you're doing as a manager, but

you still know you haven't gotten there," Mattingly said.

Still, Mattingly won't accept that the previous seasons have been complete disappointments.

"If you don't savor parts of this journey, you're a fool," he said. "We've won three straight division titles.

We've had a number of guys be a part of that accomplishment. Now that's not the ultimate

accomplishment, but it is an accomplishment. The fight that it takes, the perseverance, all the work that

these guys put in from Spring Training, you watch these guys on a daily basis. Working, studying, in the

gym.

"You have to, without listening to the noise, people say, 'Oh, if you don't do this ...', no way. You have to

savor what you're doing. There are accomplishments in there. They're obviously not the mountaintop

that we're all striving for but there are accomplishments in all the hard work that we're putting in, to a

certain level."

As a Yankee his entire playing career, Mattingly has never been truly embraced by Dodgers fans,

particularly in comparison to the adoration New York fans still show him, even though he retired as a

player 20 years ago.

He not only has multiple World Series winners Lasorda and Alston to measure up to. CEO Stan Kasten

worked 15 years with Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox. Baseball operations president Andrew

Friedman's reputation was enhanced by being teamed with rock-star manager Joe Maddon.

"If Donnie has to win a World Series or the season is a failure, that's tough to live up to," said reliever

J.P. Howell, who also played for Maddon. "I'm glad I don't have that on my shoulders."

Joel Peralta, another Dodgers reliever who also played for Maddon, said the two have vastly different

personalities.

"Maddon likes the players to have fun because that's the way he is and he gives you the freedom as long

as you don't cross the line," he said. "Mattingly is more quiet, down to earth. They are two different

guys, but in the game, they're not much different.

"When people judge a manager, sometimes they should check the players. When a team doesn't win, I

think sometimes it's not the manager's fault, it's the players that had a lot to do with it."

Mattingly has one year left on his contract, but he's politically savvy enough to be a favorite of Mark

Walter, who wields the most control from the cabal of Guggenheim partners. Mattingly doesn't chase

billionaire owners' family members away from the batting cage or out of the clubhouse.

He might be an Indiana farm boy at heart, but Mattingly didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

Puig, Peralta on Dodgers' Division Series roster

By Ken Gurnick

LOS ANGELES -- Outfielder Yasiel Puig and veteran reliever Joel Peralta were included on the 25-man

roster submitted by the Dodgers for the National League Division Series that starts tonight.

The best-of-five series against the Mets is scheduled to begin with Game 1 at 6:30 PT at Dodger Stadium

(TBS).

The Dodgers also will have a five-man traveling taxi squad, consisting of Alex Guerrero, Chris Heisey,

Austin Barnes, Juan Nicasio and Carlos Frias, in case of unexpected changes.

Puig made the roster over Heisey even though the talented Cuban played in only the last two games of

the regular season after missing more than a month with a strained hamstring, and didn't run full speed

in those two games.

Peralta, plagued by a bulging neck disc most of the season, demonstrated increased velocity and

sharpness in September to edge Nicasio, who had a 7.04 ERA in September and was vulnerable all

season against left-handed hitting.

The roster:

PITCHERS (11)

Brett Anderson

Luis Avilan

Pedro Baez

Yimi Garcia

Zack Greinke

Chris Hatcher

J.P. Howell

Kenley Jansen

Clayton Kershaw

Joel Peralta

Alex Wood

CATCHERS (2)

A.J. Ellis

Yasmani Grandal

INFIELDERS (6)

Adrian Gonzalez

Howie Kendrick

Jimmy Rollins

Corey Seager

Justin Turner

Chase Utley

OUTFIELDERS (6)

Carl Crawford

Andre Ethier

Kiké Hernandez

Joc Pederson

Yasiel Puig

Justin Ruggiano

LA TIMES

Vin Scully: Voice of the Dodgers, soundtrack to a California childhood

By Cathleen Decker

Usually, I write about politics. Today, not as much.

Today is about Vin Scully, the poetic voice of the Dodgers, newly sidelined for the offseason by surgery.

Temporarily, if prayers are heard.

Los Angeles erects giant edifices to symbolize this disparate place, to create a sense of community for a

centerless amalgam of suburbs filled with people who may know nothing about the lives of the people

next door. But more than the shiny buildings put up on Bunker Hill lately, Vin Scully is the real

connective tissue, the greatest Los Angeles edifice.

For those of us raised in Southern California, he is also like the ticking clock--always there, dependable

enough to set your life to.

I was raised in Long Beach, only 29 miles down the road from downtown Los Angeles but a town that

then had a significant chip on its shoulder about the behemoth to the northeast. This played out in odd

ways. Until the morning I started work at the Los Angeles Times as a junior in college, I had never seen

its downtown building, nor the grand City Hall across the street, nor the glorious Public Library a few

blocks away. They were of Los Angeles, and we weren't.

The sole exceptions were sporting venues. We hung out in season seats in UCLA's basketball arena,

Pauley Pavilion, in the second to the last row up high behind the team benches. Close enough to see

Coach John Wooden, another Los Angeles edifice, wrap his papers into a tube he could point for

emphasis rather than lose his mild demeanor to a bellow.

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My father, a former UCLA baseball pitcher, wanted never to lose touch with that elemental part of him.

He could see himself in the athletes on the court.

My dad coached his four kids in baseball from the time we could walk. I threw left—inept at using the

favored hand--but was taught to bat right, probably for his ease. I got to play in the boys' park leagues,

and no one raised a constitutional stink.

At school the fourth grade teacher , a nun named Sister Josephine Mary, played left field in our games,

catching not with a glove but by holding up a few of the voluminous layers of her floor-length habit. And

when the Dodgers made the World Series, the hard-nosed Catholic school teachers would roll portable

black and white TVs into the classrooms, so we could watch the games.

For reasons I don't know, the Dodgers from the very beginning connected us to baseball more than the

UCLA team on which my dad had played. Maybe it was the pull of professional sports, a game my father

would have loved to play had my arrival not stopped him in semi-pro.

So we trudged one day, in a drenching rain, up to a ledge in disdained Los Angeles to look into a giant

pit. That's Chavez Ravine, my dad said reverently. That's where they’re building Dodger Stadium.

After it was built we had the run of the place. At some point, my dad's job meant a share in season

tickets, first base line. We scarfed down Dodger dogs and frozen chocolate malts fast, the better to

catch any foul ball headed our way. Alas, the angle was mostly wrong.

The rules then gave season ticket holders twice the number of playoffs and series tickets as regular

seats, meaning eight additional tickets besides the four behind first base.

The two oldest kids won the rights to the ‘60s series games. Off we trotted to the newly acquired seats,

on the top deck, third base side, hundreds of feet up and across from where he sat. I was 9 and my

brother was 7, if I remember right, when we first clambered up, snack money and gloves in hand, hoping

an opponent would shank a Koufax or Drysdale pitch into our willing arms. It didn’t happen there either.

Still, we walked the stadium's byways with the swagger of veterans.

You heard Vin Scully at the stadium, of course, by transistor radio. Row after row, fans would hold them

to their ears to catch his radio broadcast, him talking to you, right to you, right to your awed ear.

The summer I turned 9 we listened from our backyard as he called a game from Candlestick Park, home

of the scorned San Francisco Giants. Dodger catcher John Roseboro challenged Giants pitcher Juan

Marichal for beaning two Dodger teammates. Marichal retaliated by cracking Roseboro on the head

with his bat, opening a wound that would send blood running down Roseboro's uniform.

We were aghast at the sudden violence. I remember staring at the transistor on the step, the cool of the

concrete as we sat next to it, the light breeze . But Vin smoothed things out--cognizant, he said later, of

the kids listening in.

If this is to be a little bit about politics, let's say that it doesn't appear lately that many politicians are

cognizant of the kids, or of anyone else, as they bluster on. Maybe, in his hopefully temporary

departure, Vin has left lessons for them, and lessons for all of us.

Be there, consistently: 66 years for him, so far. Make it not about you but everyone else: The stories he

tells are not about his accolades but about other people, the legends and carny characters who inhabit

baseball. Care, in an obvious and meaningful way, about the people you're talking to. Be the connective

tissue that he is.

I was last at Dodger Stadium about 10 years ago, the season after my father died. It was August, again.

We'd gotten tickets in the sunny part of the stadium, forgetting how hot it would be.

We could hear Vin Scully through other people's radios, a good thing as the transistor had long since

died. The kids brought their gloves. No wayward foul balls came our way. And as before, that barely

mattered.

Dodgers Dugout: Dodgers vs. Mets Game 1 thoughts, Game 2 preview

By Houston Mitchell

Hi and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell, wondering if it is

possible to just skip the seventh inning and go directly to the eighth the next time Clayton Kershaw

pitches.

Game 1 loss

I don’t know what to say. What a depressing game to watch. Rather than relive it all, here are some

random thoughts and stats that came to me while watching the game on TBS. By the way, even though I

am going to point out a couple of negative things about him below, it is unfair to blame this loss on

Kershaw. The inability to get a clutch hit, strange lineup decisions, and bringing in Pedro Baez are the

things to blame for this one.

That 12-pitch at-bat by David Wright in the first inning set the tone for the game. Kershaw couldn’t put

him away, and that made me nervous.

Worst. Home. Plate. Umpire. Ever.

Clayton Kershaw in the postseason now: 1-6, 4.99 ERA.

Kershaw’s ERA in the seventh inning of postseason games since 2013: 42.49.

For three innings, I thought the Dodgers were celebrating Halloween by having the Crypt Keeper sit

behind home plate. Then I realized it was Larry King.

Baez has allowed a .320 batting average to the first batter he faces. So he was the perfect guy to bring in

with the bases loaded.

Puzzling lineup by Don Mattingly. I would have much rather seen Kiké Hernandez in the game and

leading off, with Crawford batting sixth or seventh and Joc Pederson on the bench.

Jacob deGrom pitched a great, great game. The Dodgers just couldn’t get a hit when it counted.

Those Matthew McConaughey car commercials are really creepy.

All the pressure is on Zack Greinke now. It will be interesting to see if Mattingly makes any lineup

changes at all.

Game 2

Game 2 is at 6 tonight at Dodger Stadium, with Greinke taking on Noah Syndergaard.

How key Mets have fared against Greinke (minimum six plate appearances):

Wilmer Flores, .375, 0 HR, 0 RBIs

David Wright, .333, 0, 0

Daniel Murphy, .308, 0, 0

Michael Cuddyer, .250, 1, 7

Lucas Duda, .250, 1, 1

Yoenis Cespedes, .200, 0, 0

Curtis Granderson, .192, 1, 3

Juan Lagares, .125, 1, 3

Ruben Tejada, .000, 0, 0

Kelly Johnson, .000, 0, 0

In his career against the Mets, Greinke is 3-1 with a 2.48 ERA in four starts.

The Dodgers have faced Syndergaard, a rookie, only once. On July 3, they went 2 for 24 against him in a

2-1 loss. The only Dodgers with hits were Adrian Gonzalez, who was 1 for 3 with a homer, and Justin

Turner, who was 1 for 2 with a double. Syndergaard pitched six innings, striking out six.

The rest of the schedule

Game 3: Monday at New York, 5 or 5:30 p.m., Brett Anderson (10-9, 3.69) vs. Matt Harvey (13-8, 2.71)

Game 4*: Tuesday at New York, 5 p.m., TBA vs. Steven Matz (4-0, 2.27)

Game 5*: Thursday at Dodger Stadium, 5 p.m., TBA vs. deGrom

* if necessary. All times Pacific. All games on TBS.

Ask Ross Porter

Former Dodgers announcer Ross Porter will be answering select reader questions for the rest of the

season. Email me a question for Ross, and I will pass it on to him. Here is his latest response:

Ronald Sorrels asks: Hey Ross! So good to hear that you are still around and kicking! You were always

fun to listen to calling the games with a unique style that made listening on the radio not only fun but

informative as well.

Do you think that the Dodgers, and Major League Baseball in general, have lost the ability or interest to

do the fundamentals? I notice that until Chase Utley showed up for the Dodgers and started to go about

the game in a professional way, the stolen base was rare and baserunning could be described as

comical, with runners getting picked off of second base for crying out loud!

It seems that the little things that makes the game great, like heads-up plays and having a sense of doing

the right thing at the right time, is sadly lacking by many of the youngsters. I enjoy watching the game

when pros like Utley and Rollins show how to get the bat on the ball at the critical moment and nurture

the kids as well.

Ross: Believe me, Ronald, being around and kicking is better than the alternative.

I think you are absolutely right about the lack of practice on fundamentals. It’s always been puzzling to

me that teams spend hours on fundamentals in spring training, and rarely, if ever, after that when the

regular season opens. You might see a manager schedule a “fundamentals” practice if his team is in a

long losing streak that has seen the club make frequent mental mistakes. Maybe managers try to avoid

tough discipline on their players.

I’m glad Chase Utley made the roster for the divisional series. He has playoff experience, and the

Dodgers might be able to use his leadership skills in the crucial games of the season. Since Ron Roenicke

became the third base coach, the team has not been as reckless on the bases.

Despite road struggles, Mets' Noah Syndergaard will start Game 2

By Zach Helfand

The way he envisioned it, New York Mets Manager Terry Collins would have pitched right-hander Matt

Harvey in the first game of the National League division series against the Dodgers.

That would’ve allowed Jacob deGrom to pitch Game 2, and, importantly, Noah Syndergaard would have

taken Game 3 in New York, where the rookie has felt more comfortable.

Harvey’s strict innings limit, though, got in the way.

“We would have liked to have pitched him Game 1,” Collins told reporters on Friday, “except we are

limited to the amount of games he can pitch — not necessarily how much in those games.”

That has thrust Syndergaard in a spot that nagged him for almost the entire season: pitching on the

road, in front of a hostile crowd, on an unfamiliar mound.

At home, the 23-year-old Syndergaard has a 2.46 earned-run average. On the road, it balloons to 4.23.

But Collins said the rookie’s most recent three road starts, when he allowed two runs or fewer in each,

have erased any concerns.

“The way he’s pitched lately, they’re passed for me,” Collins said. “He has gone out and, as we saw, just

pounded the strike zone with quality stuff.”

Syndergaard’s average fastball velocity is the fastest on the Mets’ staff, faster, even, than deGrom, who

whipped 97- and 98-mph fastballs past the Dodgers on Friday evening. To complement his off-speed

offerings, he added a two-seam fastball with sinking action that, Collins said, allows him to better

challenge hitters and pitch to contact more often.

Syndergaard credited some of his earlier road struggles to bad luck. He said he hasn’t altered his road

routine significantly.

“To be honest, at the beginning of the year when I was having struggles on the road, it wasn’t that I felt

uncomfortable out there,” he said. “I felt like my stuff was there. It’s just a couple series of bad events

happened.”

One of the few positive road outings he had came in his one start at Dodger Stadium.

In that game, in early July, Syndergaard called the atmosphere “electric,” yet he matched Clayton

Kershaw with six innings, one run and six strikeouts. The Mets won the game with a ninth-inning

sacrifice fly.

“To me, it’s just all about getting comfortable out there on the mound on the road,” he said. “I feel like

the last couple starts I had on the road, I had a lot of success, lot of comforts.”

How did the seventh inning become Clayton Kershaw's postseason blackhole?

By Steve Dilbeck

The seventh inning again, really? Is there something mystical going on here, something that defies logic

and explanation?

Clayton Kershaw pitched brilliantly throughout the uncomfortably hot night and then runs into another

postseason seventh that left him a loser yet again in the playoffs.

Last season, he twice squandered leads against the Cardinals in the seventh inning. This time, the Mets

score twice in the seventh, the runs the difference in New York’s ultimate 3-1 victory Friday in their

National League Division Series opener.

Both times against the Cardinals, the rally started and Manager Don Mattingly stuck with Kershaw. Both

times it blew up. On Friday, he took him out, it blew up.

Kershaw had walked the bases loaded with two outs Friday to bring up David Wright. Mattingly stepped

out of the dugout and called for Pedro Baez.

Mattingly said going into the inning, aware of Kershaw’s pitch count (88), that they had predetermined if

the lineup got around to Wright, he would make the switch. It would have been his fourth time facing

Kershaw on Friday.

The Dodgers lost Game 1 of the National League division series with the New York Mets, 3-1, at Dodger

Stadium.

“David pumps on lefties pretty good,” Mattingly said. “Felt like that was going to be a spot if we got to

that point, thought we were going to make a move there.”

A right-handed hitter, Wright naturally hits left-handers better. So of course he drilled a two-run single

up the middle.

Last year in Game 1 against the Cardinals, Kershaw was leading 6-2 going into the seventh, and St. Louis

rallied with eight runs. Five of the first six Cardinals singled in the inning. Then with two outs, Mattingly

left Kershaw in, and Matt Carpenter hit a three-run double. Then he went to Baez.

In Game 4, the Dodgers were leading 2-0 heading into the seventh when the Cardinals led off with a pair

of singles. Mattingly let Kershaw pitch to Matt Adams, who hit a game-winning three-run homer.

But Mattingly said none of that was on his mind when he decided to take Kershaw out this time in the

seventh. It wasn’t that he had learned some lesson from postseasons past.

“No, it was more of just we felt like David’s really good,” Mattingly said. “His numbers against lefties are

really good. Again, kind of getting back through [him] a fourth time.

“At that point, I got to feel like he’ll go right-handed there against David.”

In all three seventh innings, Mattingly went to Baez.

Sometimes it seems whatever a manager does works out wrong. Until one day, they hope, it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, Kershaw has a postseason seventh-inning hurdle to overcome.

Mets' Jacob deGrom unlikely to face Dodgers in Game 4 of NLDS

By Dylan Hernandez

If there was any consolation for the Dodgers about what Jacob deGrom did to them Friday night in their

3-1 defeat to the New York Mets, it was that they forced him to throw 121 pitches.

That could eliminate the possibility of deGrom returning to pitch on three-days’ rest in Game 4 of their

National League division series.

“As I sit here at this moment, I think he went too far tonight,” Mets Manager Terry Collins said. “He had

to work hard.”

DeGrom pitched seven scoreless innings, striking out 13 to match a franchise record set by Tom Seaver

in 1973.

DeGrom’s pitch count was 80 after four innings.

“I mean, he worked really hard early in the game,” Collins said.

Collins said he doesn’t count the four pitches deGrom threw to intentionally walk Joc Pederson in the

second inning. Even then, he threw 117 pitches.

“That’s a lot of work for him,” Collins said.

The Dodgers praised deGrom, starting with Kershaw who acknowledged that the All-Star right-hander

outpitched him.

DeGrom was routinely clocked in the high-90s.

“He’s got electric stuff,” catcher A.J. Ellis said. “Personally, this is as good of an arm as I’ve seen all year

long.”

Based on film of deGrom the Dodgers had seen recently, Carl Crawford said they were expecting his

fastball to be 2 to 3 mph slower.

“You see what it does,” Crawford said. “Twelve strikeouts, huh?”

Actually, it was 13.

The Dodgers also entered the series considering pitching Clayton Kershaw on three-days’ rest in Game 4.

Kershaw threw 113 pitches in Game 1.

Corey Seager starts for Dodgers, manages one hit against Mets

By Zach Helfand

When Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager drove to Dodger Stadium early this afternoon, he didn't even

know if he'd be starting.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, when he scanned the lineup posted in the Dodgers' clubhouse and saw

that he was penciled in at shortstop, making him the youngest position player to start a postseason

game for the Dodgers.

And he was batting third.

"Seeing the lineup," Seager said, "was really cool."

Seager, 21, has been a major leaguer for slightly more than a month. He said he felt no added stress

from batting third.

"That's a meaty part of the order, so you've got to go out and give good [at bats]," Seager said. "But

other than that, there's no extra pressure."

After Seager had seen the lineup card, Manager Don Mattingly pulled him aside. "It's still a baseball

game," Seager said Mattingly told him.

Seager has hit .337 with four home runs and 17 RBIs in 27 games this season. On Friday, he had one hit

in four at bats, a bloop double down left-field line in the third inning.

Mattingly said that Seager "fit the best" at the No. 3 spot. He said he was not worried about the 21-year-

old handling the responsibility. "We've put him all over," Mattingly said. "He seemed to handle

everything."

Right colors, at least

NLDS: Dodgers vs. New York Mets, Game 1


Stadium.

The possibility of the Dodgers meeting the Chicago Cubs in the National League championship series is

particularly intriguing to Mark Walter, the Dodgers' chairman.

Walter lives in Chicago — and, even as the controlling owner of the Dodgers, still keeps his season seats

at Wrigley Field. "You can't give up seats to the Cubs," Walter said.

Walter said Chicago is abuzz over the Cubs. "Everybody's pretty excited," he said. "They should be. They

haven't been in the playoffs for a while."

Then Walter left to root on his team, which has been in the playoffs in every full season under his

ownership.

Roster moves

Earlier this week, Mattingly maintained he'd start a rookie in center field, he just wouldn't say which.

Ultimately, he opted for Joc Pederson over Enrique Hernandez, despite Pederson's .178 batting average

in the second half of the season. Pederson was hitless in three at bats Friday with a strikeout and an

intentional walk.

Hernandez, a left-handed hitter, bats .423 against left-handers but .234 against right-handers. Pederson,

a .210 hitter, has hit both roughly equally.

"It's kind of what we thought was best for today," Mattingly said. "Same old story. Trying to match up,

and thought that was best."

When the rest of the 25-man roster was announced Friday morning, right-handed relievers Juan Nicasio

and Carlos Frias were notable omissions.

Nicasio had been a regular out of the bullpen for most of the year, but Mattingly said the Mets' bench,

loaded with left-handers, dissuaded him from adding Nicasio. "Juan struggled with the lefties,"

Mattingly said. "We didn't really feel like we were ever going to get sections against those guys that

you're going to get a number of righties together."

More deGrom?

Mets Manager Terry Collins left open the possibility that game one starter Jacob deGrom would pitch in

game four on three days' rest.

"It all depends a lot on tonight," Collins said before the game. "If he goes deep into a game, if he has to

work hard, he probably won't come back on three days' rest."

DeGrom thew 121 pitches on Friday. If deGrom does not go in game four, left-hander Steven Matz is the

likely starter.

Times staff writer Bill Shaikin contributed to this story.

Dodgers' Don Mattingly makes right call to pull Clayton Kershaw

By Bill Plaschke

Another October, another long, slow, painful walk for Clayton Kershaw from the pitching mound into his

personal hell.

The crowd stood. Kershaw slumped. The crowd roared. Kershaw winced. The crowd quieted. Kershaw

collapsed on the bench.

We've been here before and it never gets any easier. We've seen this before and it never makes any

more sense.

For a third consecutive postseason Friday, the best pitcher on the planet stumbled in the biggest

moment of his season and this time, even an attempted rescue by Manager Don Mattingly couldn't save

the pitcher, the moment or the game.

In a controversial but proper decision, Mattingly lifted Kershaw after he walked the bases loaded with

two out in the seventh inning of the National League division series opener against the New York Mets

at Dodger Stadium.

Pedro Baez took the ball, gave up a two-run single to David Wright, and the Mets took a 3-0 lead that

eventually became a 3-1 win that puts the Dodgers' postseason on the brink just hours after it began.

But, yes, you read that right. Mattingly made the right call in lifting Kershaw after he had thrown 113

pitches in steamy heat. He made the right call after Kershaw had walked three of the five batters in

faced in the seventh.

He made the right call because if the Dodgers have learned anything from the last two postseasons, it is

they cannot stand by helplessly and watch their ace wilt while their season wilts with him.



Stadium.

Were you not watching last October against the St. Louis Cardinals? Were you not watching in October

of 2014 against those same Cardinals?

In two late collapses last season against the Cardinals, Kershaw succumbed after throwing 110 and 102

pitches. The previous season, he was left alone to absorb a shelling while throwing 98 pitches.

In all three games, there were cries that Mattingly should have swallowed his pride and risked alienating

his ace and gone to the bullpen. From the moment Mattingly angered Kershaw by pulling him late in the

season against the Arizona Diamondbacks, it was obvious this season's Dodgers, from the front office to

the dugout, would heed those cries.

Yes, Kershaw had been his usual dominating self in the first six innings Friday with 11 strikeouts and only

four allowed hits, his effort marred only by Daniel Murphy's fourth-inning homer.

But in that seventh inning, the signs of potential collapse were everywhere.

He threw four balls in five pitches to Lucas Duda, who only had two career hits against him in 12

previous at-bats. He was ahead 0-and-2 to Ruben Tejada, but then lost him to a walk. Then he was

ahead 1-and-2 to Curtis Granderson, yet also stumbled and walked him to load the bases.

Up stepped Wright, who had already battled Kershaw to a walk in a 12-pitch at-bat in the first inning.

Warming up in the bullpen was Pedro Baez, who had allowed one run in his previous eight appearances

with nine strikeouts. Mattingly had ignored that bullpen the previous two years, but he wasn't going to

do it again.

"Going into that inning, we kind of looked at what his pitch count was, and kind of thought if we got

back to Wright felt like that was going to be a spot thought we were going to make a move there," said

Mattingly.

Kershaw didn't fight this time. Kershaw knew.

"I put myself in that spot so not much room for arguing when you put yourself in that situation," said

Kershaw.

Even the Mets, while thrilled to get Kershaw out of the game, weren't that happy about suddenly seeing

the energy of Baez.

"Normally you'd be pleased to get Kershaw out of the game," said Wright. "But then you look up at a

guy throwing 100 [mph] and you're not too pleased."

Should he have brought in hotter reliever Chris Hatcher? Perhaps, but the point is that Mattingly did the

right thing in lifting Kershaw, and the awful outcome doesn't change the fact that their ace was cooked.

"He had walked three guys in an inning," said Mattingly, adding he "was kind of out of sync there."

To be fair, the entire team was out of sync Friday against the hair-raising fastball of the Mets' Jacob

deGrom. Rookie Corey Seager struck out twice and popped out with a runner in scoring position. Rookie

Joc Pederson flied out with two guys on base. Adrian Gonzalez struck out three times before finally

delivering a one-run single.

The Dodgers now face a must-win Game 2 on Saturday night with their 2015 ace on the mound, Zack

Greinke. If they lose, they would face an elimination game Monday in New York with Brett Anderson

facing the Mets' ace Matt Harvey.

No, Kershaw can't pitch on two days' rest. At this point, both he and the Dodgers can only hope he can

pitch again, period, a man and a team continuing their search for October redemption.

David Wright delivers for Mets after Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw leaves the mound

By Dylan Hernandez

This time around, there was no soul-crushing meltdown for Clayton Kershaw.

If anything, Kershaw pitched well in the Dodgers' postseason opener Friday night. In some moments, he

was even extraordinary.

Jacob deGrom just happened to pitch better.

And so the Dodgers were defeated in their home stadium by the New York Mets, 3-1, and are now

behind in their best-of-five National League division series, one game to none.

Kershaw still has only one victory in nine career postseason starts, but the latest of his six losses was

more of a reflection of deGrom than it was of him.

"I got outpitched," Kershaw said. "That's basically the moral of the story. Jacob pitched an amazing

game."

Kershaw was charged with three runs. DeGrom gave up none.

Kershaw pitched 62/3 innings. DeGrom pitched seven.

Kershaw struck out 11 batters. Armed with an electric fastball that was frequently clocked at 97 mph or

higher, DeGrom struck out 13, matching a franchise postseason record set by Tom Seaver against the

Cincinnati Reds in Game 1 of the 1973 NL Championship Series.

"Obviously, a lot of velocity," Manager Don Mattingly said. "It just seemed like he beat us with that a

lot."

Never before in baseball history had two pitchers struck out 11 or more batters in the same playoff

game. The only other time two pitchers struck out 10 or more in the same game was in Game 5 of the

1944 World Series, when Mort Cooper of the St. Louis Cardinals struck out 12 and Denny



Stadium.

Galehouse of the St. Louis Browns struck out 10.

The Dodgers couldn't score until deGrom was out of the game. With setup man Tyler Clippard on the

mound for the Mets in the eighth inning, Adrian Gonzalez hit an opposite-field single to drive in Howie

Kendrick.

By then, the visitors had already scored three runs, building what felt like an insurmountable advantage.

Daniel Murphy stunned the capacity crowd into silence by launching the first pitch of the fourth inning

into the visiting bullpen in right field. The home run by the left-handed-hitting Murphy provided the

Mets with a 1-0 edge.

The game opened up in the seventh inning.

With two outs, Kershaw walked his third batter of the inning, Curtis Granderson. With the bases loaded

and Kershaw's pitch count at 113, Mattingly removed the ball from his ace's hand.

Pedro Baez was called on to pitch to David Wright.

As Kershaw watched from the Dodgers' bench, Wright lined a single into center field, driving in two runs

and extending the Mets' lead to 3-0.

The game was essentially over.

The Dodgers had only seven hits, including five against deGrom.

"We had some chances," Mattingly said. "We just weren't able to get that hit early."

In the early innings, the Dodgers' only chances were created by Michael Cuddyer, the left fielder for the

Mets.

Cuddyer misplayed a line drive by Justin Turner in the second inning, allowing it to go over his head and

off of his glove for a leadoff double.

DeGrom struck out the next two batters, Andre Ethier and A.J. Ellis. DeGrom intentionally walked Joc

Pederson, then struck out Kershaw to end the threat.

Cuddyer misplayed another ball in the third inning, resulting in another double. This time, Cuddyer

allowed a high fly ball by Corey Seager to drop inside of the foul line and bounce into the stands for a

ground-rule double. Seager didn't the ball was going to be fair and got a late start out of the batter's

box.

However, Gonzalez, who struck out with Kendrick on first base to end the first inning, struck out again.

Gonzalez played the final weeks of the regular season with a pinched nerve in his lower back that he

said weakened his left leg.

Leading up to Friday, Gonzalez said he was confident the problems were behind him.

"It should be 100%," Gonzalez said. "I don't think it's going to be an issue at all. If I don't get a hit, it's not

because of my back."

But how he could know?

"It's not something you completely feel in a one-hour practice," he acknowledged earlier in the week.

The Dodgers had a runner in scoring position again in the fourth, when Turner and Ellis singled.

For Ellis, the single lengthened his postseason hitting streak to 11 games, equaling a franchise record

established over the previous two seasons by Carl Crawford.

But the Dodgers couldn't capitalize, deGrom retired Pederson and got Kershaw on a deep fly ball to end

the inning.

Left-handers give Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw problems

By Bill Shaikin

As the Dodgers opened the playoffs without an ailing Vin Scully, we couldn’t help but think about him,

and not only to send a stadium full of good wishes.

We thought back to the spring of 2008, when Scully first called a game in which Clayton Kershaw

pitched. At that point, Kershaw was a minor leaguer, a first-round draft pick full of hope and hype.

He was 19 years old. He wore No. 96 on his back.

Kershaw unleashed one of his now-famous curve balls, the ones that appear to fall out of the sky. Scully

had seen it all, but he had not seen that pitch. He branded the pitch immediately: “Public Enemy No. 1.”

It is a nasty pitch for any batter to try to hit, but particularly unfair to left-handed batters. It is a primary

reason why most managers stack the lineup with right-handed batters against Kershaw. Futility might

follow anyway, but why abet it?

When the New York Mets unveiled their lineup for Game 1 of the National League division series on

Friday, they had a leadoff hitter that bats left-handed. They had a cleanup batter that bats left-handed.

They had a slugging first baseman that bats left-handed.

And it worked.

The Mets did not pummel the mighty Kershaw. But Daniel Murphy, he of the left-handed swing, hit a

solo home run in the fourth inning, putting the Mets ahead for good.

Of the four hits the Mets got off Kershaw, all were hit by left-handers – two singles by Curtis

Granderson, a single off Kershaw’s foot by Lucas Duda, and the home run by Murphy.

Add a couple walks, and the left-handed hitters batted 10 times against Kershaw and reached base six

times.

“Lefties, they had a good approach,” Kershaw said. “I felt a little more comfortable against the righties.”

He did not know why. He rarely faces left-handers. He wondered if that might be the reason.

“He's so good, it really doesn't matter what side of the plate you're on,” Mets Manager Terry Collins

said. “But if you have all right-handers against him and he gets into a groove, he'll carve you up. So

you've got to give him something different to look at, in my opinion.”

Collins, managing his first postseason game 21 years after managing his first regular-season game,

certainly read the Kershaw numbers correctly. The on-base percentages against Kershaw: .239 for right-

handed batters, .231 for left-handed hitters.

In his last three post-season starts, he has given up three home runs to left-handers: to Matt Carpenter

of the St. Louis Cardinals in the first game of last year’s NLDS, to Matt Adams of the Cardinals in the last

game of last year’s NLDS, and to Murphy on Friday.

The Dodgers lost all three games. And, yes, Murphy said, he had watched video of Kershaw pitching in

last year’s playoffs.

But, no, he was not claiming to have figured Kershaw out, at least not publicly.

“My first at-bat, he chewed me up and spit me out,” Murphy said.

And the second at-bat? A fastball, about as down the middle as down the middle can get.

“He makes so few mistakes that, when someone capitalizes on him, we’re surprised,” Murphy said.

Collins ultimately decided to let his best hitters bat, no matter whether they batted left-handed or right-

handed. He did not out-think himself, and his team won.

The Dodgers did not lose on Friday because of Kershaw, of course. Jacob deGrom, the Mets’ starter, was

simply better – no runs, no unintentional walks, 13 strikeouts.

DeGrom is three months younger than Kershaw. He is a converted shortstop, and he played college ball,

so he did not make his major league debut until Kershaw already had won his first Cy Young award.

In the regular season, Kershaw has started 242 games, deGrom 52. In the postseason, Kershaw has

started nine games, deGrom one.

The number of postseason victories is the same: one apiece. And, while we thought that the Cardinals

were Kershaw’s Kryptonite in October, we now have to wonder whether left-handers might be as well.

There was something familiar in Dodgers' 3-1, Game 1 loss to Mets

By Steve Dilbeck

Not a replay, just painfully close. Clayton Kershaw near brilliant for six innings, then tiring in the seventh.

The Dodgers' offense never getting it going. The bullpen faltering. The big hit, big play, never arriving.

And the loss, the much too familiar loss.

This time it added up to a 3-1 loss to the Mets in Game 1 of their National League division series on a 90-

degree Friday night before a Dodger Stadium crowd of 54,428, a stinging defeat in the best-of-five

series.

As good as Kershaw was Friday -- and he was very, very good -- he was outpitched by New York’s Jacob

deGrom, who matched Kershaw early and then simply outlasted him.

Kershaw gave up a solo home run to second baseman Daniel Murphy, a blast that landed deep into the

Mets bullpen.

But otherwise Kershaw and deGrom were providing a classic postseason pitching duel, each with at least

10 strikeouts by the fifth inning.



Stadium.

And it remained a 1-0 Mets lead until the seventh, Kershaw's personal postseason inning of horror.

Already at 88 pitches when he took the mound, he walked the bases loaded with two outs. He was still

throwing hard but had lost his sharpness.

This time Manager Don Mattingly took him out in a difficult postseason seventh inning and brought in

Pedro Baez. It was probably the right move, but with Mattingly in the postseason, almost any decision

he makes seems to backfire.

Veteran David Wright, who had struck out twice against Kershaw, worked the count full and then lined a

two-run single up the middle, just beyond diving second baseman Howie Kendrick.

Kershaw would be charged with the three runs on four hits and four walks. He struck out 11. And

suffered yet another difficult postseason loss. He fell to 1-6 in the postseason.

The Dodgers never really were able to do anything with deGrom. The 6-foot-4 left-hander never let the

Dodgers get comfortable. He consistently threw 98 mph fastballs on both sides of the plate.

He went seven impressive innings, holding the Dodgers scoreless on five hits -- two of those aided by

some circuitous defensive play by left-fielder Michael Cuddyer. He walked one (intentionally) and struck

out 13, tying Tim Seaver's postseason franchise record. All this in his first career playoff game.

It was the first time in postseason history that both starting pitchers struck out at least 11 batters.

The Dodgers did not push a run across until deGrom left the game. Tyler Clippard took over in the eighth

and gave up a one-out double to Kendrick. Corey Seager popped up, but Adrian Gonzalez laced a single

to left to score Kendrick.

That was enough for Mets Manager Terry Collins, who went to his closer with two outs in the eighth.

Jeurys Familia came in to face Justin Turner, getting him to line out to first.

Familia retired the Dodgers in order in the ninth to earn the save.

Inning by inning: Dodgers drop NLDS opener to New York Mets, 3-1

By Zach Helfand

Final: New York Mets 3, Dodgers 1

That's the ballgame as the Dodgers go in order in the ninth. Kershaw's postseason earned-run average in

the ninth inning was 27 entering the game. He gave up two more runs, and earned the loss in game one.

He now has one win in nine postseason starts. deGrom was excellent in seven innings. He allowed five

hits, and two came on miscues by Michael Cuddyer in left field.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 1, bottom of ninth inning

Hatcher goes 1-2-3 in the ninth. Last chance now for the Dodgers.

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Chris Hatcher will pitch the ninth for the Dodgers.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 1, top of ninth inning



Stadium.

Justin Turner lined out to the first baseman to end the inning. The Dodgers will head into the ninth

inning down by two runs.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 1, bottom of eighth inning

The Dodgers Now jinx strikes again. After this blog hinted that a shutout was likely, Adrian Gonzalez hit a

two-out single to drive in Howie Kendrick. The Dodgers are within two runs, and closer Jeurys Familia

has taken over for Clippard in the eighth.

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Tyler Clippard is now pitching for the Mets.

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Get news and notes on all the Dodgers matchups >>

New York Mets 3, Dodgers 0, bottom of eighth inning

Joel Peralta pitched a 1-2-3 eighth. It won't mean a thing unless the Dodgers can muster three runs.

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deGrom just shook Collins' hand. It looks like he's done. Seven innings, five hits, one walk, 13 strikeouts,

and in position for a win over Clayton Kershaw.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 0, top of eighth inning

The Dodgers go quietly again in the seventh. Another 1-2-3 inning. deGrom has now retired 11 batters in

a row.

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Not to freak anyone out here, but three out of five opening games in this postseason, including the two

wild-card games, have been shutouts.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 0, bottom of seventh inning

That was a tough decision for Mattingly. Keep the left-handed Kershaw against the right-handed

Wright? Or sub in the right-handed Baez, with no room for error? The Dodger Stadium crowd wasn't

happy with the results, of course. They booed as the Dodgers headed off the field after the inning.

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New York Mets 3, Dodgers 0, top of seventh inning

The pitching change did not work out the way Mattingly had hoped. Baez gives up a 3-2 single to David

Wright that scored two runs. The vice is tightening.

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That's it for Kershaw. After Kershaw loaded the bases with three walks, Pedro Baez will come in with the

bases loaded and two outs. Kershaw exited to applause. Now he'll need some help.

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deGrom is up to 101 pitches, but he hasn't lost much velocity, if any, on his fastball.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, top of seventh inning

The Dodgers' side was retired in order again. The Dodgers are down to nine outs in game one.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, bottom of sixth inning

The Dodgers Now jinx is alive and well. After this blog reported that neither team had a 1-2-3 inning,

both pitchers retire the side in order. Kershaw used two fly outs and a ground out, his first inning

without a strikeout, to cruise through the top of the sixth inning.

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Asked by handsome reporter Zach Helfand to describe the game so far in five words or less, intrepid

blogger Steve Dilbeck replied, "disappointingly dull." Let's hope for some more action in the later

innings. For Steve.

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Another note on strikeouts. According to MLB.com reporter Paul Casella, this is the second ever

postseason game in which both starters struck out 10 or more batters. The only other instance was

game five of the 1944 World Series between the St. Louis Browns and St. Louis Cardinals.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, top of sixth inning

The Dodgers sent up the top of the order. They went down quickly. deGrom struck out two more

batters, and he now has 10 strikeouts. It's the first time a Met has had double-digit strikeouts in the

postseason had since game one of the 1988 NLCS at Dodger Stadium, when Dwight Gooden had 10.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, bottom of fifth inning

This has undoubtedly been a pitchers' duel so far, but here's an oddity: neither pitcher has a 1-2-3 inning

so far. Kershaw struck out three more batters — he has 11 strikeouts — in the fifth but allowed a sharp

single to Curtis Granerson. So far, all four Mets hits have come from left-handed hitters.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, top of fifth inning

With a runner on first and second, Kershaw smacked a line drive the opposite way, to deep left-center

field. But Yoenis Cespedes made a nice running grab to preserve deGrom's shutout. deGrom has thrown

80 pitches through five.

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A.J. Ellis' fourth-inning hit just gave him an 11-game postseason hitting streak, tying a Dodgers franchise

record. Reminder: he has, by far, the highest postseason OPS out of any player on either team.

-----------------

Asked to describe the game so far in five words or less, dogged beat reporter Dylan Hernandez replied,

"well-pitched; tiring." We can assume the game story in tomorrow's paper will be more eloquent.

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The commercial break between each inning is more than three minutes. In other words, the time it

takes the Times' award-winning staff in attendance to consume a combined five press box ice cream

cups.

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New York Mets 1, Dodgers 0, bottom of fourth inning

There's your answer, and your first run. Daniel Murphy hit a Kershaw fastball a long way, to right field,

for a home run. The Mets are on the board first.

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What will happen first? Will either team score a run, or will intrepid blogger Steve Dilbeck learn how to

work his cell phone?

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, top of fourth inning

The Dodgers strand another runner on second. After Corey Seager gets a bloop double, on another

misplayed fly ball by Cuddyer, Adrian Gonzalez struck out to end the inning.

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, bottom of third inning

Another two strikeouts for Kerhaw. He allowed a bloop single to Curtis Granderson and nothing else.

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Speaking of hair, deGrom, who just grounded out to start the third, may have an even nicer flow than

the Dodgers' game-two starter, Zack Greinke.

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Our intrepid blogger, Steve Dilbeck, was scratching his balding head at the Pederson intentional walk.

Pederson is batting .161 against right-handers since July 1. Kershaw has batted .167 against righties this

season.

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, top of third inning

deGrom worked out of trouble. After Turner's leadoff double, he struck out Andre Ethier and A.J. Ellis

before intentionally walking Joc Pederson. Then he struck out Kershaw, too.

-----------------

There's the first break of the game for either team. Michael Cuddyer misplayed a line drive in left field to

gift a double to Justin Turner. Let's see if the Dodgers can make it hurt.

-----------------

It's 25 minutes after the first pitch and from the press box, we can still see a line of cars pulling into the

parking lot.

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, bottom of second inning

This one was easier for Kershaw. He struck out another two batters after Lucas Duda reached on a

grounder off Kershaw's legs. This time, he did it in just 11 pitches.

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, end of first inning

Is it hot out here, or is it just Jacob deGrom's fastball? OK, it's probably both. deGrom gave up a hit to

Howie Kendrick but struck out three Dodgers, all with 98-mph fastballs.

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Dodgers 0, New York Mets 0, bottom of first inning

Left-hander Clayton Kershaw displayed his usual dominance in the first inning, but he had to work for it.

He didn't allow a hit but used 22 pitches, mostly becuase third baseman David Wright fouled off eight

pitches to work a 12-pitch walk. He struck out the next two batters to end the inning.

-----------------

Here's some pregame notes and links:

Adrian Gonzalez said his back "should be 100%."

Home-field advantage? Mets Manager Terry Collins says it's the opposite.

If the Dodgers bullpen finally proves trustworthy in the postseason, it may be because Chris Hatcher

called his dad.

In August, journeyman Justin Ruggiano was languishing in triple-A for the Seattle Mariners. Now he's on

the Dodgers' postseason roster, and he's pretty happy about it.

Not only is 21-year-old Corey Seager starting tonight, he's batting third. Here's how he found out.

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Yes, it seems fly balls are traveling quite far. In batting practice, Mets first baseman Lucas Duda,

tonight's No. 6 hitter, smashed a ball off the "SPORTSNET LA" sign above the right-center field bleachers,

knocking off the "R.' It seems Duda, too, is unhappy that much of Los Angeles couldn't watch the

Dodgers on television this season.

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How about some pregame reading? The Dodgers set their 25-man roster this morning, and left off

relievers Juan Nicasio and Carlos Frias and outfielder Scott Van Slyke, but put outfielder Yasiel Puig on

the roster. Find out why here.

-----------------

We're about 90 minutes away from game time, which, coincidentally, may be the temperature at game

time. It is currently 94 degrees at Dodger Stadium, but both teams decided to hold batting practice in

the heat. The Dodgers' game two starter, Zack Greinke, said that fly balls "should travel a little bit more

than average" due to the heat. Clayton Kershaw has given up 15 home runs this season. Jacob deGrom

has given up 16.

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The Dodgers take on the New York Mets in Game 1 of a NL Division Series matchup Friday night at 6:45

p.m. at Dodger Stadium. Clayton Kershaw will pitch for L.A. against Jacob deGrom of the Mets. Kershaw

has never lost to the Mets in his career, while deGrom has never defeated the Dodgers.

Bill Plaschke, Dylan Hernandez, Mike DiGiovanna, Steve Dilbeck, Bill Shaikin and Zach Helfand will be at

the stadium to bring you all the action. You can follow along with inning-by-inning updates right here.

'Matt Harvey gave his arm already for the New York Mets,' agent says

By Bill Shaikin

With Matt Harvey in line to work innings far beyond what his agent expected this season, the agent

decided Friday that this was not the time to revive his public dispute with the New York Mets.

"I think the best thing to say is, we’re in the playoffs," agent Scott Boras said before Game 1 of the

Dodgers-Mets series at Dodger Stadium.

Boras had said Harvey should pitch no more than 180 innings this season, his first after Tommy John

surgery, based on what the agent said was a consensus among the player, the team and doctors. Mets

General Manager Sandy Alderson said last week the agreement had been 185 innings plus playoffs.

Harvey, who told Mets Manager Terry Collins he would pitch beyond the suggested limit, worked 189

1/3 innings in the regular season. He is scheduled to start Game 3 of the series on Monday.

Boras declined to say whether he thought the Mets were taking undue risk with Harvey.

"I’m not going to comment on it," Boras said. "I just want to focus on the game and let them do what

they’re going to do. ... We certainly want the players and the teams to focus on the game. That’s what

everybody should do.

Harvey showed up late for a workout this week, but Boras said he did not believe the tardiness -- and

the unusually public atmosphere surrounding the inning-limit debate -- had dented Harvey's reputation

among his teammates.

"I think the perception of every player is, Matt’s got a great work ethic," Boras said. "I think everybody

knows that.

"Matt Harvey gave his arm already for the New York Mets. In 2013, he went out and pitched until he

didn't have a ligament."

Mark Walter, Cubs season-ticket holder, rooting hard for the Dodgers

By Bill Shaikin

The possibility of the Dodgers meeting the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series is

particularly intriguing to Mark Walter, the Dodgers' chairman.

Walter lives in Chicago -- and, even as the controlling owner of the Dodgers, still keeps his season seats

at Wrigley Field.

"You can't give up seats to the Cubs," Walter said.

Walter said Chicago is abuzz over the Cubs.

"Everybody's pretty excited," he said. "They should be. They haven't been in the playoffs for a while."

Then Walter left to root on his team, which has been in the playoffs in every full season under his

ownership.

Dodger Stadium is slowly filling up for postseason opener

By Steve Dilbeck

Things are heating up at Dodger Stadium. Actually they’re cooling down, if you consider 94 degrees on

the cooling side.

The Dodgers’ 2015 postseason opener is less than an hour away, but the stadium is maybe one-fifth full.

It could look fairly empty at first pitch.

Shadows, at least, have already covered the field by 5 p.m. and the heat has begun to abate. On-field

pregame visitors beneath clear skies included Sandy Koufax and team owners Mark Walter and Todd

Boehly.

Alas, the postseason still includes the world’s most annoying in-game hosts, who continue to shout over

each other in an attempt to convince the still quiet crowd the atmosphere here is electric.

The stadium grass, which was looking pretty patchy after last week’s AC/DC concert, is back to looking

Dodger Stadium beautiful.

There is little bunting around the stadium. The end of two decks are covered with electric ribbon

advertising, so there’s no room for it there. And the suite level is so narrow, if they hung bunting it

would cover the view from the pricey suites seats. The only place with bunting is at the base of the

pavilions and the end of the top deck.

There is one other change to the stadium. Balls were flying out of the stadium during batting practice,

and Mets first baseman Lucas Duda hit a rocket that went off the SportsNet LA sign hanging below the

covering of the right-field pavilion. It knocked the “R” off the sign.

Duda was born in Los Angeles and raised in Riverside. Maybe he was unhappy over the Dodgers’ lack of

local TV coverage.

Dodgers' Corey Seager says he feels no extra pressure batting third

By Zach Helfand

When Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager drove to Dodger Stadium early Friday afternoon, he didn’t know

where he’d be batting in the lineup. He didn’t even know if he’d be starting.

It was a pleasant surprise then, when he scanned the lineup posted in the Dodgers' clubhouse and saw

that he was penciled in at shortstop, making him the youngest position player to start a postseason

game for the Dodgers.

And he was batting third.

"Seeing the lineup," Seager said, "was really cool."

Seager, 21, has been a major-leaguer for slightly more than a month, but he has been one of the

Dodgers' best hitters over that span. Before Friday’s game, he said he felt no added stress from batting

third.

"That's a meaty part of the order, so you’ve got to go out and give good [at-bats]," Seager said. "But

other than that, there’s no extra pressure."

Seager said that after he scanned the lineup card in the clubhouse, Manager Don Mattingly pulled him

aside.

"It's still a baseball game," Seager said Mattingly told him.

Seager has hit .337 with four home runs and 17 RBIs in 27 games this season. He has batted third twice,

and had one hit in eight at-bats.

Mattingly said that Seager "fit the best" at the No. 3 spot. He said he was not worried about the 21-year-

old handling the responsibility.

"We've put him all over," Mattingly said. "He seemed to handle everything."

"We felt like that was the spot for him today," he added.

Mets Manager Terry Collins: 'Heat is on the home team' to win

By Steve Dilbeck

The Dodgers made it a point to win the home-field advantage from the Mets in the first round of the

playoffs.

And now it looks like a big mistake?

Sleeping in your own beds and playing in your home ballpark hasn’t proved any great advantage this far

in the 2015 postseason.

At the moment Mets Manager Terry Collins sat down for his pregame news conference Friday, home

teams had started the postseason 0-5 (the Royals later won at home).

What gives?

Collins has a theory.

“I really don't have all the answers, but I've talked to enough managers that tell me a lot of it when you

start out at home, the pressure's on you,” Collins said. “There's that added thing. You're the guys who

are supposed to win.”

The Dodgers went 55-26 at home this season and were determined to capture the home-field

advantage. They won their last four consecutive games to win it from the Mets.

They hope it means something, and if not only in a positive vein for them, in a possibly negative one for

a mostly young Mets team.

Early in the postseason, however, it just hasn’t worked out that way.

“The visitors just go in more relaxed,” Collins said. “I told the guys yesterday, look, we've just got to play

our game. We play good on the road. Let's not change anything, and no matter what happens, we're

going to still go back to New York and we hopefully can salvage something here and go back and get the

advantage.

“But I just think it's the fact that the heat is on the home team for me.”

OC REGISTER

Familiar frustration for Dodgers as Clayton Kershaw is outpitched by Jacob deGrom in 3-1 loss

By Bill Plunkett

LOS ANGELES – Hitters from both teams stepped into a haunted house Friday night where they were

tormented by things they could sense and occasionally catch a glimpse of – but rarely touch.

It was Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw who went home with the demons, though.

Between them, Kershaw and Mets starter Jacob deGrom threw 234 mostly excellent, often unhittable,

pitches in extreme heat – frequently with extreme heat as well. They struck out 11 and 13 respectively

in the first postseason game to see two pitchers each strike out more than 10.

Kershaw also threw a fat, 2-and-0 fastball to Daniel Murphy in the fourth inning that Murphy turned on

and sent over the wall in right field for a solo home run, and walked the bases loaded in the seventh

inning, enough missteps for the Mets to take Game 1 of the National League Division Series, 3-1, at

Dodger Stadium.

“I got outpitched. That’s basically the moral of the story,” Kershaw said. “Jacob pitched an amazing

game. We battled and got deep in some counts. But he outpitched me, plain and simple.”

Kershaw was fairly brilliant, but deGrom brilliant-er. And the Dodgers’ tarnished ace has now lost each

of his past five starts in the postseason (four to the St. Louis Cardinals).

“I don’t know,” Kershaw said when asked – again in October – if he feels snake bit in the postseason.

“No. Just each game is a little bit different. It didn’t work out this time.”

Kershaw’s greatest postseason flaw might be choosing such unsupportive friends. The Dodgers left him

with no margin for error to absorb any mistakes by stranding six runners on base in the first four innings

against deGrom.

Mets left fielder Michael Cuddyer twice played fly balls into doubles, letting Justin Turner’s drive get

over his head to start the second inning and Corey Seager’s fly ball to drop just inside the foul line with

two outs in the third inning.

In both cases, the Dodgers stranded the runner without advancing him. DeGrom struck out the side

after Turner’s double and struck out Adrian Gonzalez (one of three strikeouts for Gonzalez in three at-

bats against deGrom) to strand Seager in the third.

“You can’t think you’re just going to cash in on something,” Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis said. “DeGrom was

phenomenal.”

The Dodgers also put two runners on with one out in the fourth inning after singles by Turner and Ellis.

Neither advanced past second.

“Obviously a lot of just velocity. He beat us with that a lot,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said of

deGrom, whose fastball stayed in the 96-98 mph range all night. “I thought we did a pretty good job

with him of not chasing the change(up) or the breaking ball down. But with that, you end up chasing

some elevated fastballs and I think he beat us with that a little bit.”

The Dodgers were 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position in those innings and struck out seven times

with runners on in deGrom’s seven innings. In fact, their best at-bat with a runner in scoring position

might have come from Kershaw himself in the fourth inning. He fell behind 0-and-2 but worked the

count full before flying out deep to center field, sending Yoenis Cespedes to the edge of the warning

track to run down his drive.

“I felt like we had good at-bats until the end result,” Gonzalez said. “We worked deep counts but he

made the pitches when he needed to.

“He has great pitches to finish hitters off, but we’ve got to do a better job of putting the ball in play.”

That left Kershaw on the wrong end of a 1-0 pitchers’ duel when he took the mound for the seventh

inning – often his personal torture chamber in the playoffs.

“That’s that seventh inning again, huh?” Ellis said.

Kershaw walked Lucas Duda to start the inning, Ruben Tejada two batters later and then Curtis

Granderson after a sacrifice bunt by deGrom had moved the runners into scoring position.

That was it for Kershaw, as Mattingly went to the bullpen for the first time this postseason. His right arm

didn’t tremble as he waved for Pedro Baez, but he might have been forgiven if it had, considering the

way his bullpen has betrayed him in past postseasons.

Baez was true to his lineage, giving up a two-run single to David Wright that proved decisive when

Gonzalez drove in the Dodgers’ only run in the eighth inning.

For the second year in a row, the Dodgers find themselves down in a best-of-five NLDS after losing the

opening game at home with their best pitcher on the mound.

“There’s pressure on every game in the postseason,” Ellis said. “We’ve been in this spot before. Zack

(Greinke) was able to come back and tie that series for us last year. That’s all we can focus on. Win

tomorrow and take it back to New York tied.”

Miller: Mets' Jacob deGrom beats Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw at his game

By Jeff Miller

LOS ANGELES – Typically, his nemesis has been armed with a bat, like, in his previous playoff start, St.

Louis’ Matt Adams, who last fall sent Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers soaring over the right-field fence

at Busch Stadium.

On Friday, one year and two days later, Kershaw was felled by an opponent armed with an arm, the

Mets’ Jacob deGrom marching onto the mound at Dodger Stadium and out-Kershawing Kershaw

himself.

And so another frustrating page was added to the diary of disappointment that is the postseason career

of baseball’s greatest modern-day regular-season pitcher.

Kershaw and the Dodgers lost the opener of this National League Division Series, 3-1, New York placing

every flavor of pressure on the home team entering Game 2 on Saturday.

If the Dodgers fail to win again, they will face the reality of being down two games to none after

unleashing the most potent one-two punch on the planet – Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

To update, Kershaw has now started nine postseason games all-time and won only one of them. The

Dodgers are 3-6 in those games, having now lost five consecutive Kershaw playoff starts.

The numbers are remarkable really, among the most unlikely statistics accumulated by a pitcher famous

for producing unlikely statistics. Kershaw, in October, has become a splintered ace.

Some of his nine postseason starts have been very good, a couple of them have been very bad and a

few, like this latest one, have fallen somewhere in between.

Against the Mets, he permitted only Daniel Murphy’s homer leading off the fourth before three walks

unraveled his seventh inning, leading to the Mets’ other two runs.

Manager Don Mattingly pulled Kershaw with the bases loaded and the score still only 1-0 with two outs

in that seventh.

Reliever Pedro Baez immediately fell behind David Wright, the most veteran of New York’s hitters, and

eventually surrendered Wright’s game-clinching two-run single, and maybe you’ve read before about

the Dodgers’ bullpen failing in these sorts of situations.

Some folks will question Mattingly’s decision to remove Kershaw, who, to that point, had thrown 113

pitches. After all, questioning Mattingly has become one of the great postseason traditions in Dodger

history.

But I’m not going to do that here, given how Kershaw was struggling to find the strike zone. I would,

however, wonder about Mattingly’s choice of Baez over, say, Chris Hatcher. I’d also note that more than

Mattingly, Baez was the one who really failed.

Kershaw had spent stretches of this night making New York’s hitters look silly, repeatedly striking them

out with curveballs that short-hopped catcher A.J. Ellis.

The Mets batted .155 against left-handed curveballs this season, which was the worst in baseball and

another sign this sport one day will be rendered less thrilling than long division.

Yet, ultimately, Kershaw’s impact Friday was compromised greatly by deGrom, who easily was the best

starting pitcher on the field.

“I thought about the fourth or fifth inning, he started to settle in a lot better,” New York manager Terry

Collins said. “I think he was making better pitches.”

En route to seven shutout innings, the right hander kept doing things that made Mets’ history. At one

point, he equaled a record held by Dwight Gooden. Later, the name Tom Seaver was mentioned.

“What made Jacob so great tonight,” Murphy said, “was that he not only matched up pitch-for-pitch

(with Kershaw), but he was able to go deeper in the game.”

The Dodgers struck out 13 times in all, frequently blown away by deGrom’s upper-90s fastball, swinging

at fumes and, unfortunately for L.A. fans, consistently making contact.

The Dodgers got a leadoff double in the second from Justin Turner and a leadoff single from Turner in

the fourth and did nothing with either.

Their greatest threat against deGrom actually was delivered by Kershaw, who drove a ball deep to left-

center that was run down by Yoenis Cespedes to end the fourth inning with two runners on.

“Obviously, a lot of just velocity,” Mattingly said of deGrom, who entered this game overshadowed by

Kershaw but didn’t exit that way. “He beat us with that a lot.”

As dominant as both starting pitchers were Friday, this game somehow didn’t feature a 1-2-3 inning

until the bottom of the fifth, a half-inning that, in honor of deGrom, I’ll rename here the bottom of the

filth.

He smoked Carl Crawford with a 96-mph four-seam, five alarm fastball that was closer to the bill of

Crawford’s helmet than the strike zone. He then retired Howie Kendrick on a routine ground ball back to

the mound. That brought up Corey Seager, who was so fooled by a deGrom curve that his halting swing

looked fractured.

So that’s how it went on a night when Clayton Kershaw started for the Dodgers in October. So many of

us were left writing about the opposition. Again.

Some day, this has to change, no? Some day, the best starter going has to finish on top, right?

Moura: Dodgers had better options than Pedro Baez in critical seventh inning

By Pedro Moura

LOS ANGELES — He was wild, he was frustrated, and he was staring at the sky. Clayton Kershaw seemed

to know Don Mattingly would be removing him from the mound after he walked the Mets’ Curtis

Granderson to load the bases in Friday’s seventh inning at Dodger Stadium.

Down one run, it was not an irrational decision, not at all. Kershaw had thrown 113 pitches in this Game

1 of the National League Division Series, thrown them harder than he usually does, and his control was

getting worse. The man he’d face if he stayed in was David Wright, who worked him for a 12-pitch walk

in the first inning. Of course, Kershaw’s seventh-inning struggles in playoffs past loomed large.

So, it made sense. What was questionable was the choice to replace him: right-hander Pedro Baez, a 27-

year-old in his second season who possesses an electric fastball but the command of a teenager driving

on a learner’s permit.

He is not the one you want in the game in the most important moment of said game. Either Mattingly

should’ve used one of his two best relief options, or he should’ve kept Kershaw in.

Mattingly had already committed to the choice for a good 10 minutes: Baez was the only one warming

all that time. The Dodgers’ best relief option is closer Kenley Jansen, by a large margin. A radical choice

would’ve been to bring him in right there, in what was likely to be the highest-leverage situation in the

game. Bringing in the Dodgers’ second-best relief option, set-up man Chris Hatcher, would have been a

less radical choice — and probably the right one.

But because the pitcher’s spot was due up third in the bottom of the inning, Mattingly avoided Hatcher.

He wanted to save him for the eighth, to set up for Jansen in the event that the Dodgers took a lead.

So he went to Baez, who threw six straight fastballs to David Wright. During the pitching changeover,

the Mets’ leader and third baseman had received scouting reports from teammate Michael Cuddyer and

hitting coach Kevin Long. After Baez’s first two pitches, both balls, Wright felt he had the 98-mph stuff

timed.

Wright worked the count to 3-1, fouled off an inside-corner fastball to bring it to 3-2, and then laced a

pitch down the middle back up the middle for the deciding hit of the Dodgers’ loss. Catcher A.J. Ellis

wanted the pitch right back on the inside corner. It did not end up there, because, you know, Baez lacks

command and all.

“It was just sitting on something hard,” Wright said.

The Dodgers had been sitting on Baez, confident from the inning’s start that leaving Kershaw in to face

Wright a fourth time would have been a bad idea.

“We felt like that was going to be the spot,” Mattingly said.

Conveniently, we have a nice way to compare the two presented options in that situation. There is such

a thing as a times-through-the-order penalty, and it applies to most, if not all, pitchers. After two times

through an opposing lineup, they tend to become less effective. Part of it, surely, is fatigue; part of it is

hitters having seen all their pitches; part of it is even the added benefit of pinch-hitters.

Whatever the case, it has never particularly applied to Kershaw. He entered Friday having faced hitters a

fourth time through in 289 previous plate appearances. In those chances, they were hitting .211, with a

.254 on-base percentage and .274 slugging percentage.

That’s a small sample, sure, but Baez entered Friday having faced hitters in any situation in exactly 300

previous plate appearances. In those situations, they were hitting .229, with a .270 on-base percentage

and .375 slugging mark.

The advantage swung in Kershaw’s favor.

To add to it, the Dodgers’ new regime has repeatedly stressed the inherent volatility in relief pitching.

The importance of the hot hand is overemphasized throughout baseball. A six-game hitting streak does

not portend a hitter extending it. But one place it does exist is in relief.

Hatcher earned the staff’s confidence based on six solid weeks of pitching since returning from the DL.

He pitched to a 1.31 ERA. In that same span, Baez had pitched to a 5.52 ERA.

He clearly wasn’t one of the Dodgers’ two best options, and it’s entirely possible he wasn’t the team’s

third-best, either. Right-hander Joel Peralta made the playoff roster after a strong September and went

on to pitch a perfect eighth Friday night. He was an option. Hatcher should have been too, for one out or

for four.

It comes down to this: In the Dodgers’ last six playoff games, spanning three Octobers, Jansen has

thrown one inning, less than two percent of the total innings the team has handled. Their best reliever is

going unused.

And, at some point, doesn’t the risk of that outweigh the risk of burning him too early in a game?

Against odds, Mets left-handed hitters do the damage against Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw

By Ryan Kartje

LOS ANGELES – At first glance, it seemed like an odd lineup to trot out against the best left-handed

pitcher on the planet.

But as ace Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw took the mound in Game 1 of the NL Division Series, the

Mets turned in a lineup with three of its top six hitters – Curtis Granderson, Daniel Murphy, and Lucas

Duda – batting left-handed. Conventional knowledge suggested this might not be the best idea.

Mets manager Terry Collins didn’t agree. Turns out, neither did Murphy.

The Mets second baseman stepped to the plate in the fourth inning with Kershaw already in rare form,

six strikeouts deep through three innings. Murphy, on the other hand, had hit just .254, with just one

home run and nine extra-base hits in 134 plate appearances against left-handers. Now, he was facing

the best in the game, and conventional knowledge took a backseat to playoff drama.

“We know when Murph’s swinging good,” Collins said before the game, “he hits anybody.”

On a 2-0 pitch from Kershaw, Murphy cracked a line-drive over the wall in right field.

Given Kershaw’s success in the first three innings, it was a brutal twist of fate for the Dodgers, who

eventually lost, 3-1. In a game that quickly became an intense pitcher’s duel between Kershaw and Mets

starter Jacob deGrom, that early run would be vital.

Still, Kershaw tore through the Mets lineup in Kershaw-like fashion after that, striking out 11 in 62/3

innings. But while he mostly bamboozled the right-handers he faced, New York’s lefties continued to

give him fits. Mets pitching coach Kevin Long said he noticed Kershaw making more mistakes than usual

against Duda, Granderson, and Murphy. Even Kershaw admitted felt more comfortable against righties.

Duda, who has hit lefties well all season, tallied a hit and drew a key leadoff walk in what would be a

back-breaking 7th inning for the Dodgers. Curtis Granderson, with a less-than-stellar .183 against left-

handers this season, notched two hits against him, as well.

It was Granderson who ultimately chased Kershaw in the seventh. After getting ahead 1-2 with two outs

and two runners in scoring position, Kershaw’s command eluded him. He walked Granderson, loading

the bases and ending his night. Ultimately, the Mets lefties would finish 4 of 8 with two walks and a

home run against the best left-handed pitcher in baseball.

The Dodgers replaced him with a right-hander, Pedro Baez, to face Mets righty David Wright. But

conventions deceived them again, as Baez promptly gave up a two-run single that put the game out of

reach against Mets pitching on this night.

Statistically, the onslaught of left-handed success wasn’t a total oddity against Kershaw; though, any

success against him is admittedly rare. Left-handed batters this season have actually hit .203 against

Kershaw, while righties have hit him at a .192 clip.

But that’s the first time that disparity held true throughout Kershaw’s entire career. Other than in his

rookie year, Kershaw has never allowed lefties to hit better than .200 against him over the course of a

season.

On Friday night, though, it was a parade of Mets lefties that made the difference, emboldening Collins’

unconventional lineup choices. In the end, it was actually Collins’ reluctance to play a lefty, rookie

outfielder Michael Conforto, that nearly cost the Mets.

Michael Cuddyer, who is not known for his defensive prowess, took the field instead of Conforto on

Friday and misjudged two fly balls in left field – in the second and third innings – giving the Dodgers

runners in scoring position both times.

But Cuddyer’s gaffes would amount to nothing on the scoreboard for the Dodgers, as the Mets lefties

went against convention and took care of business in Game 1.

Dodgers' NLDS roster includes late bloomers

By Bill Plunkett

LOS ANGELES – When the Dodgers announced their roster for the National League Division Series

against the New York Mets on Friday morning, it included five players who weren’t on their active roster

at the end of August, two who weren’t even on their 40-man roster.

Yasiel Puig, Kiké Hernandez and Joel Peralta were all on the DL at that time. Justin Ruggiano was playing

for Triple-A Tacoma in the Seattle Mariners’ organization. And Corey Seager was finishing his season

with Triple-A Oklahoma City.

Hernandez returned from his hamstring injury with time to demonstrate his good health. Despite his

late return less than a week ago, Puig’s status became clear when Scott Van Slyke was unable to take

batting practice this week. Van Slyke will miss the NLDS with an injured right wrist. Seager and Ruggiano

played their way into the postseason picture over the final month – Seager as the starting shortstop,

Ruggiano as a valuable role player against left-handed pitching.

Peralta was the only real surprise on the postseason roster. The veteran reliever spent most of the

season on the DL with a strained neck and was largely ineffective when he was on the active roster –

until September.

Peralta, 39, returned from his second DL stint and showed big recoveries in both velocity and spin rate

over the final month, allowing four hits while striking out 11 in nine innings.

“I thought he threw the ball well down the stretch,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “Obviously I

think the neck was a big issue early on and then when he did come back I still don’t think he was totally

healthy. I think the second time he went on the DL, I think that kind of solidified him.

“When he came back after that … his velocity ticked up and I think that was a big difference.”

Peralta made the NLDS bullpen at the expense of Juan Nicasio, whose splits against left-handed batters

(a .348 average and more walks than strikeouts) were worrisome.

“Juan struggled with lefties,” Mattingly acknowledged, pointing out the Mets’ lineup goes back and forth

with right- and left-handed hitters. “We didn’t really feel like we were ever going to get sections against

those guys that you’re going to get a number of righties together.”

THREE-DAY DILEMMA

Both Mattingly and Mets manager Terry Collins will have a decision to make in the next three days – do

they bring their Game 1 starters back on short rest to pitch in Game 4?

Mattingly said one of the factors in starting Clayton Kershaw in Game 1, not Zack Greinke, was to “leave

that option open” for Game 4 – the inference being the Dodgers would start Kershaw on three days’ rest

(as they did once in each of the previous two postseasons) but they wouldn’t consider that with Greinke.

Mattingly said he had conversations about short-rest starts with Greinke when he first came to the

Dodgers. He has not asked him to do it.

“I told them three years ago, I’ll pitch on short rest. I just haven’t done it good in my career,” Greinke

said Friday. “So I think that’s kind of why it has been like that in the past ... and Kershaw is more

confident than me doing it.

“So that’s why I’m guessing he is doing it. But I’ll do it. I just haven’t been good at it.”

The numbers don’t necessarily back up that assertion. Greinke has made just two starts in his career on

short rest, both during the regular season – once in Kansas City in 2007 and once in 2011 with the

Milwaukee Brewers. He lasted just three innings the first time (during a season when he was bouncing

between starting and pitching out of the bullpen) but allowed just two runs on six hits over nine innings

in the two starts.

Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom has never pitched on short rest. That will factor heavily in his Game 4

decision, Collins said. The Mets also included left-hander Steven Matz on their NLDS roster. If he has

recovered sufficiently from an upper-back injury, he could start Game 4.

“We don’t know what will happen,” Collins said. “Certainly I’m not going to say today that Jake’s going

to be the guy. It all depends on tonight. If he goes deep into the game, if he has to work hard, he

probably won’t come back on three days’ rest.

“Clayton’s done it three times (actually two). The kid’s never done it in his whole career. When you’re

asking young guys to do things that they’ve never done before, you can set yourself up for some

failure.”

NLDS Game 2: Mets at Dodgers, Saturday, 6 p.m.

By Pedro Moura

Where: Dodger Stadium

TV: TBS

Did you know: The Mets’ first three starters in this series have started a combined 141 major-league

games. If they choose rookie left-hander Steven Matz for Game 4, it’ll be 147 total. Clayton Kershaw has

started 250, including the postseason.

THE PITCHERS

RHP ZACK GREINKE (19-3, 1.66)

Greinke was the most consistent man in the majors during the regular season. He never threw fewer

than six innings, and the Dodgers can certainly count on him for that. His most recent start was even

better: He went eight innings against the Padres and gave up just one run, striking out eight and walking

one. He had a 5-to-1 strikeout-ratio for the year.

Vs. Mets: 3-1, 2.48

At Dodger Stadium: 29-5, 2.00

RHP NOAH SYNDERGAARD (9-7, 3.24)

Syndergaard, 23, was shrewdly acquired in the R.A. Dickey trade three years ago and has developed into

the hard thrower he was supposed to be. Mets call the 6-6, 242-pounder “Thor,” a nod to his (possibly)

Viking roots from Scandinavia. He has been on quite the roll of late, with 29 strikeouts against just one

walk in his last three outings.

Vs. Dodgers: 0-0, 1.50 (6 innings)

At Dodger Stadium: 0-0, 1.50

Dodgers announce NLDS roster for Mets series that begins tonight

By Pedro Moura

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers this afternoon announced their final NLDS roster for their NLDS series

against the New York Mets that begins tonight at 6:45 at Dodger Stadium.

On it are not real surprises. Yasiel Puig made it, of course, even if he might not start multiple games. The

biggest snub is probably right-hander Juan Nicasio.

LA DAILY NEWS

Corey Seager is youngest LA Dodgers position player to start in postseason By JP Hoornstra

It was Sept. 12 and Corey Seager had just erased any doubt he belonged in the major leagues, going 4 for 4 in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, when a reporter asked about his calm exterior. “It’s just kind of the demeanor I kind of have – try to hide as much as possible,” he said. “Two older brothers, you kind of get used to hiding your emotions because they get under your skin pretty easily.” So who knows what was really running through Seager’s mind this week when he learned he made the Dodgers’ roster for the National League Division Series. Or Friday, when he saw his name listed third on the Dodgers’ lineup card, making him the youngest position player to start a playoff game in franchise history. Or when Jacob deGrom blew a 98-mph fastball past him in the first inning. Truth is, Seager’s lack of transparency has only helped him in the major leagues. “I think he’s just not been overwhelmed at all,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “He seemed to just handle everything and nothing has really stepped up on him, it didn’t seem like. Again, just kind of calm and the same demeanor he’s had when we’ve seen him in Spring Training. It’s kind of an everyday thing. “He made a couple errors one day, and it didn’t even bother him. Not that it didn’t bother him, but it didn’t change his demeanor or anything, and he just seems well equipped to handle it.” Seager seems so well equipped, veteran first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said Wednesday he felt no need to pull Seager aside to talk before the series. “Let (the rookies) play the game and if you see something, you talk to them,” he said. “You can’t put too many things in their head.” Even in the case of Seager, there might be a lot running around in there. FINAL ROSTER DECISIONS The only thing resembling a surprise on the Dodgers’ 25-man NLDS roster — after reserve outfielder Justin Ruggiano and pitcher Joel Peralta said Thursday they would be on it — lay in the final bullpen spots. Maybe the biggest surprise was the exclusion of pitcher Carlos Frias, who had allowed one run in eight innings after returning from a back injury in September. “Carlos was really kind of a long man,” Mattingly said. “We looked to him for some length, but also could he get guys out. He’s a little bit like Juan (Nicasio) — kind of had trouble with the lefties over the course of the year. But, again, with our combination of guys, how we look at possibly how this series kind of works itself out, we had — it was a tough choice, actually, but we didn’t feel like we were going to need that length.” Alex Wood said two days ago that he would begin the series in the bullpen. He might be the Dodgers’ only option as a long reliever, so Mattingly’s remarks reinforce the notion that the club is leaning toward using Clayton Kershaw on short rest in an if-necessary Game 4 next Tuesday in New York.

As for Nicasio, the Dodgers figure to replace his innings with Pedro Baez – another hard-throwing right-hander accustomed to short stints. Baez has been almost equally good this season against lefties (who batted .255 against him) and righties (.245). “Juan struggled with the lefties,” Mattingly said. “We didn’t really feel like we were ever going to get sections against (the Mets’ lineup) that you’re going to get a number of righties together. Different team, different set of circumstances. “It could have easily have been Juan. Just more about feeling like the other guys were better against their combination of guys.” ALSO Asked about the health of Yasiel Puig, who missed most of September with a hamstring injury, Mattingly said “we would not be afraid to use him in any way.” ... Sandy Koufax attended the game, as did Dodgers co-owners Magic Johnson, Mark Walter, Todd Boehly and Bobby Patton. ... A.J. Ellis’ 11-game postseason hitting streak tied a Dodgers franchise record. Whicker: Kershaw, deGrom turn game 1 into a showdown of arms By Mark Whicker While the announced crowd of 54,428 at Dodger Stadium shifted in its seats Friday night, Clayton Kershaw sat and watched. He had walked three batters to load the bases for the Mets’ David Wright in the seventh inning, putting Don Mattingly in a precarious position that the Dodgers’ manager has been in before. This time, Mattingly pulled Kershaw in favor of right-handed reliever Pedro Baez. Kershaw calmly took a seat on the bench. He leaned his elbow on his leg and his cheek in his hand. He shifted his arms as Baez fell behind 2-0, then 3-1, then served up a 99 mph fastball down the middle of the plate. Wright smoked a line drive back up the middle of the diamond for a two-run single, the decisive hit in the Mets’ 3-1 win in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Friday. The outcome of the game, and the Dodgers’ 1-0 deficit in the series, are consistent with Kershaw’s October trajectory. The ace is winless in his last five October starts. He’s allowed at least three runs in his last four. But this game was its own animal — the very thing Mets manager Terry Collins compared Kershaw to before the series began. And much like the last time he pitched in the playoffs (a Game 4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in last year’s NL Division Series), Kershaw appeared to have tamed the October beast for six innings. So did Mets starter Jacob deGrom, who did not allow a run in seven innings in his first playoff start.

“I got out-pitched,” Kershaw said. “That’s basically the moral of the story. Jacob pitched an amazing game. We battled, got even in some counts, got his pitch count up there, but he out-pitched me plain and simple.” DeGrom (13 strikeouts) and Kershaw (11) became the first postseason opponents to strike out 11 batters in the same game. The Mets collected only four hits and, until the seventh inning, only one walk — a masterful 12-pitch at-bat by Wright in the first — against Kershaw. Before Baez took over, the only difference between the two teams was a fourth-inning home run by Daniel Murphy that landed on the grass of the Mets’ bullpen. “My first at-bat he chewed me up and spit me out,” Murphy said of Kershaw. “That’s kind of what it looked like. I got a lot of sliders that I didn’t see well and he put me away with them fairly easy. The next at-bat I was able to get my foot down just a little earlier, got a 2-0 heater in the middle of the plate, and I was fortunate to put a good swing on it.” Lucas Duda, Ruben Tejada and Curtis Granderson all drew walks in the fateful seventh inning, interspersed between a pair of ground-ball outs. When A.J. Ellis caught Kershaw’s 113th and final pitch a couple inches outside to Granderson, Kershaw could only look to the heavens and droop his shoulders. It was Baez who relieved Kershaw last October, too, after Matt Adams hit a three-run home run on Kershaw’s final pitch in St. Louis. Whether he faced one batter too many or one batter too few, Kershaw’s final inning ensured he would be dogged by the same questions about not rising to the occasion of the postseason. But he could not, and did not, argue with Mattingly when he was removed from this game. “I put myself in that spot,” Kershaw said. “Not much room for arguing after you put yourself in that situation.” More than Kershaw, the Dodgers’ offense failed to rise to the occasion Friday. DeGrom’s 98-mph fastball and 91-mph slider were too much for the Dodgers’ lineup. Their big hits against the shaggy-haired right-hander — a double by Justin Turner off left fielder Michael Cuddyer’s glove and a double by Corey Seager, also off Cuddyer’s glove — stood in isolation. The Dodgers’ only run came in the eighth inning, when Adrian Gonzalez punched an opposite-field single off right-hander Tyler Clippard to score Howie Kendrick. They finished 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position. “We didn’t do much when we had guys out there,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve got to do a better job (Saturday) and put the ball in play.” DeGrom allowed five hits and walked one batter in addition to his 13 strikeouts. Closer Jeurys Familia relieved Clippard in the eighth inning and recorded a four-out save, retiring Joc Pederson on a weak ground ball back to the mound to end the game himself. Zack Greinke will start opposite the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard in Game 2, a game scheduled to begin at 6:07 p.m. Saturday.

“Not that (Game 2) is a must-win, but it’s a game that we definitely need to compete in, and play well in, and do everything we can to get to New York with a split,” Ellis said. Kershaw’s postseason frustration continues in Game 1 of NLDS By JP Hoornstra Clayton Kershaw ambled off to the dugout after 6 2/3 innings, bathed by cheers he didn’t need to hear, surrounded by Mets on the basepaths who were excited he was leaving. “It wasn’t like we stood up and cheered,” said New York manager Terry Collins. “But it’s nice to see him walk off the field with us in the lead.” The Mets led 1-0 on Daniel Murphy’s home run in the fourth inning, the one piece of meat in a riveting famine of a playoff game. At one point Kershaw and Jacob deGrom had struck out 12 of the first 21 hitters. Kershaw had 11 strikeouts in five innings. Mets batting coach Kevin Long was getting ribbed in the dugout at that point. “They were telling him it was a good plan, seeing if we could strike out enough to drive up his pitch count,” Collins said. And it worked as well as anything else. This time Dodgers manager Don Mattingly lifted Kershaw to bring in reliever Pedro Baez, after Kershaw had walked three Mets, and David Wright was due to hit with two out. This decision will be second-guessed, of course, but Mattingly had perfectly sensible reasons, since Kershaw had thrown 113 pitches. The problem was not generated by Mattingly, but by a front office that had this ailment in the bullpen last year and could not find the prescription for it. Here, Baez hulked his way in, threw high-velocity fastballs, fell behind and watched Wright, one of the best Mets ever, rip a two-run single to center that put New York up 3-0 in a game it would win 3-1. deGrom left, too, after seven innings and 121 pitches. Collins had toyed with the idea of bringing back the shaggy right-hander for Game 4. “As I sit here right now, he might have gone a little too far,” Collins said. First, however, the Dodgers have to make sure there is a Game 4, and to do that they have to beat either Noah Syndegaard at Dodger Stadium tonight or Matt Harvey in New York on Tuesday night, neither of which will be simple. Mattingly’s rationale was to make sure Kershaw didn’t have to face Wright for the fourth time when it mattered. In the first inning, Wright treated the fans to several souvenirs, fouling off eight pitches, six with two strikes, and going through a 12-pitch at-bat that launched Kershaw on the road to bad pitch count numbers.

“(Curtis) Granderson started out by putting a good move on the first pitch (and lining out),” Murphy said. “I was afraid that it would be something like an eight-pitch inning, but David went up there and battled, and it paid dividends later. Plus, he won the at-bat (with a walk).” The crucial seventh began with a walk to Lucas Duda. “Clayton was a little out of sync there,” Mattingly said. With one out, Kershaw faced shortstop Ruben Tejada, whose defense got him playing time over Wilmer Flores’ offense. Tejada had 38 walks this year. He fell behind Kershaw 0-and-2 and fouled off two pitches, then took four balls. That was the plate appearance that put the Dodgers in check, and deGrom, a former infielder at Stetson University, moved them closer to checkmate with an expert bunt that moved up the baserunners. “Then Granderson comes up with a great left-on-left walk,” Murphy said. Kershaw tightened his lips as he snatched the ball back from A.J. Ellis, following a 3-and-2 pitch, at 95 mph, that just missed. He has been through enough postseason pickles to know when things turn sour. But it was hard to lay anything on Kershaw when you saw how much horsepower was under deGrom’s hood. The first batter he faced was Carl Crawford, and he took care of him with five pitches at the following speeds: 97, 97, 97, 97 and 98. “He beat us with velocity a lot of times,” Mattingly said. “I thought we did a good job laying off the breaking balls that he wanted us to chase. But that meant he was able to get us out with high fastballs. He was good tonight, but we had some chances.’ The Dodgers were 0 for 6 with men in scoring position in the first four innings. Then deGrom began mixing in some off-speed stuff (definition: 85 to 90 mph) and he retired 11 straight Dodgers and struck out the last three he faced. The question is whether Kershaw will hear any more cheers in 2015, and for what reasons. Hoffarth: It’s a Blue October with no Vin Scully By Tom Hoffarth The game arrived at 6:45 p.m. The radio was flipped on. The volume on the TV was turned down. And there was no Vin. Of course, we had all been properly warned that this would be the reality of Friday’s Dodgers-Mets NLCS Game 1 from Dodger Stadium. We still had to check. And then, check our pulse. None of this was quite registering. It was as if we were in some kind of weightless state, waiting for gravity to return.

The vague terms used Thursday afternoon was something about a “medical procedure” that 87-year-old Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully needed. So he’d have to go quiet during this postseason. So now that this is apparently real, do we have a plan on how to navigate the rest of this playoff contest? The rest of this series? The rest of the winter? For a quick diversion earlier in the day, we picked up the comic section of the paper. There was Kevin Fagan’s “Drabble.” The topic was Scully. Ralph Drabble is telling his youngest son, Patrick, how he’ll listen to Scully do the game on the radio but that five-second delay between what he said and what happened on TV was kind of a problem. The son responds: “Wow, he must really be good.” “I can’t figure out how he does it,” Ralph says amazingly of Scully. When we had the radio humming on Friday night, that delay between what was said by Charley Steiner and Rick Monday and what occurred on the TBS coverage was tolerable at best. But then came the reminders. Between the first and second inning, Scully’s voice came on with a sponsored “This Date in Dodgers History.” It was by a Scully Farmer John commercial. It was comforting and confusing. And then confounding when his voice came on one more time: “And now back to Rick and Charley in the Mercedes-Benz broadcast booth.” Nothing so much against Ernie Johnson, Ron Darling and Cal Ripken Jr. on the TV feed — as they occupied the same booth Scully uses as a second home. But Blue October has already begun in L.A.. And not even the funny pages could soften the blow. On Twitter, some needed a platform to vent sadness, concern, and even some anger over how Scully has been silenced to some degree by the two-year slog involving the SportsNet L.A. channel launch. Dick Enberg tweeted out: “No Vin Scully for playoffs is NO playoffs. Good thoughts, our friend!” Jon Weisman, the Dodgers’ director of digital and print content, put up a piece on the Dodger Insider MLB.com blog that Scully wrote as a guest columnist for the L.A. times 50 years ago. The words were Scully lyrical describing how he was waiting out a rain delay in Pittsburgh and coming “face to face with the biggest enemy on the road … TIME.” It’s time for Dodgers playoff baseball. Steiner even said so as Friday’s game started. Thanks for trying, but … During a moment after a KLAC-AM station identification break in the first inning, Steiner wished Scully “nothing but the best” because “he’s on our minds and on everybody’s mind.”

But not on our radio. And we still can’t get our ears, or hearts, around that. Los Angeles Dodgers’ Game 1 loss, the morning after By Mark Whicker Mets 3, Dodgers 1, in Game 1 of the N.L. Division Series, the morning after: • The only Dodgers victory came on the videoboard, during the Presidents challenge, in which a fan and a Dodger try to recite how many Presidents they can identify. A.J. Ellis blew away his opponent by naming the chief executives perfectly in order, from Obama backwards all the way to Eisenhower, and then threw in both Adams and both Harrisons for good measure. • Ellis had a better night than Adrian Gonzalez, who struck out three times at the hands of Jacob deGrom. Gonzalez did thrill the crowd with a loud foul home run to right, and then drove in the Dodgers’ only run, off Tyler Clippard, with a single to left. • Justin Turner and Howie Kendrick were the only Dodgers who didn’t strike out. They also had four of the club’s seven hits. • The Mets used closer Jeurys Familia for four outs and presumably won’t hesitate to do that again. The Dodgers went 0 for 4 against him with three grounders. Familia had 45 saves in 50 opportunities and gave up a .207 batting average this year. • Of course, the only Met who didn’t strike out was Curtis Granderson, the former Tiger and Yankee who saw Kershaw better than anyone else in the lineup. He popped a single into left-center field, singled hard in the fifth, lined into an out in the first and got the walk that finished Kershaw in the seventh. • The underrated Daniel Murphy homered off Kershaw in the fourth inning, drilling an inner-half fastball on a 2-0 count and taking it into the Mets’ bullpen. “He ate me up with sliders in the first,” Murphy said, “but then I was able to get my foot down just a little bit earlier. He doesn’t make many mistakes.” • Ellis did not disagree with the notion that a four-day layoff made deGrom’s fastball even more nuclear. “I don’t know if our timing was off or not, but he had an electric fastball,” said the Dodgers catcher. “He was elevating really well. When the ball gets up there with that velocity, it’s so close to your eyes that it looks good to hit, but it was going to be really hard to catch up with.” • Houston and San Diego set the all-time record for strikeouts in a postseason game in 1998, when Randy Johnson hooked up with Kevin Brown and 28 hitters took the walk of shame to the dugout. Brown struck out 16 in his eight innings and Johnson struck out nine. The Astros won, 2-1, with Greg Vaughn’s homer in the eighth providing the eventual winning margin. Trevor Hoffman got the save. The Mets and Dodgers came within a strikeout of that record Friday night. • deGrom’s 13 strikeouts tied the Mets’ postseason record for a single game. Drum roll, please — Tom Seaver also had 13, against the Reds in 1973.

• Zack Greinke handles Game 2 for the Dodgers Saturday night against Noah Syndegaard. Greinke was asked if he minded starting Game 2, since Mattingly’s reasoning was that Kershaw was better equipped to work Game 4 with three days’ rest. “I told them I’d do it, but I’m not very good at it,” Greinke said. He has done it in his career with a 2.00 ERA, although he went only nine innings, total, in those starts. It is quite possible this will be Greinke’s final home start as a Dodger, since he can opt out of his contract at season’s end. Keeping the book: Dodgers fans keep art of scorekeeping alive By David Montero Before she heads to Dodger Stadium, Holly Proulx goes through her equipment checklist. There’s the scoring book. A pencil — with 0.9 thickness lead. Two erasers. Headphones and radio. Oh, and Billy Proulx, her husband. “First time we both went to a Dodger game in 1980, we both kept score,” he said. “After awhile, I figured there was no reason for both of us to do it, so I became her spotter.” That means he has the binoculars slung around his neck while she make notes about the game started. She’s a former schoolteacher and now teaches martial arts in Claremont. She loves baseball and is hoping to pass along the love to her two grandchildren, ages 6 and 2, though she doesn’t take them to Dodgers games when she keeps score because, well, she sort of really gets into it. “It’s important to give a lot of yourself to others, but to do that well, you have to do something for yourself that brings you joy,” she said. “For me, it’s keeping score during a baseball game.” The focus is intense. And she’s not alone. In the top deck during Friday’s playoff game between the Dodgers and the New York Mets, there were almost a dozen people with their scorekeeping binders dotting the rows of light-blue seats. Each had their own style, but they all bonded in this old-school fraternity of baseball tradition. Jeanine Lussier custom-made her own scoring sheets and, as word got around, others asked if she could make some for them. She said she currently makes about four or five scoring books — complete with a custom photo on the front. One of her favorite scorekeeping books was in 2009, when she snuck into Dodger Stadium and took a picture of her two dogs, Bailey and Sweet Pea, with the “Think Blue” sign in the back. This season, she’s scored 60 baseball games and flips through the pages like it’s a spiral notebook from a semester’s worth of note taking in college. She has the score sheet from when Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw got his 300th strikeout. There was a game that ended on a balk. Lussier, who works as an information technology specialist for the

California State University system, said she enjoys being able to look back at a score sheet and remember the game. Sort of like instant replay with a pencil and paper. The downside, she said, is she can sometimes miss an exciting moment because her head is buried in the notebook and not looking at the field. “You have to make choices sometimes,” she said. “You find a balance. Maybe you don’t record every strike and ball and you see more of the game.” She said, however, when Kershaw pitches, she thinks it’s possible he could throw a perfect game. “In that case, I want to have a perfect score sheet,” she said. Pamela Wilson agreed and said she’s missed some exciting plays while keeping score. She said, however, the score sheet makes her feel comfortable. Like it’s part of the game experience. Proulx said she probably has about 500 score sheets from games at home. Lussier said she may have close to double that. Proulx said she also won’t go to technology to keep score. Swapping out paper and a pencil for a smartphone app would be like pinch-hitting a rookie for a Hall-of-Fame-bound veteran. “The app has no character,” she said. “It has to be paper.” When they settled in their seats for the start of the game — a sluggish affair that was 0-0 after the third inning — the scorekeepers dutifully charted pitch counts and noted strikeouts. During David Wright’s at-bat against the Dodgers’ Kershaw in the first inning, the Mets third baseman fouled off six pitches and forced the starter to throw 12 of his 22 pitches that inning. Proulx had to erase a few that she thought were strikes. She pressed hard on the lead to count the pitches. She said she sometimes presses so hard, she breaks the lead. “When I was a kid, I tended to break the crayons, too,” she said. Proulx said she gets great satisfaction out recording history. She just hopes this year will be one where she is charting pitches during a World Series. Daniel Murphy made Clayton Kershaw pay for location mistake By Jaime A. Cardenas Clayton Kershaw was dealing when he took the mound for the fourth inning. Through three innings in game 1 of the NLDS series, the Dodgers ace had struck out six Mets batters— two in each inning. It looked like Dodgers fans would be getting the regular season Kershaw, and not the postseason one who is 1-5 lifetime in the playoffs.

But, of course, that wasn’t the case. One moment, one mistake changed that. Daniel Murphy, the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the fourth inning, took a 2-0 offering from Kershaw deep over the right field wall to put New York up 1-0. According to the MLB’s statcast, the home run traveled a projected 415 feet. With Kershaw behind on the count, having missed on a slider and a 4-seam fastball, he served up a fastball right over that plate that had little to no movement on it. It looked like trouble as soon as Murphy made contact. TBS play-by-play announcer Ernie Johnson knew it too, saying, “that ball is well hit to right, I mean really well hit to right,” he emphasized, “and the Mets are up 1-0.”

TRUEBLUELA.COM Dodgers offense struggles again in Game 1 loss to Mets By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- As is often the case in a close game, the focus falls on a single play and ignores an otherwise systemic problem. On Friday in Game 1, David Wright 's two-run single against Pedro Baez was the single biggest play of the game, providing the winning margin in the Mets' 3-1 victory over the Dodgers. But in the loss, the Dodgers offense sputtered once again. Obviously, Jacob deGrom was a huge part of that, striking out 13 in his seven scoreless innings. "I thought we did a pretty good job with him of not chasing the change or the breaking ball down, but with that you end up chasing some elevated fastballs, and I think he beat us with that a little bit," manager Don Mattingly said. "We had a few chances. We got some runners, JT got on a couple times. They had a little rally going. We just weren't able to get that hit early." The Dodgers did have some chances against deGrom, both with leadoff hits by Justin Turner, who doubled in the second and singled in the fourth. But both innings ended with Clayton Kershaw batting with two outs, not the most ideal scoring chances. Kershaw hit arguably the best ball of the night against deGrom, a drive to deep center field in the sixth, but Yoenis Cespedes was able to easily track it down on the warning track. The Dodgers finished 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, with the hit a single by Adrian Gonzalez in the eighth inning to drive home Howie Kendrick when the Dodgers were already down 3-0.

The Dodgers hit .230/.309/.358 with runners in scoring position since July 1, and scored 3.99 runs per game during that span of 83 games. They had seven hits on the night, though two were doubles that were really would-be outs horribly misplayed by Michael Cuddyer in left field. Since the start of the 2013 playoffs, the Dodgers are 6-2 when they score three or more runs. They are 0-7 when they do not. Simply put, the Dodgers offense has to find a way to score. The matchups won't be any easier, with Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey starting the next two games for the Mets. Mattingly wouldn't reveal any lineup changes planned for Game 2. "Syndergaard's a little different than deGrom. He just mixes a little bit different," Mattingly said. "We'll just look at it and put the best lineup out there for tomorrow." Record hit streak One bright spot for the offense was A.J. Ellis, who singled in the fourth inning and went 1-for-3, extending his postseason hitting streak to 11 games, tying Carl Crawford (2013-2014) for the Dodgers franchise record. Up next Zack Greinke gets the start in Game 2, a 6:07 p.m. PT start. Syndergaard starts for the Mets. Jacob deGrom dominates, Clayton Kershaw suffers another defeat By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers found themselves on the wrong end of a pitcher's duel, falling to Jacob deGrom and the Mets 3-1 in Game 1 of the National League Division Series with a script ending that seemed all too familiar for Clayton Kershaw. Down 1-0 in the seventh, Kershaw battled through the heat as his pitch count rose, but he walked three in the inning to load the bases with two outs. It was the first time Kershaw walked three in an inning since April 23, 2013 — in the third inning against the Mets, in New York — 95 starts ago. "I felt pretty good. That seventh, obviously you can't walk that many guys," Kershaw said. "Just the 3-2 pitch to Tejada I want back. It slipped out there. I really wanted to have that one back." Pulled after 113 pitches, Kershaw gave way to Pedro Baez, who pumped fastballs to David Wright until the Mets third baseman lined a single up the middle for a two-run lead to put the game out of reach. During the regular season, Baez with the bases loaded held batters to 0-for-7 with four strikeouts and a sacrifice fly.

In Game 1 of the 2014 NLDS, also on a oppressively hot day at Dodger Stadium, Kershaw tired in the seventh inning (though much more spectacularly so), and left down a run to St. Louis with one runner on base. Baez entered that game too, and walked a batter before allowing a three-run home run to Matt Holliday that neutered the Dodgers' comeback chances in a game they would lose by a run. The Dodgers would rally for a run in the eighth, with a double by Howie Kendrick and a single by Adrian Gonzalez. But that was it. In Kershaw's last three postseason starts, he allowed three total runs on eight hits in the first six innings, so 18 innings total, with 28 strikeouts and three walks. In the seventh inning of those games, Kershaw has combined to record four outs, allowing 11 runs on nine hits and three walks, with two strikeouts. Strikeout buddies Kershaw and deGrom battled back and forth all night, each mowing down the other side in a nail-biter of a game. Kershaw struck out 11, and deGrom struck out 13. It was just the second postseason game ever with two starters each striking out double digits, and the first since Game 5 of the 1944 World Series. But this game was the only postseason game ever with each starter getting at least 11 strikeouts. The only blemish was a 2-0 fastball that Daniel Murphy hit into the visitor's bullpen in right field in the fourth inning. Murphy had one of the four hits allowed by Kershaw on the night, with all four coming from the three left-handed batters in the Mets' lineup, with Curtis Granderson and Lucas Duda collecting the others. The Dodgers got their long fly ball deep into the night in right field in the sixth, when Gonzalez took advantage of a curveball over the plate from deGrom. Only this one was a few feet foul, just a long strike. Five pitches later, Gonzalez struck out for the third time in three at-bats against deGrom. For deGrom, he matched Tom Seaver (1973 NLCS) for most strikeouts in a postseason game in Mets franchise history, and set a record for most strikeouts in a postseason game at Dodger Stadium. Kershaw was tied for second. Kershaw had the 12th Dodgers postseason game with 10 or more strikeouts, and third of his career matching Sandy Koufax for most in franchise history. But Kershaw also suffered his fifth consecutive postseason loss, and the Dodgers are down 1-0 in the series. "I got outpitched. That's basically the moral of the story. Jacob pitched an amazing game," Kershaw said. Game 1 particulars

Home run: Daniel Murphy (1) WP - Jacob deGrom (1-0): 7 IP, 5 hits, 1 walk, 13 strikeouts LP - Clayton Kershaw (0-1): 6⅔ IP, 4 hits, 3 runs, 4 walks, 11 strikeouts Sv - Jeurys Familia (1): 4 up, 4 down Dodger Stadium NLDS pregame info, national anthems, first pitches, gate times By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- Here are some pregame details for what will be a sold out Dodger Stadium for both Games 1 and 2 on Friday and Saturday night in Los Angeles. For Friday's 6:45 p.m. PT start, parking lot gates will open at 3:45 p.m. and stadium gates will be open at 4:15 p.m., with Dodgers batting practice finishing up at 4:50 p.m, followed by Mets batting practice from 5-5:50 p.m. For Saturday's 6:07 p.m. PT start, parking lot gates will open at 3 p.m. and stadium gates will be open at 3:30 p.m., with Dodgers batting practice finishing up at 4:15 p.m, followed by Mets batting practice from 4:25-5:15 p.m. Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Game 1 is Ella Mason Annear, a four-year-old cancer survivor. She was diagnosed Heptoblastoma and a lung tumor seven months ago, and underwent surgery in April followed by seven rounds of chemotherapy and now is cancer free. For her incredible journey, she earned he nickname 'Ella the Great.' Performing the national anthem before Game 1 is All-4-One, who also did so at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 28. On Saturday, Tommy Lasorda will throw out a ceremonial first pitch before Game 2. The national anthem that night will be performed by Mariachi Sol de Mexico de Jose Hernandez, who will also perform on the field before the anthem. They did the same on Oct. 2 and were fantastic. Dodgers finalize NLDS roster vs. Mets By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers finalized their 2015 National League Division Series roster against the Mets, and will carry 14 position players and 11 pitchers for the best-of-five series.

The one relative surprise is Joel Peralta making it over Juan Nicasio in the bullpen. Peralta, 39, had two disabled list stints, one for a pinched nerve in his back and one for a neck sprain, and after he returned in September saw an uptick in velocity. "When he came back after that, obviously he got healthy, healthier and stronger. His velocity clicked up and I think that was a big difference. He was kind of all of a sudden clicking 90, 91. I know that's not a big number for a lot of relievers. But for him, I think that little tick from the 88, 89, to the 90, 91 every once in a while 92, is a big difference with his pitch mix," manager Don Mattingly said on Thursday. "So creating that difference and just that little bit of velocity, I think has made a big difference with Joel." Nicasio allowed left-handed batters to hit .348/.477/.493 this season, which factored into why he was left off the 25-man NLDS roster against the Mets. "It was more about the matchups against the Mets and how they line up. Juan struggles with the lefties. We didn't feel like we were going to get sections with a number of righties together," Mattingly said Friday. "Another team, another circumstance, it could have very easily been Juan." Carlos Frias was also considered, but with a shortened series and two off days, the Dodgers didn't have much of a need for a long reliever. "Carlos was a long guy thought," Mattingly explained. "But with this series and the way it might work itself out, it was a tough choice but we didn't feel like we were going to need that length." The Dodgers are balanced with three right-handed-hitting outfielders and three lefties. They have a switch-hitter and a lefty in Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley off the bench in the infield. Of the 14 position players, the Dodgers have six right-handed batters, six left-handed batters and two switch-hitters. "Our mix of guys is pretty balanced as it is so I don't think we would skew it that far because you always have matchups later in the game," general manager Farhan Zaidi said on Tuesday. "Our objective is to have good balance both ways." Dodgers NLDS roster Starting pitchers (4): Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Brett Anderson, Alex Wood Relief pitchers (7): Kenley Jansen, Chris Hatcher, J.P. Howell, Luis Avilan, Joel Peralta, Pedro Baez, Yimi Garcia Catchers (2): A.J. Ellis, Yasmani Grandal Infielders (6): Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Corey Seager, Justin Turner, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley Outfielders (6): Carl Crawford, Kike Hernandez, Andre Ethier, Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, Justin Ruggiano Dodgers regular season numbers vs. Mets

By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- Much like we did with the Mets, here are the Dodgers who made the NLDS roster and their regular season numbers against New York in 2015. Again, take this with a grain of salt, or file it away for trivial reference. Alex Wood and Luis Avilan both faced the Mets only as Braves this season, and Chase Utley did so wth Philadelphia. Chris Hatcher and Brett Anderson did not face them. Neither did Justin Ruggiano nor Corey Seager. Corey Seager bats 3rd for Dodgers in his first playoff game By Eric Stephen LOS ANGELES -- As expected, Corey Seager is starting for the Dodgers at shortstop in Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the Mets. Not as expected, the rookie is batting third. Seager at 21 years, 165 days old is the youngest Dodgers position player to start any postseason game. Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that he's hitting third though, since he has been the team's best hitter over the last month. After getting called up on Sept. 3, Seager started 25 of 30 games down the stretch and hit .337/.425/.561, leading the team in RBI (17) and runs scored (17) in September. Seager batted third twice in September. "I think he's just not been overwhelmed at all. Nothing has really sped up on him. He's just calm and has the same demeanor we saw in spring training," manager Don Mattingly said. "He's well equipped to handle it." The other mild surprise is Joc Pederson back in center field. It appeared that Kiké Hernandez took over regular center field duties in the final week of the season, as he did in the final week of August before hitting the disabled list. But while Hernandez crushes left-handed pitching, his .234/.262/.331 mark against right-handed pitching this season makes it worth putting up with a slumping Pederson — hitting .161/.318/.252 against RHP since July 1 — because of the superior defense in center. The Mets, as promised, have their three regular left-handed batters — Curtis Granderson, Daniel Murphy and Lucas Duda v in the lineup against the southpaw Clayton Kershaw. Mets regular season numbers vs. Dodgers By Eric Stephen

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers and Mets are wildly different since the two clubs played each other seven times in July, New York especially. That said, I thought it would be fun to see what each member of the Mets' NLDS roster did against the Dodgers during the regular season in 2015. Take these with copious grains of salt. David Wright, Yoenis Cespedes and Travis d'Arnaud did not face the Dodgers this season, nor did pitchers Tyler Clippard and Erik Goeddel. The numbers for Kelly Johnson and Addison Reed include their time with Atlanta and Arizona, respectively.

ESPN LA Mets' deGrom too much for the Dodgers; plus DS notes, highlights By Buster Olney LOS ANGELES -- A.J. Ellis had seen Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom strike out four of the first six Dodgers he faced Friday, all of them flailing to catch up to deGrom's autobahn fastball, and as Ellis approached the plate for his first at-bat, he offered some gallows humor to his counterpart, Mets catcher Travis d'Arnaud. "This is fun," Ellis said. "First game in a week and I get to face the best pitcher in baseball." On this night, the fourth day of the postseason, that title unquestionably belonged to deGrom even as he dueled multiple-Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw, who acknowledged flatly after the game that he had been outpitched. Of the 27 batters the Dodgers sent to the plate, 13 struck out in a manner not commonly seen this time of year: They appeared utterly helpless in a 3-1 loss. You have to know that beneath deGrom's long hair and Ichabod Crane-like gait is a politely understated and cheerful person; he really wasn't bragging when he answered Michael Cuddyer's question in the dugout Friday night about what pitch had worked for him on the mound. Everything, deGrom replied. "I could throw anything at any time," he said. But it started with that overpowering fastball. As some clubhouse attendants break in a new catcher's mitt, they will smash the pocket with a mallet to soften the leather, and that's what deGrom's fastball sounded like on the field microphones Friday night, a 98 mph sledgehammer, one after another, crashing into d'Arnaud's mitt. DeGrom threw 75 fastballs Friday and according to ESPN Stats & Information, only two traveled at under 95 mph -- a couple of seventh-inning stragglers at 94.7 mph and 94.9 mph. The mastery and mystery of Zack Greinke By Steve Wulf

On the afternoon of Aug. 6, Zack Greinke of the Dodgers flailed his arms in disgust and squatted in the middle of the diamond at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. As he berated himself for throwing away an easy tapper by the leadoff hitter in the bottom of the first, he looked less like one of the best pitchers in the world and more like a long-haired Little Leaguer who was upset with himself for letting his team down. Somewhat flustered, Greinke gave up a single, a walk, a single and then a three-run homer to Domonic Brown. His first-place Dodgers now trailed the hapless Phillies 5-3 with no outs, and the crowd of 27,839, as well as the occupants in both dugouts, looked on in shock as pitching coach Rick Honeycutt went out to the mound to find out what this impostor had done with the guy who had recently tied a major league record with six consecutive scoreless starts. A veteran scout sitting behind home plate exchanged quizzical looks with his colleagues and said, "Watch, he'll get out of this." The pitching coach in the other dugout, Bob McClure, had no doubt that he would. Five runs in, no outs, bottom of the first -- that's nothing compared to the spot McClure saw Donald Zackary Greinke try to get out of nine years before. That time, there was much more than a game on the line. On this afternoon, Greinke took a deep breath and proceeded to retire the next three batters, the last two by strikeouts. He led off the top of the second with a single off David Buchanan and scored on a three-run homer by Adrian Gonzalez that put the Dodgers back in front, 6-5. With two outs in the top of the third, he lined the first pitch from Buchanan over the fence in left-center to give himself a 7-5 lead. Then, in the top of the sixth, he singled off a reliever to start a three-run rally. On the mound, he settled down and kept the Phillies at bay with his extensive repertoire -- two-seamers, four-seamers, curves, sliders, changeups -- and intensive control. By the time he left the game after six innings, the Dodgers were ahead 10-6, and they went on to win 10-8. Greinke had given up seven hits, but he had gotten three. Greinke worked through his disastrous start in Philadelphia, a microcosm of his lifelong resilience. Rich Pilling/Getty Images Afterward, in one of his delightfully taciturn postgame news conferences, Greinke said, "I was mad after that first inning and motivated to get some hits. Normally, you just focus on your pitching, but we were down by some runs, so I needed to put good at-bats out there." When asked about his high school aspirations of being a major league shortstop, he said he'd seen the old videos, and "My confidence then was good enough to make the majors, but my swing wasn't as good as I remembered." While his eyes seemed to be searching for anything but another set of eyes, there was a hint of a smile on Greinke's face. Over in the other clubhouse, McClure was not pleased that his team had just lost and that his pitchers had been hammered. But part of him was inwardly happy for Zack and the season he was having.

Once upon a time, you see, McClure was the pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals. He was there on the day that Greinke quit baseball. When people get off the elevator at the press box in Citizens Bank Park, they are greeted on the left by a phalanx of magazine covers that trace the history of the Phillies. One of the covers is from the July 21, 1980, issue of Sports Illustrated, and it bears a photo of future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton with the words "Mastery and Mystery." It's a cover billing that would fit Greinke just as well. Thirty-five years after Carlton won the third of his four Cy Young Awards, Greinke is on the short list for his second Cy Young with a 19-3 record, a 1.66 ERA and an astonishing WHIP of 0.84. The only other pitcher to have a winning percentage that high (.864) and an ERA that low was Greg Maddux of the Braves when he won the Cy Young in 1995 with a 19-2 record and a 1.63 ERA. And Greinke's scoreless streak of 45⅔ innings, which began on June 18 and ended on July 26, is the fourth longest in history. Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis, who recently wrote "Catching Aces" for the Players' Tribune, says, "I think my favorite Zack moment this year came in a game in Washington in July [July 19] in the middle of the streak. Yasmani [Grandal] had to leave the game because he took a foul tip off the mask, so I had to go in cold. I walk out to the mound to talk to Zack and get my bearings. He tells me, 'Put down whatever you want. Everything right now is nasty.' "And it was. That's Zack for you." That's Zack for you. It's a mantra people who know Greinke use to explain him to people who don't know him. He can seem off-putting and baffling, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a 31-year-old enigma who walks into a clubhouse with his blond hair tied up in a ninja knot, then lets it down to pad around like Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." But while the mysterious aura around Carlton was strictly enforced -- he never talked to the media in his heyday -- and sometimes downright hostile, Greinke has a much more playful and collegial vibe to him. Whether he's showing pictures of newborn Bode Nicholas Greinke, trading stock tips with Andre Ethier or getting ribbed for having Colin Kaepernick on his fantasy football team, he is just one of the guys, albeit a guy who could opt out of his contract at the end of this season and sign somewhere else for a ridiculous amount of money. There's also a bit of mystery to his mastery. Greinke throws hard, but not as hard as either of his Cy Young competitors, the Cubs' Jake Arrieta and rotation-mate Clayton Kershaw. His edge is brainpower, which can't be measured on a radar gun. He instinctively knows what an opposing batter is expecting just by the way he sets up in the box. As Kershaw says, "When Zack goes out on the mound, he knows exactly what to do. The way he executes his pitches is probably the best I've ever seen. He can throw anything at any time to any spot." According to Honeycutt, "Zack reminds me of Greg Maddux. Zack throws harder, but they're both ultra-competitive, really smart with great control and often the best athlete on the field. Yeah, Maddux is the closest I can think of to Zack."

The athleticism is as obvious as it was that day in Philadelphia. This season, Greinke outhit his opposition, .224 to .187. He is one of only three pitchers to win a Silver Slugger, a Gold Glove and a Cy Young Award. The other two are Dodgers pitchers Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser. Somehow, Greinke actually outhit the opposition he faced this year: .224 to .187. Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire/AP Images Greinke comparisons aren't limited to other pitchers, or even other athletes. Scouts often bring up the names of Picasso and Einstein. "I would say he's more of a scientist than an artist," Ellis says. "A scientist who's incredibly talented, self-aware and honest." And a scientist who's having the best season of an already stellar career. "Why now?" McClure says. "Knowing Zack, I'd say a lot has to do with having Kershaw in the rotation with him. They feed off each other's greatness. They keep raising the bar on one another." Honeycutt agrees: "It helps to have peers who push you internally, who improve your game just by watching them." For now, Kershaw and Greinke are the Mets' problem in the NLDS. But when the season is over, the Dodgers will have to figure out whether they can afford to keep the reincarnation of Koufax and Drysdale together; the deeper they go in the postseason, the more the pressures and revenues will mount. Dodger Blue hasn't been in a World Series since 1988. That was the year another right-hander, Hershiser, mixed in a record scoreless streak (59 innings), a newborn and a world championship. That serendipity is what makes Zack Greinke one of the best stories in baseball in 2015. But if you go back nine years, you realize he's also one of the best stories about baseball, a story shared by a few people who were there for him when he seemed irretrievably lost. "I can't tell you how proud I am of Zack," says Buddy Bell, his former manager in Kansas City and now the assistant general manager of the Chicago White Sox. "I'm proud of him for the pitcher he's become, but also the husband and father. Look, we might have helped him a little. But this is really on him, and it's a beautiful thing to see." A portrait of the artist as a young man, in the Royals' farm system. Douglas Jones Photography For his first full season as the Royals' manager in 2006, Bell brought in McClure to be his pitching coach. The Royals were terrible at the time, losers of 106 games the season before. To make matters worse, their No. 1 draft pick from 2002 had just gone 5-17 with a 5.80 ERA. Pitcher name of Greinke. So job one for McClure, a crafty left-hander who had bounced around the majors for 19 seasons, was to turn around this talented but disappointing right-hander. "I played golf with him in Florida that winter to establish a rapport," McClure says. "Helluva golfer, but not much of a talker. Still, I figured it was a start. "We get to spring training in Surprise, Arizona, and Zack has his first bullpen session. [Before he] throws one pitch -- one pitch -- [he] walks over to me and says, 'I have to tell you three things. No. 1, I'm not going to throw a two-seam fastball. No. 2, I'm not going to throw a changeup. No. 3, I don't like listening to pitching coaches.'

"So I tell him, 'I actually don't have a problem with No. 3 -- I didn't get along with some of my pitching coaches, either. But I have to tell you: If you don't want to finish 5-17 again, you might want to think about changing your repertoire." "He finishes the session throwing nothing but fastballs and walks away. Later that day, I get a call from Buddy Bell. 'Nice job with Zack today,' he tells me. 'He just quit. Our No. 1 starter just quit baseball.'" Although the Royals had sensed that Greinke was unhappy, they hadn't seen that he was at his breaking point. He was quiet, after all. Intensifying their shock was their personal investment in him. Ever since scout Cliff Pastornicky filed his first reports on this sophomore at Apopka (Fla.) High School, the Royals had been smitten with Greinke. "The easiest guy ever to scout," says Pastornicky, a former Royals third baseman who works at the IMG Baseball Academy in Bradenton, Florida. "He could have been a shortstop, a third baseman, a catcher, a pitcher. What I really liked about him, though, was his integrity. I tried to take him to lunch when he was a senior and Clemson was recruiting him, and he refused because he thought it might be against NCAA rules." In his senior year at Apopka, Greinke went 9-2 with an 0.55 ERA, 118 strikeouts and 8 walks, and the Royals made him the sixth pick in the 2002 draft. But he still hadn't decided whether he would be a shortstop or a pitcher when he reported to their Gulf Coast rookie league team in Davenport, Florida. "Zack and I worked out together at shortstop," says Andres Blanco, now a Phillies infielder but then a Royals prospect. "I was fresh from Venezuela, didn't know much English, and one day this really nice teammate just gives me his glove. He said he didn't need it anymore because he was going to be a pitcher. You know what? I still have that glove." When Greinke reported to his first full spring training the next year, he was already the talk of the Royals. General manager Allard Baird showed up one day to watch this 19-year-old kid throw in the bullpen, and when someone asked him why he was there, Baird said out loud, "I heard that there was supposed to be some hotshot young pitcher out here." As Baird recalls, Greinke responded without looking up, "And you're gonna be impressed." He was so talented, confident and mature that the Royals put him on a fast track that would enable them to bring their future into the increasingly desperate present. By 2003 he had come to the attention of Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski, who would become the world's leading Zack-ologist. He saw Greinke pitch in the Futures Game at the All-Star Game festivities at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago. As he described it: "He looked to be all of 12 years old. His cap looked too big for his head; the bill stretched out too far, like he was Charlie Brown. ... He pitched one perfect inning with two strikeouts. "When it ended, I asked his catcher, a young Joe Mauer, what he thought. He said: 'Wherever I put the glove, he hit it. He was definitely different." Posnanski discovered just how different after that season, when the Royals' best prospects were given a tour of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. He noticed that Greinke was especially moved by the stories of players who couldn't play in the major leagues because of the color of their skin. When a television reporter walked over and asked whether she could interview Greinke, he looked up at the ceiling and said, "No, this is not a good time. I don't really feel like it."

Ten minutes later, he gathered himself and gave her the interview. Externally, Greinke was just what the Royals had been hoping for. He blew through their minor league system, pitching just six games in Triple-A Omaha in 2004 before he was called up to the big club, where he acquitted himself with an 8-11 record and a 3.97 ERA in 24 starts. But internally, he was struggling, with the time between starts, the pressure he put on himself, the anxiety of dealing with strangers. "I really had no idea," Pastornicky says. "We just thought he was a shy kid." A shy kid with a tendency to speak what was on his mind. Posnanski tells another story, this one about the time teammate Jeremy Affeldt came back to the bench after giving up a homer, claiming he had made a good pitch. Everybody kept their distance as he fumed. Everybody but Greinke. "Actually, that was a pretty bad pitch," Zack said. "Thanks, Zack," Affeldt said in a sarcastic tone. "No, really. I went back to the clubhouse and looked at the pitch on video. It was a really bad pitch. Right over the middle of the plate, and you got it up ... I could have hit it out." "Thanks, Zack." "Yeah." Sensing that Greinke might need some work on his social skills, the Royals literally went old school, suggesting that effervescent Hall of Famer George Brett invite Greinke to live at his house. Which he did. He'd sleep late, go fishing, hang by the pool, play video games at night with Brett's kids. As Brett later said, "On the outside, he didn't have a worry in the world. But then, who knows what anybody's really like?" The problem ran deeper than the Royals knew. When Greinke was only 8 years old, he was a tennis prodigy, but he came to hate the game, quit and took up the team sport of baseball. Now he apparently was feeling the same way about pitching. He missed his high school sweetheart, Emily Kuchar, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. He phoned home to his parents to ask them whether he should go to college and just start over. Then came the disastrous 2005 5-17 season, exemplified by a June 10 game in which he gave up 11 runs. The Royals were hoping against hope that he would turn it around. Enter McClure as the new pitching coach. Exit Greinke, who told Baird and Bell that he was quitting. Greinke later described his state of mind at the time: "I used to get so nervous and upset at stuff ... I'd always be angry." He would channel that anger into intense workouts ... and that fateful bullpen session. What McClure told him must have hit home because Greinke then told Baird and Bell that he couldn't do it anymore. At Greinke's worst and most vulnerable, no one, not even Royals pitching coach Bob McClure, could help him out of his funk. Brian Kersey/AP Images

Nobody blamed McClure. "This was beyond baseball," says Baird, now a senior vice president with the Boston Red Sox. "This was about a young man in pain, and we had to figure out what was best for him, not for us." "My father was a major leaguer; I was a major leaguer; and my sons were major leaguers," Bell says. "But while this game is in my blood, I realized what was at stake here: the life of a really good kid who deep down loved the game as much as I did." The Royals told Greinke to take some time off and come back when he was ready. He went home to Florida and saw a psychologist, who diagnosed him with social anxiety disorder, a deep-seated fear of social situations often associated with clinical depression. He was prescribed Zoloft, a commonly used anti-depressant. The distractions faded, and the worries became manageable. "The medicine was the greatest thing ever," Greinke would later say. "I may have gotten lucky and found the right one. The only problem I have with it is that it makes me a little tired, but not real tired." After a few weeks away from the game, he returned to the Royals in extended spring training, then joined the Double-A Wichita Wranglers, pitching every few days for Royals legend Frank White and helping the Wranglers get into the Texas League playoffs. He even found a new, higher gear for his fastball. At one point that season, Posnanski went down to see him and reported, "I had never seen him look that happy." After the Wranglers' playoffs, Greinke was called up to Kansas City for three brief appearances. Unfortunately for Baird, he was fired by the Royals before he could see Zack return to the majors. But he kept in touch with Greinke and with his successor in the team's GM office, Dayton Moore, who subscribed to the same plan of patience. When Kansas City native Mike Swanson became communications director in 2007 after nine seasons with the Diamondbacks, he created a comfortable environment for Greinke that would also satisfy the needs of the media. "Basically, we addressed the social anxiety issue in a spring training press conference," he says. "After that, Zack just talked after the games." By revealing his problem, Greinke helped the public understand that social anxiety is not a stigma, that you could be an elite athlete with a disorder shared by millions. And that it was nothing new, even if the nomenclature was. Once upon a time, the New York Yankees had a talented first baseman who was labeled a shy "mama's boy" because he sometimes cried after failing at the plate. Player name of Gehrig. As for his pitching, Greinke started listening to McClure. "He was headstrong, but I like that in a pitcher," McClure says. "It means that he's committed, and while it makes him harder to convince, once you do, he's just as committed." McClure also credits a journeyman pitcher, David Riske, with reaching out to Greinke and helping him become a better pitcher. When he joined the Royals in 2007, Riske was in the eighth year and on the fourth stop of his major league career. "Growing up outside of Seattle, I had a friend, a really good baseball player, who reminded me of Zack," says Riske, now retired from baseball and living in Las Vegas. "So I enjoyed bringing him out of his shell, like a big brother who challenges his little brother. And he's so competitive that he rises to every challenge, whether it's shooting 3-pointers, playing golf or pitching.

"One time, after I left the Royals, I saw something in his mechanics in a spring training game that I didn't like and texted him: 'What are you doing? That's not you.' And he texted back and admitted I was right." The Royals' patience began to pay off in August 2007, when Greinke was eased back into a starting role: three shutout innings, followed by four shutout innings, followed by five shutout innings. He made 14 starts in all, but the Royals still lost 93 games, and Bell was fired. Under Trey Hillman the next year, Greinke went 13-10 in 32 starts, and the Royals had themselves the ace they had been hoping for all along. "I'm not sure a lot of organizations would have had the patience or understanding that the Royals showed Zack," says Posnanski, now the national columnist for NBC Sports. "Yes, they were pretty terrible in the mid-2000s, but they were building toward something and they didn't trade him or release him like some teams might have. Allard Baird is one of the best people in the game, and Buddy Bell is one of the best people in the game, and it's a shame they weren't around to reap the benefits." Just before he left for Sports Illustrated in 2009, Posnanski wrote a long piece on Greinke's comeback for The Kansas City Star. After it was published, the subject approached the writer and told him a story about the story. "He said he asked his girlfriend, Emily, to read it to him while he was driving," Posnanski says. "He told me it took all 45 minutes of his drive for her to finish. Then he said, 'It was like a book.' I asked him if he liked it. He smiled, looked up at the ceiling, and he repeated, 'It was like a book.'" And there was a heroine in the book. If Lou Gehrig had Eleanor Twitchell, an effervescent flapper, to stand beside him, Zack Greinke had Emily. They started dating in high school, when she was a library assistant and he kept stopping by for help with his homework. A model even as a child, she was named Miss Daytona Beach and became a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader as Zack was pursuing his baseball career. "One of the sweetest women in the world," Swanson says. "Outgoing, the polar opposite of Zack in that regard. But he also has a heart of gold, and Emily's the proof." In the spring of 2009, they made plans to marry -- her first choice was Oct. 10, something of a faux pas for a major league player, even if he is a Royal. So they changed the date to Nov. 21. Well, the Royals won only 65 games that season. But Greinke won 16 of them, losing only eight, struck out 242 batters in 229⅓ innings and led the majors in ERA (2.16). His wins above replacement number was an otherworldly 10.4, and he easily won the AL Cy Young Award, finishing ahead of the Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez when the votes were announced in early November. But that presented a problem for Swanson and the BBWAA. The winners of the Cy Young Award usually hold a news conference in their home cities, but with the wedding approaching, there was no way Greinke would fly back to Kansas City from Florida. So Swanson went into stealth mode, booking a ballroom and TV interview space at a hotel near the Orlando Airport, not far from where Greinke lived. When Swanson called to congratulate him on the award, Zack apologized for not being able to go back to Kansas City. Says Swanson, "That's when I told him, "Oh, no, we're right here in Orlando.' He was trapped." And because McClure lived in Florida, he was able to attend.

Two months later, Swanson and Emily persuaded Zack to go the annual BBWAA dinner in New York, put on a tux and accept the award. "What an awesome picture that was," Swanson says. "The two Cy Young winners, Zack and Tim Lincecum, looking like high school kids at a prom. I believe he gave the shortest acceptance in history. But that's Zack for you." How to explain Greinke's best season? Look no further than the campaign his fellow ace Clayton Kershaw has had -- and the healthy competition between them. Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire/AP Images To catch you up on what's happened since then, these are also Zack for you: He gave the 2009 Cy Young Award to his parents but kept the samurai sword that Mizuno presented him in recognition of that season. "It's the coolest thing ever," he said. He later admitted to being rude on the way out the door in Kansas City in 2010 when he finished 10-14 and demanded a trade, prompting Brett, his former landlord, to comment, "Time to grow up." Still, McClure will never forget the gift Zack gave him that season. "We both loved surfing, so he gave me a signed surfboard," McClure says. "It was un-Zack-like, which made it mean even more to me." The offseason trade to the Brewers not only helped them -- he went 16-6 and got Milwaukee into the 2011 postseason -- but also provided the foundation for the Royals' revival (Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar and Jake Odorizzi, who became part of the deal with the Rays that brought James Shields and Wade Davis to Kansas City). If anybody knows this, it's Zack, a baseball geek who understands FIP (fielding independent pitching), implements the data from fielding charts and scouts amateur games during spring training. Greinke asked then-GM of the Brewers Doug Melvin whether he could go to the 2012 MLB draft to observe. "He knew who all the prospects were," Melvin says. "At one point, we asked him who he would take with the first pick. And he said, 'Corey Seager.' Unfortunately, the Dodgers took him before us, and now look, they're going into the postseason together." Back in 2002, USA Today asked the members of its All-USA high school baseball team what their favorite subject was. Zack Greinke chose economics because "it makes you feel like you know what you're doing with your financial future." Fast-forward 10 years and the Angels acquire impending free agent Greinke from the Brewers with the hope of (1) making the playoffs and (2) enticing him to stay. They fell short on No. 1, then general manager Jerry Dipoto discovered just how serious he was about money. Said Greinke at the time, "We loved it there. But there's a point where every team has to have a stopping point ... They have to run a business." And the Dodgers were willing to give him more money. Although Greinke was represented by respected agent Casey Close, he basically did his own negotiations with the Dodgers. "It was three hours, and it was the most interesting meeting I've ever had with a player," says Stan Kasten, team president. "We talked about everything." The Dodgers signed him for six years and $147 million -- with Greinke holding an opt-out after the 2015 season. (That should make for another interesting session or two between Kasten and Greinke this winter as Greinke weighs the recent contracts given to other star pitchers such as Max Scherzer and Jon Lester against the $71 million the Dodgers will owe him if he fulfills the last three years of his current deal.) The team's Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully remembers his first FanFest with Greinke before the 2013 season. "He asked me where I lived, and when I told him where, I said, 'There are good golf courses out there,' knowing he was a very good golfer.' Then he said, 'Yes, but are there a lot of people?'"

Greinke's Dodgers career got off to an inauspicious start when, in a game against the Padres on April 11, Carlos Quentin charged him after being hit with a 3-2 pitch. In the ensuing melee, Greinke's collarbone was broken, and he was lost to the Dodgers for a month. Quentin later called Greinke to apologize for his actions. "That's cool, man," the pitcher told him. "But just so you know, if you stand on the plate, I'll hit you again." Once he recovered, Greinke gave the Dodgers their money's worth, finishing at 15-4. According to Molly Knight's revealing book about the Dodgers, "The Best Team Money Can Buy," he also called out his teammates during a meeting meant to spur them through the closing weeks. "I've been noticing something," Greinke told them as the room got quiet. "Some of you guys have been doing the No. 2 and not washing your hands ... So if you guys could just be better about it, that would be great." Because it was so random, the observation loosened up the team. Funny how these things work. When Greinke first signed with the Dodgers, there were concerns that the pressures of a large market might work against him. But he's been treated with respect by the media and with something close to affection by his teammates -- kind of like the way Gehrig was embraced by the Yankees. Greinke, in his own way, finds ways to endear himself to the team -- in the clubhouse and particularly on the mound. Christian Petersen/Getty Images There's certainly no denying the results -- outstanding seasons in 2013 and 2014, two division titles, teaming with Kershaw for one of the best one-two punches in baseball history. Melvin caught up with Greinke this spring, when he and Zack and their wives had dinner together in Arizona. "I've never seen him happier," Melvin says. "But in one way, he's the same old Zack. We were talking about the cars we're driving, and I said we had a Lexus. And he said, 'But that's for old people.' My wife and I laughed all the way home. We are old people." On July 23, 2015, Emily Greinke gave birth to 6-pound, 5-ounce Bode Nicholas in Los Angeles with Zack in attendance, and in the middle of his scoreless streak. The next day, he flew to New York to pitch in a Sunday game against the Mets. The streak ended in the third inning, but he still pitched well, giving up just two runs in seven innings. Afterward, he said this: "Surprisingly, it wasn't as distracting as you would think. Flying back and forth cross-country wasn't too bad. I felt strong today. I started off really well and got worse. You would think if there was an effect on me, I would've started off bad and gotten better." It doesn't get much better than this. Zack and Emily are holding Bode in the middle of the field at AT&T Park, beaming as the rest of his teammates celebrate winning the National League West. Greinke with his wife, Emily, and son, Bode, after clinching the National League West title. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images They're standing there because Kershaw threw a one-hit shutout against the Giants to clinch a third straight NL West title, but they're also standing there because of Greinke's brilliant pitching. "He's been amazing to watch," Giants pitcher and old teammate Jeremy Affeldt was saying before the game. "Every kind of pitch he throws is better-than-average, thrown to a precise location on either side of the plate, all coming from the same slot. I'm proud of him."

But they're also standing there because a few good people saw the good in Greinke before they saw the greatness. "Wouldn't it be something," Swanson says, "if the Royals met the Dodgers in the World Series? It'd be great to see Zack pitch against us. It'd be great just to see him." "Oh, I'll be watching Zack," McClure says. "I'll also be watching our 4-year-old twins. That's because my wife is going to Kansas City for the first round." This past Sunday, on the last day of the regular season, Zack Greinke received the Roy Campanella Award, given annually to the Dodger who best exemplifies the spirit and leadership of the late Hall of Fame catcher. The award is voted on by the team's players and coaches. That's Zack for you. One of these days, Dodgers might have to win a Clayton Kershaw postseason start By Mark Saxon LOS ANGELES -- Going into Game 1 of the National League Division Series, there was an opinion among Los Angeles Dodgers management that Friday night's game was more important to the Dodgers than it was to the New York Mets. It's not just because a home team that loses the first game of a five-game postseason series has advanced only 27 percent of the time, though that's no statistical trifle. We are living in the Clayton Kershaw era in Dodgers baseball and they keep losing when he's on the mound in October's biggest games. For fairly obvious reasons, this is a bit of a problem for the franchise. It's as if Sandy Koufax, who was in attendance Friday night, had been just as dominant through the 1960s, but the Dodgers lost his World Series starts, rather than won four out of six of them to burnish his legend. So, forget for a moment about whether it was Kershaw's fault for walking three batters in the seventh inning, or reliever Pedro Baez's fault for giving up a two-run single to David Wright, or Jacob deGrom's fault for throwing all those 98-mph fastballs, or Don Mattingly's fault, because to some Dodgers fans, everything is Don Mattingly's fault. Clayton Kershaw has taken the loss in five straight postseason starts, the longest such slump in Dodgers history. Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports After Friday's 3-1 loss to deGrom's Mets, Kershaw has taken the loss in five straight postseason starts, the longest such losing streak in Dodgers history. One seems to be more painful than the next even if Kershaw's culpability is hazy in the majority of those losses. Friday, he struck out 11 batters before, shockingly, the three walks after some tough battles in the fateful seventh. It's always the fateful seventh, isn't it?

Kershaw has been known to get a little testy when Mattingly comes to relieve him of the ball, but after a three-ball pitch to Ruben Tejada slipped out of his hand and then he couldn't put Curtis Granderson away, he looked pretty resigned to giving it up after 113 pitches. "Well, you know, I put myself in that spot, so there's not much room for arguing after you put yourself in that situation," Kershaw said. Baez, too, couldn't make the right pitch at the right time and Wright lined a 99-mph fastball into center field for a bases-loaded single, the blow that put the Dodgers in this 0-1 hole and squandered home-field advantage in the series. What really sunk the Dodgers, of course, was deGrom, rested, amped up and absolutely electric. His fastball was consistently in the 96-to-98-mph range and Kershaw summed it up accurately. "I got out-pitched," he said. "That's basically the moral of the story." It has happened before. In Kershaw's five-game postseason losing streak, the Dodgers have mustered eight runs of support over 29 1/3 innings. Granted, Kershaw hasn't been nearly as good in October as he is in April, May, June, July, August or, especially September, but what has befuddled him as much as anything are people like Michael Wacha and deGrom standing in the rest of his team's way. Kershaw and deGrom made their defenders into bystanders for the most part. The teams struck out 27 times, one shy of the all-time postseason record for a nine-inning game. "It was tough to find the barrel for a lot of guys out there tonight," catcher A.J. Ellis said. "It was two really, really dominant starting pitchers out there tonight." Terry Collins probably deserves credit for Friday's Mets win, too, for stacking his lineup with four left-handed batters, if you include deGrom. Most managers stash their lefties as far from the batter's box as possible when Kershaw is pitching. This season, lefties hit slightly better than righties off Kershaw (.554 OPS to .511), but he faced righties 688 times and lefties only 202. Of the eight baserunners Kershaw allowed, including Daniel Murphy's home run, six were left-handed batters. "I was a little more comfortable against righties tonight, but I don't face that many lefties usually," Kershaw said. "I'm not worried about it, but you definitely just basically tip your cap to them, that's probably the best thing to do." So, now the Dodgers hope they can make a little more leeway against another Mets' flame thrower, Noah Syndergaard, and trust that Zack Greinke can do what he did last year and give Dodgers fans hope by winning Game 2. But -- if the Dodgers are able to extend the series to Game 4 -- Kershaw could be the fulcrum of this thing once again, because the Dodgers might choose to bring him back on short rest rather than go with young lefty Alex Wood. Kershaw said we'll have to wait to see how that one shakes out. But whether he gets to pitch in this series again or not, the Dodgers are going to have to win one of Kershaw's starts one of these Octobers or they're not going anywhere.

Friday's Top 5: Mets' Jacob deGrom (13 K's) outduels Clayton Kershaw By David Schoenfield What a fun day of baseball. We had a tense 14-inning game with an obscure hero for the Rangers, a comeback victory for the Royals, a shutdown performance from John Lackey and then the expected pitching duel in the finale from Dodger Stadium. 1. Jacob deGrom, New York Mets. The pitching line says it all: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 13 SO. Except it was even better than that: Two of the hits were Michael Cuddyer misplays in left field and the walk was intentional. DeGrom is one of my favorite pitchers to watch: He generates power from his slight frame, and he's able to hold his velocity deep into games; that big mop of hair that flows out from his cap is either a trait you joyously get a kick out of or annoyingly want to cut off. The 13 strikeouts tied Tom Seaver for a Mets postseason record and were the most ever in a playoff game at Dodger Stadium. At times, deGrom simply threw his fastball past hitters. Overall, he induced 24 swings-and-misses, tied for the second-most in a postseason game since 2009. (Tim Lincecum had 31 in a 1-0 shutout over the Braves in 2010.) Fourteen of those misses were fastballs. The Dodgers simply had trouble catching up to it. It was a brilliant performance. As for Clayton Kershaw, let's just say he was good, but not good enough, and I think it's absolutely fair that the narrative about his postseason history will continue, despite the attempts of many on Twitter to dismiss the idea. Look, Kershaw was great for six innings, allowing only a home run on a 2-0 fastball that Daniel Murphy -- who had homered just once against a left-hander all season -- crushed to right field. But in the seventh inning -- the same inning in which the Cardinals beat him twice last year, you may recall -- he walked Lucas Duda. He walked Ruben Tejada with one out. After deGrom sacrificed, he walked Curtis Granderson, a terrific seven-pitch walk by Granderson. Don Mattingly then went to Pedro Baez, and David Wright lined a 3-2 fastball into center field for a two-run single. Was it the right call to remove Kershaw? I think so. I get that you let the best pitcher on the planet work out of his own mess, but Kershaw had walked three guys in the inning, including two lefties and a light-hitting shortstop. He looked done and had thrown 27 pitches in the inning. I'm not going to knock Don Mattingly there and I wouldn't have knocked him if he'd left Kershaw in. (You can argue that with the game was on the line that Mattingly should have used closer Kenley Jansen, but no manager would have brought in his closer in the seventh inning, which is more a discussion about bullpen roles than Mattingly's decision.) Kershaw struck out 11, but he walked four and he couldn't get the last out he needed. We still await a signature postseason game from him. 2. John Lackey, St. Louis Cardinals. He doesn't get much attention for his postseason résumé but the veteran right-hander has now pitched in eight postseasons and has an excellent track record. As a rookie with the Angels, he was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the World Series. He went 3-1 with a 2.77 ERA in the 2013 postseason for the Red Sox, winning the clinching Game 6. And after throwing 7 1/3 two-hit innings against the Cubs in Friday's 4-0 victory, he's now 8-5 with a 2.90 ERA in his playoff career, much of that coming with the Angels during a higher-scoring offensive era. The one thing he does best in the postseason: Limit home runs; he's allowed just four in 124 1/3 innings. How do the Cubs love to score runs? By hitting home runs.

They didn't hit any on this night. Dexter Fowler drove one ball to deep right field that looked like it might have been a go-ahead two-run homer in the sixth, but otherwise Lackey was in complete control. He took a no-hitter into the sixth, relying almost exclusively on his fastball, throwing it on 71 of his 86 pitches. It was an interesting approach and it wasn't so much that he was painting the corners as mixing it around the zone, and a few times dropping his arm slot a bit on right-handers. Here: One reason Lackey stuck with the fastball: He averaged a season-high 92.7 mph, above his season average of 91.6. Another reason he stuck with it: Home-plate ump Phil Cuzzi was calling the corners. Of the 23 pitches the Cubs took for called strikes in the game, only 14 registered as in the strike zone. The Cubs would get called out looking on six of their 10 strikeouts, including all three in the ninth against Trevor Rosenthal. Yes, only two of those six were strikes, but Cubs hitters never adjusted to the borderline pitches getting called. Or maybe they just had rotten luck. Only three of the 16 called strikes on the Cards were out of the zone. One more note: Kudos to Mike Matheny for pulling Lackey in the eighth despite the low pitch count and shutout going. It was only 1-0 at the time, before rookies Tommy Pham and Stephen Piscotty homered in the bottom of the inning, but Matheny has maybe the best bullpen in these playoffs. He's received criticism in recent postseasons for possibly sticking with his starters a little too long, but unlike John Gibbons and A.J. Hinch in the two earlier games Friday, he didn't wait for a runner to get on before pulling Lackey. 3. Hanser Alberto, Texas Rangers. Here, I wrote a bunch of stuff about this game and the Rangers' unlikely hero who drove in the go-ahead run in the 14th inning. Also discussed: Did Blue Jays manager John Gibbons mess up the eighth inning? And here's Jim Caple's story from Toronto on the unknown rookie who was filling in for the injured Adrian Beltre. 4. Kansas City Royals bullpen. They're back! In what turned into a battle of bullpens, the Royals' pen did the job while the Astros' pen faltered, as Kansas City rallied from a 4-1 deficit to rescue a shaky Johnny Cueto and even the series with a 5-4 victory. Kelvin Herrera, Ryan Madson and Wade Davis each tossed a scoreless inning, with Davis picking off pinch-runner Carlos Gomez for the second out in the ninth, a play in which he was initially ruled safe but the call was overturned on replay. The key inning, however, was the bottom of the sixth. The Astros led 4-2 and had to have been feeling good that Scott Kazmir had given them five solid innings considering his terrible final two months. But Astros manager Hinch tried to sneak one more inning from the left-hander, who had given up 15 runs in 11 1/3 innings over his final three starts and posted a 5.22 ERA the final months. Predictably, Lorenzo Cain, who hit .335 and slugged .568 against southpaws, doubled with one out. Hinch then went to the pen. With Cain running against Oliver Perez, Eric Hosmer simply stuck his bat out and blooped an RBI single to left-center. After another soft single -- Perez was left in to face switch-hitter Kendrys Morales even though Perez allows a .400-plus OBP to righties -- and a walk to Mike Moustakas to load the bases, Josh Fields came on and walked Salvador Perez, which is nearly impossible to do. Anyway, good inning for the Royals, bad inning for Hinch and the Astros bullpen, and Kansas City plated the winning run the next inning on Alcides Escober's triple and Ben Zobrist's single. Jerry Crasnick writes that it was a missed opportunity for the Astros.

How deGrom dominated the Dodgers By ESPN Stats & Information New York Mets starter Jacob deGrom beat Clayton Kershaw at his own game. DeGrom tied a Mets postseason record with 13 strikeouts in seven scoreless innings in defeating Kershaw and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1. Kershaw had three games with at least 13 strikeouts and no runs allowed in 2015, tied with Max Scherzer and Chris Sale for the major-league lead. Kershaw was no slouch Friday, striking out 11 in 6 2/3 innings pitched. But this marked the first time in Kershaw's career (regular season or postseason) that he struck out at least 10 in a game and the opposing pitcher struck out more than him. This was the first game in postseason history in which each starter had at least 11 strikeouts. But the story of the game was deGrom. How did he do it? DeGrom had a couple of rough starts in August and September, but he returned to form at the very end of the season. He has given up one run and struck out 29 in his last 17 innings. DeGrom won with a fastball that averaged 96.6 mph, his best average fastball velocity this season. His fastball averaged 94.9 mph in the regular season. He threw 73 of his 75 fastballs faster than that Friday. All 13 of his strikeouts were swing-and-misses. He recorded 24 swings-and-misses for the game. The last pitcher with more in a postseason game was Tim Lincecum, who had 31 against the Braves in 2010. DeGrom lived at the top of the strike zone. He threw 54 percent of his pitches in the upper half of the strike zone, his third-highest rate this season. The history DeGrom became the fifth pitcher to record at least 13 strikeouts and give up no runs in his postseason debut. The other four are Joe Coleman (1972 Tigers), Mike Boddicker (1983 Orioles), Mike Scott (1986 Astros) and Lincecum (2010 Giants). Seventh-inning woes come back for Dodgers, Clayton Kershaw By Mark Saxon LOS ANGELES -- It seems as if the Los Angeles Dodgers keep having the same nightmare in the postseason, but it proves all too real. Clayton Kershaw gets in trouble in the seventh inning and whatever button manager Don Mattingly pushes, or doesn't push, turns out all wrong.

The plague of Octobers past resurfaced Friday night in Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium, where New York scored a 3-1 victory. Truth be told, though, the Dodgers lost because they couldn't handle Jacob deGrom, who struck out 13 batters in seven innings. Kershaw looked like himself in the first six innings, striking out 11, but he walked three batters in the seventh, a stunning turn of events for a pitcher with Kershaw's command. Mattingly replaced him with reliever Pedro Baez, who fell behind and gave up a two-run single to David Wright. Thumbs up: It's remarkable how little solid contact the Dodgers made off deGrom, who was still throwing 97 mph in the seventh inning, but one Dodgers hitter seemed fairly comfortable: former Met Justin Turner. He lined a double over Michael Cuddyer's head (and off his glove) in the second inning and hit a solid single to left in the fourth. He was stranded on base both times in part because Andre Ethier struck out immediately afterward. DeGrom was simply too much, reaching a strikeout total only Tom Seaver had hit for the Mets in the postseason. Thumbs down: The scrutiny will be on Kershaw, but the Dodgers lost this because they couldn't figure out deGrom. Even the meat of their order looked overmatched. Adrian Gonzalez had a runner on in each of his first two plate appearances and struck out both times. In fact, Gonzalez, who came into the game 3-for-8 with two home runs off deGrom, went down swinging in each of his three at-bats against the Mets starter. One was on a 98 mph fastball, another was on an 87 mph changeup and the third was on a 97 mph fastball. The heart of the Dodgers' order couldn't cash in on the few opportunities it had, but then again, neither could any other area of the Dodgers lineup. Gonzalez later accounted for the Dodgers' only RBI with a bloop single to left field off reliever Tyler Clippard. What's next: The Dodgers all along have had a pretty good fallback plan. Zack Greinke, perhaps the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young award, is scheduled to pitch Saturday night for the Dodgers, opposed by another hard-throwing Mets right-hander, Noah Syndergaard. Greinke is coming off one of the greatest pitching seasons in a generation, with a 1.66 ERA and 0.84 WHIP, though he's no lock to win the Cy Young because of competition from Jake Arrieta and Kershaw. Jacob deGrom outduels Clayton Kershaw with 13 K's as Mets top Dodgers By Associated Press LOS ANGELES -- Jacob deGrom sure seems to thrive on baseball's biggest stages. He struck out the side on 10 pitches in one inning of the All-Star Game in July. He was even better in his postseason debut. "Before the game, I was pretty nervous," said deGrom, who at 27 is in just his second major league season. "But once I got out there warming up, I kind of settled down. It really went away after the first pitch I threw." DeGrom (1-0) limited the Dodgers to five hits and walked one. The right-hander's strikeouts tied the franchise playoff record set by Tom Seaver in Game 1 of the 1973 NL Championship Series.

"I've got a little more confidence out there," deGrom said. "There were a couple times tonight, 3-2, where I threw a couple changeups. Last year, I probably wouldn't have done that." Kershaw (0-1) endured his fifth straight postseason loss after giving up the seventh playoff homer of his career. Last season's NL MVP allowed three runs and four hits in 6⅔ innings, struck out 11 and walked four. "I got outpitched, plain and simple," he said. Three of Kershaw's walks came in the seventh, before Mets captain David Wright had a two-out, two-run single off Pedro Baez that put New York up 3-0. "It's been nine years since I felt this," said Wright, who missed 115 games with injuries this season. "That's about as sweet as I thought it was going to be." Runs will likely again be at a premium when the Dodgers try to even the series Saturday night in Game 2. They start major league ERA leader Zack Greinke against Noah Syndergaard of the Mets. With a game-time temperature of 92 degrees, both pitchers came out throwing heat. Kershaw, the major league strikeout leader with 301 in the regular season, retired six of his first nine batters. DeGrom, last year's NL rookie of the year, struck out two batters in each of his first four innings. "He was unbelievable right from the get-go," Mets catcher Travis d'Arnaud said. "He had command of all four of his pitches, and he was just being himself out there, having fun. There's a lot of good seats out there, but I had the best seat in the house." DeGrom became the first Mets pitcher with 10 or more strikeouts in the playoffs since Dwight Gooden in Game 1 of the 1988 NLCS at Dodger Stadium. DeGrom retired his final 11 batters, subduing the white towel-waving crowd of 54,428. "To have him go out there against Clayton tonight and win the game is a huge lift for us," said Mets manager Terry Collins, who got a victory in his postseason debut at age 66. "This is a good start for a team that hadn't been in the postseason for a long time. We needed a confidence boost, and Jake gave it to us." Jeurys Familia got four outs to earn the save. Murphy homered leading off the fourth to give New York a 1-0 lead before Kershaw retired the next three batters. Kershaw stumbled in the seventh, giving up three walks before being relieved by Baez, who served up Wright's hit. Wright's hit whizzed past leaping second baseman Howie Kendrick and into center field, scoring Lucas Duda and Ruben Tejada. The Dodgers finally scored in the eighth on Adrian Gonzalez's two-out RBI single that left them trailing 3-1. He struck out in his first three at-bats.

Catcher A.J. Ellis had one of the Dodgers' five hits off deGrom. "Just electric stuff," he said of the Mets' ace. "That's as good of an arm as I've seen all year long. He's got great composure, great poise out there." Kershaw nearly helped himself in the fourth when the Dodgers trailed by one. With two runners on, he hit a long fly ball to center field that was caught by Yoenis Cespedes to end the inning. The left-hander threw 22 pitches in the first inning, including 12 on a walk to Wright. In the second, a ball hit by Duda went off Kershaw's right foot, but he didn't appear to be affected and struck out the next two batters to end the inning. Los Angeles lost its third straight postseason game, having been beaten in four games by St. Louis in last year's NLDS. The Dodgers lost the final two games, with Kershaw tagged for the loss while pitching on three days' rest in Game 4. K-CITY The teams combined for 27 strikeouts, one short of the all-time playoff record for a nine-inning game set by San Diego (17) and Houston (11) on Sept. 29, 1998, in Game 1 of the NLDS. It was the first game in major league playoff history in which both starters had 11 or more strikeouts and just the second game in postseason history in which each starter had at least 10. CESPEDES' STRIKEOUTS Cespedes was hitless in four at-bats, including three strikeouts, just the second time this season he was fanned three times in a game. He was still playing for Detroit on June 24 at Cleveland when Carlos Carrasco struck him out twice and Cody Allen once. UP NEXT Greinke (19-3, major league-best 1.66 ERA) starts for the Dodgers against Syndergaard (9-7, 3.24). Greinke beat the Mets 4-3 on July 4 at home in his only start against them this season. Syndergaard had a no-decision in the Mets' 2-1 win at Dodger Stadium on July 3 in his only career start against Los Angeles. How Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke have made each other better By Mark Saxon LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers don’t know how many more starts they’re going to get out of Zack Greinke. In fact, it’s not out of the question that Saturday night’s outing against the New York Mets in Game 2 of the National League Division Series will be his last as a Dodger. Greinke can opt out of his contract following this season, which certainly seems likely since he had a 1.66 ERA this season, the lowest in the major leagues in 20 years.

The Dodgers’ new front office certainly hasn’t made a habit of signing superstar pitchers to long-term, nine-figure contracts, deals that typically don’t pan out. So, yeah, the Dodgers have thought about Greinke’s stay in Los Angeles coming to an end for a while now. His co-ace, Clayton Kershaw, brought up the possibility a couple of weeks ago in an interview with a couple of reporters. “If this is Zack’s last season with us, I’ve had a great time playing with him and definitely some of the most fun I’ve ever had watching him pitch every five days and I hope it’s not the last one,” Kershaw said. In the same conversation, Kershaw paid Greinke an extraordinary compliment. “Specifically, the way he executes his pitches is probably the best I’ve ever seen,” Kershaw said. “He can throw anything at any time to any spot.” Among other standout pitchers, Kershaw played with Hall of Famer Greg Maddux at the end of Maddux’s career. Greinke has increasingly drawn comparisons to Maddux because of his pinpoint command, his changeup and his ability to field his position. The interaction of the two former Cy Young winners, Kershaw and Greinke, has been a big part of this era of Dodgers baseball. Many people have speculated about whether they have driven each other to get better through a friendly competition, but it might have more to do with simply watching how the other prepares for his starts and then attacks hitters. Greinke said he learned from Kershaw that if you execute a pitch well enough, the sequence of pitches becomes secondary, if not irrelevant. “If your pitches are that good, they can’t do anything with them,” Greinke said. “And that’s what Kershaw has done ever since I’ve been here. So I probably stop trying to trick guys as much as I used to do, and try to make my pitches as good as possible.” Yasiel Puig officially makes Dodgers' NLDS roster By Mark Saxon LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers released their 25-man roster for the National League Division Series that starts Friday night and, as expected, Yasiel Puig made the cut. Puig, who missed more than two months with a pair of hamstring injuries this season, told reporters on Tuesday he had been informed he would make the team. Puig figures to be part of a bench that should also include Joc Pederson, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. The Dodgers think their bench will be a major strength in this series. The only mild surprise was reliever Juan Nicasio, who did not make the cut after spending the entire season in the Dodgers’ bullpen. Nicasio was 1-3 with a 3.86 ERA. He had a rough September, with batters hitting .457 against him and a 9.00 ERA.

The Dodgers went with veteran Joel Peralta rather than Nicasio. Peralta had a 4.34 ERA, but six of his final eight appearances were scoreless.

DODGER INSIDER Meet frontier doctor Walter O’Malley By Jon Weisman Fifty years ago today, in an episode that aired October 10, 1965, — yes, just hours after the Dodgers won Game 4 of the World Series — Dodger owner Walter O’Malley played a frontier doctor in the NBC TV western “Branded,” opposite series star Chuck Connors. Connors was a former Brooklyn farmhand who had one at-bat with Brooklyn in 1949 and half a season with the Cubs in 1951, before embarking upon his acting career. O’Malley was recruited to do the episode by Connors, after the Dodger chief asked him to entertain guests earlier that year, according to Times columnist Sid Ziff, who wrote about the filming of the episode in August 1965: … O’Malley showed up on schedule despite a heavy cold. He waited in Connors’ dressing room for his call. He had a copy of his script and occasionally glanced at his lines. In the scene, Jason McCord, who is Connors, is talking to the sheriff while O’Malley dresses his wounded flipper. … Doc O’Malley shakes his head and the ashes off his cigar on to the wounded arm, and says questioningly: “That’s a bad wound. Almost a severed tendon. Don’t figure to use that arm for at least two weeks.” During the filming, O’Malley thumps on the bandage for emphasis hard enough to cause a hemmorhage. … … You always have to do a lot of waiting around a movie set. O’Malley recalled that the first time he saw Connors, he was a rookie and he’d reported to the Dodgers with 13 pieces of luggage. “I knew then he was going places,” Walter punned. Remembering ’65: World Series Game 4 By Jon Weisman After lasting only 2 2/3 innings in Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, Don Drysdale was his old self in Game 4. Even better, the Dodger offense was a punishing crew, too.

Scoring in all but three innings, the Dodgers backed Drysdale’s complete-game, 11-strikeout, 123-pitch effort with a dynamic attack in a 7-2 victory on October 10, 1965 that evened the World Series at two games apiece. “Six infield hits and two homers is pretty good balance,” a grinning Walter Alston said after the game, according to Frank Finch of the Times. The Dodgers’ first run off Game 1 winner Mudcat Grant was vintage, kicked off by leadoff hitter Maury Wills chopping one to first baseman Don Mincher in the bottom of the first. “Wills, Grant and (second baseman) Frank Quilici arrived at first base simultaneously, and Wills knocked down Quilici as they collided head-on and Mincher’s toss was lost in the melee,” wrote Finch. Wills then stole second, went to third on Willie Davis’ infield single and scored on a Ron Fairly forceout. In the second inning, Wes Parker bunted his way aboard, stole second, went to third on a wild pitch and scored when a grounder by Johnny Roseboro went through the legs of second baseman Frank Quilici. Los Angeles would never trail in the game after that. Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva hit solo homers off Drysdale, but they were matched by Parker and Lou Johnson blasts. As it turned out, Drysdale wasn’t confident as he took the mound in Game 4. “When I got through warming up I didn’t think I had anything at all,” he told Times sports editor Paul Zimmerman. “It took me a couple of innings to get my rhythm on my fastball and one or two more before I had my curveball going where I wanted it.” Charles Maher of the Times was in on the interview with Twins manager Sam Mele after the game. “That speed of theirs is really something,” Mele said. “But tomorrow is another day.” It is also a day on which the Twins will run into Sandy Koufax again. “I’m working on something for you,” a writer told Mele. “I’m trying to get them to declare another Jewish holiday.” Heat is on Dodgers after NLDS Game 1 defeat By Jon Weisman A scorching, sweating, exhausting night at Dodger Stadium tore open old wounds. Once more, the Dodgers received six brilliant innings from Clayton Kershaw, just as they did in both his 2014 playoff starts. And once more, the Dodgers are nursing a bruising defeat.

Mets righty Jacob deGrom struck out 13 in his seven shutout innings (tying Tom Seaver’s 42-year-old postseason franchise record), shut down a few early Dodger threats and carried New York to a 3-1 victory in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. Strikeouts came at a blistering pace. Never before in MLB history had two pitchers in the same postseason game struck out at least 11 batters, and Kershaw got there first. The lefty fanned two batters in each of the first four innings and the side in the fifth. For deGrom, the first six outs were whiffs, and he had 10 through the fifth inning. The game was barely halfway over, and it was the first time since Game 5 of the 1944 World Series that two playoff pitchers had double-digit strikeouts. DeGrom allowed six baserunners in his first four innings, but two of those threats came from the bottom of the Dodger order, leaving Kershaw to bat twice with two runners on. Kershaw struck out the first time, but in the fourth, he launched deep drive to left center that Yoenis Cespedes had to run and flag down at the warning track. If only. Kershaw and the Dodgers desperately needed that drive to land. To start the inning, New York second baseman Daniel Murphy tallied what it appeared might be the only run of the game, a no-doubt 415-foot shot to right field. For six innings, Murphy was the only Met to make it past first base. Kershaw has now made nine postseason starts, and allowed two runs or less in the first six innings of seven of those nine outings. His night ended in a teeth-clenching seventh inning, the inning that was twice his downfall in the 2014 playoffs, when he walked Lucas Duda, and one out later, walked Ruben Tejada on a 3-2 pitch, and one out later, walked Curtis Granderson on another 3-2 pitch — Kershaw’s 113th and last of the game. Pedro Baez entered to face David Wright with the bases loaded. Baez (throwing 97-99 mph) and Wright went to a full count, when Wright then lined one past a diving Howie Kendrick into center field to triple the Mets lead. It was Baez who replaced Kershaw in Game 1 of the 2014 NLDS and gave up a walk and a three-run home run to Matt Holiday. DeGrom finished strong, retiring the final 11 batters he faced and striking out pinch-hitter Chase Utley on the 27-year-old’s 121st pitch of the game. “I thought we did a pretty good job with him of not chasing the change or the breaking ball down,” Don Mattingly said, “but with that you end up chasing some elevated fastballs, and I think he beat us with that a little bit. We had a few chances. We got some runners, (Justin Turner) got on a couple times. They had a little rally going. We just weren’t able to get that hit early.” Kershaw’s analysis was more succinct. “I got outpitched,” Kershaw said. “That’s basically the moral of the story. Jacob pitched an amazing game.”

After reliever Joel Peralta pitched a perfect top of the eighth, the Dodgers broke through against Mets reliever Tyler Clippard on a double by Kendrick and a single by Adrian Gonzalez. Chris Hatcher then pitched a perfect ninth, bringing up the Dodgers’ final chance. Andre Ethier grounded out, as did pinch-hitter Jimmy Rollins (thanks to a diving stop by Murphy), as did Joc Pederson, and that was the game. “I think we’re capable of bouncing back because we’ve got Zack Greinke pitching tomorrow,” Ellis said, “and that’s gonna help us, first and foremost. But there are some guys in this clubhouse who have had their backs against the wall. Guys with a lot of pride, who want to come out and even this thing up. We’re not finished with what we want to do this year.” Corey Seager batting third in playoff debut By Jon Weisman Corey Seager will not only be the youngest Dodger position player to start a postseason game, he will bat third for Los Angeles in the National League Division Series opener against the Mets tonight. Seager, who has the highest OPS+ in Dodger history for a rookie, hit in the No. 3 slot twice in his 27-game Major League debut, on September 20 and 30. One advantage with Seager is that because of his prowess against left-handed pitching, the Dodgers don’t have to worry much about batting him and Adrian Gonzalez back-to-back in the lineup. At 21 years and 165 days old, Seager surpasses James Loney (22/153) by nearly a year to become the Dodgers’ youngest playoff starter among non-pitchers. Fernando Valenzuela’s NLDS appearance at 20 years, 339 days makes him the least aged among pitchers. Johnny Podres, Clayton Kershaw, Ralph Branca and Ismael Valdez were also younger than Seager. Joc Pederson, at 23 years and 171 days, just missed making the Dodgers’ all-time playoff youth team: P – Fernando Valenzuela (20/339) SS – Corey Seager (21/165) 1B – James Loney (22/153) OF – Pete Reiser (22/198) OF – Yasiel Puig (22/300) C – Mike Scioscia (22/313) OF – Duke Snider (23/16) 3B – Eddie Miksis (23/26) 2B – Blake DeWitt (23/42) Will playoffs take Dodgers over the moon? By Jon Weisman

And now, it’s time to come out of our safe place. On some level, the past four days have been the best of the year. We’ve camped out on Tranquility Base, gazing lovingly at our home planet and longingly at the world beyond. We’ve tested our craft, tested ourselves — as if we could ever completely test ourselves — for the great unknown. Now all we have to do is make it to Mars. There’s no escaping the idea that this voyage feels all-or-nothing. Revelry or rage. Come home with red dust on our shoes or don’t come home at all. Odds don’t matter, excuses don’t matter, ghosts in the machine don’t matter. It starts at 6:45 p.m., when nine Dodgers take the field tonight but all eyes telescope to Clayton Kershaw, who must somehow rewrite his postseason unfairly tale to his favor. No turning back. As he goes, so go our hearts. We know he can do this. We know this. Our dream is so close and so far away, it’s hard to reconcile. The pain is being able to reach so near and not yet be able to touch and not know if we will. We’re not doing this in the vacuum of space. We’re racing against seven other ships, all with the same desire, some even more desperate. In less than a month, we’ll know if we’re special or ordinary. A team for the ages, or a team for the ashes. I almost hate to take that next step, to leave our peace. Every next movement fraught with tension, every beat rippling into the void, a rocket perilously, furiously zooming to soar over and beyond the expanding black hole. But with all the risk of catastrophe, we wouldn’t have it any other way. There is no journey like this one, no glory like the glory in that big, starry night. Dodgers announce NLDS roster By Jon Weisman Without further ado — that is, no more ado of any kind whatsoever — here is the Dodgers’ official 2015 National League Division Series roster. Starting pitchers (4): Brett Anderson, Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, Alex Wood Relief pitchers (7): Luis Avilan, Pedro Baez, Yimi Garcia, Chris Hatcher, J.P. Howell, Kenley Jansen, Joel Peralta Catchers (2): A.J. Ellis, Yasmani Grandal Infielders (6): Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins, Corey Seager, Justin Turner, Chase Utley Outfielders (6): Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier, Kiké Hernandez, Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, Justin Ruggiano

Alex Guerrero, Juan Nicasio and the injured Scott Van Slyke are Dodgers who spent the entire season in the Majors but did not make it to the NLDS. If a player is injured during the NLDS, he may be replaced, but the injured player would be ineligible to play in the NLCS should the Dodgers advance. Zach Greinke is the bridge over troubled water By Cary Osborne When they’ve been backed into a corner, the Dodgers’ best response all season has been Zack Greinke. The Dodgers were 10-3 this season in games Greinke pitched after a loss. In eight of those 13 games, he didn’t allow an earned run. He stopped a two-game losing streak, three three-game losing streaks and a four-game losing skid. Each time he stopped those runs, he was beyond the dominant Greinke we’ve come to know in 2015. April 12 (coming in have lost two straight): The Dodgers lost the first two games of the series at Arizona. Then Greinke pitched seven shutout innings in a 7-4 Dodger win. April 24 (three straight losses): Seven shutout innings against San Diego in a 3-0 win. May 22 (three straight losses): He went 7 2/3 innings and allowed one earned run in a 2-1 win over San Diego. June 18 (three straight losses): Seven shutout innings in a 1-0 win against Texas. August 11 (four straight losses): Six shutout innings against Washington in a 5-0 win. Even in the three games the Dodgers lost, Greinke kept the team in the game. On June 23, he pitched six shutout innings in a 1-0 loss to the Cubs, and on August 22 he allowed three earned runs in seven innings in a 3-1 loss to Houston. On September 28, he allowed two runs in seven innings in a 3-2, 12-inning loss in San Francisco. Both times Greinke took the mound against the Mets this season, he followed a loss. On July 4, he shut them out over seven innings in a 4-3 win. On July 26, he went seven and allowed two runs, but the Dodgers lost 3-2 in extra innings. Emotional reward: Ella Annear’s first pitch By Jon Weisman

The video speaks for itself. In a world that always needs a dose of good news, we got some in the moments before Friday’s playoff opener. There’s no cheering in the press box, but last night I wondered if there could be crying. We’re so very happy for the Annear family.

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Kershaw doesn't fight Mattingly's fateful move in another playoff defeat – 'I put myself in that spot' By Tim Brown LOS ANGELES – The seventh inning came for Clayton Kershaw again, a few steps ahead of Don Mattingly, out in front of another October defeat, the end coming this time when someone else threw the pivotal pitch. He watched from the bench, 113 hard pitches in, his elbows on his knees, his sweat-sodden hair slicked from his forehead. He'd been brilliant again for as long as he could, and it was not quite good enough again, because there were no runs to be had against Jacob deGrom, and because his own fly ball had been caught on the warning track, and because this stuff just keeps happening for him – to him – when the season restarts. "I got outpitched," Kershaw said without prompting or whining or suspicion. "That's basically the moral of the story. … He outpitched me, plain and simple." It's where October has gone for him, fair or not, justified or not. And for Mattingly, too, who invariably rides Kershaw for a pitch too long or abandons him a few pitches short, not based on data or circumstance but based on the fact the Dodgers can't seem to win in October with Kershaw on the mound, which makes no sense. He's lost five in a row of these, the first four to the St. Louis Cardinals, then on Friday night against the New York Mets, 3-1, in the first game of the National League division series at Dodger Stadium. He stands with the best pitchers of his generation, and then a hit falls, or a curveball hangs, or his offense strikes out 13 times in seven innings against deGrom, and he's been outpitched again, or out-flanked, or out-numbered. "I don't know," he said. "Just, um, each game's a little bit different. Didn't work out this time." He struck out 11 Mets, 11 of the first 20 he faced, those through the fifth inning. In the fourth, cleanup hitter and left-handed batter Daniel Murphy pumped a two-ball fastball into the right-field bullpen. It seemed that alone would be enough to beat the Dodgers behind deGrom, who rode a fastball that clocked routinely at 97 and 98 mph. Often, he skipped it across the top of the strike zone, where Dodgers' bats strayed. Still, Kershaw, pitching from that deficit, struck out five of the next seven Mets. He required five pitches to navigate the sixth inning. His pitch count was at 88 after six. So, manageable, certainly for him. DeGrom's was at 101. For the first time in a postseason game, each starter had struck out as many as 11

batters, and the game took on the chill of a proper first date, contact being minimal and not terribly meaningful. "I wouldn't say I got caught up in it," deGrom said. "I know what he's doing, but my gameplan stays the same. Let's go up and put up zeroes and keep us in a position to win." He issued a single walk, which was intentional. He allowed five hits, none damaging. He threw 121 pitches on a hot and humid night, all of them with the score 0-0 or 1-0. He struck out Adrian Gonzalez three times, twice with runners on base. He took this series to a place where the Mets could win it without returning to Los Angeles. In his second big-league season, deGrom is three months younger than Kershaw, who is eight years in, more than 1,600 innings in, and well-trophied. The paths were different. The mound for a few hours was the same, and it was to that mound Kershaw strode for the seventh inning, the Mets ahead by a run, the Dodgers still seeking the thunderbolt swing that would turn the game and Kershaw's fortunes. David Wright would be the sixth batter of the inning, should it get that far, and assuming the bottom of the Mets' order had enough game in it. On the Dodgers' bench, Mattingly thought that if the seventh reached Wright, he would go to his bullpen. Pedro Baez, the right-hander with the big fastball, would be his man there. "David pumps on lefties pretty good," Mattingly said. "Felt like that was going to be a spot if we got to that point, thought we were going to make a move there." It was the seventh, after all. The inning that went sideways for Kershaw in Game 1 of the division series against the Cardinals last season. The inning that beat Kershaw in Game 4 of that same series, the one that ended the Dodgers' season. A year and a couple days later, Lucas Duda walked. Michael Cuddyer grounded out and then Ruben Tejada walked on a full-count slider that was high and loose. DeGrom bunted them to second and third. And then Curtis Granderson walked on a full-count fastball that was a couple inches outside. Mattingly came out of the dugout. The choice was Kershaw, three walks in, eight years of excellence in, at 113 pitches. Or Baez, maybe the fourth-best reliever in the bullpen, at no pitches. The crowd was squishy about it. Kershaw turned on the mound, disappointed, but handed over the ball without a fight. "I put myself in that spot," Kershaw said. "So not much room for argument." Wright watched the change from the on-deck circle. He'd not had a hit against Kershaw, but had taken him to a 12-pitch walk in the first inning. Then he'd struck out twice, but competitively, if that counts for anything against the likes of Kershaw. "I think normally you'd be pleased because you get Kershaw out of the game," he said. "Then you look up and you have a guy coming in throwing a hundred. So then you're not too pleased." Cuddyer, who'd faced Baez before, offered a quick report on the new pitcher. So did Kevin Long, the hitting coach. The first five pitches ran the count full. There'd be one more pitch to stay within a run of deGrom and the Mets, and catcher A.J. Ellis thought it through. He liked Baez better on Baez's arm side,

so a big fastball on the inner half to Wright, which is generally where it was when Wright pushed a line drive into center field, scoring two runs, running deGrom's lead to 3-0, which would be more than enough for the Mets, and just enough to beat Kershaw. That's how it happened again, how he was outpitched or outlasted or out-thought this time, how it came to be that someone else threw the pitch that would matter in the end. How it keeps coming to this. How it keeps finding all of them.

NBCLA Dodgers Wilt Under Postseason Pressure, Fall to Mets 3-1 in Game 1 of NLDS By Michael Duarte In nine career postseason starts, Clayton Kershaw has one win. In one career postseason start, Jacob DeGrom, has one win. That is all you need to know. DeGrom outdueled Kershaw in one of the best pitching matchups in postseason history and the Los Angeles Dodgers wilted under the pressure, falling to the New York Mets 3-1 in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Friday night at Dodger Stadium. "I got outpitched, that's the moral of the story," Kershaw said after the game. "Jacob pitched an amazing game, but he outpitched me, plain and simple." For those in attendance in Game 1 of the 2014 NLDS, it felt like déjà vu all over again. For six innings, Kershaw looked like his dominant MVP self, only to run out of gas in the seventh and send Dodger fans home with that painfully familiar feeling of a postseason loss. Trailing 1-0 in the top of the seventh, Kershaw walked three batters to load the bases with two outs. It was the first time Kershaw had walked three in one inning since April 23, 2013, and it would be the last batter he'd face in the game. "In that 7th inning, you obviously can't walk that many guys,"Kershaw said. "I put myself in that situation, so there's not a lot of arguing you can do at that point." Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly opted to pull Kershaw and brought in Pedro Baez to try and blow heat by Mets third baseman David Wright. For many in Los Angeles, we had seen this story before. In 2014, with the Dodgers down a run, Mattingly pulled Kershaw in the seventh to give way to Baez who promptly walked a batter before allowing a three-run homer to Matt Holliday. Needless to say, the results were disastrous again.

Baez gave up a two-run single to Wright who gave the Mets a 3-0 lead, sending the Dodgers to a stinging defeat in Game 1 of a best-of-five series. Kershaw was strong, allowing three runs on just four hits in 6.2 innings. By the end of the fifth inning, Kershaw had totaled 11 strikeouts, just one shy of his postseason high of 12. But DeGrom was better, striking out 13 batters in seven shutout innings. He outlasted Kershaw allowing just five scattered hits throughout the game. "I know what he's doing, but my game plan stays the same," DeGrom said of the battle with Kershaw. "Go put up zeros and keep us in a position to win." For the first seven innings, it was a classic postseason pitching duel as both starting pitchers struck out at least 11 batters for the first time in MLB Playoff history. Yet, Kershaw wilted under the heat of the 90-degree October sun and suffered another tragic postseason loss, his fifth consecutive, dropping him to 1-6 in his playoff career. Daniel Murphy hit a 94MPH fastball off Kershaw into the Mets bullpen in the fourth inning to give New York an early 1-0 lead. "My first at-bat he chewed me up and spit me out," Murphy said of Kershaw. "He doesn't make a lot of mistakes and I was really fortunate to put a good swing on the ball he threw me on my second at-bat." The Dodgers got some help in the early innings as left fielder Michael Cuddyer misplayed not one, but two fly balls that lead to doubles. However, LA stranded both runners, unable to get any big hits off DeGrom. The Dodgers would finally scratch a run across in the eighth inning, after DeGrom had left the game. Howie Kendrick doubled off reliever Tyler Clippard and scored on an Adrian Gonzalez single to left field. Mets manager Terry Collins immediately went to the bullpen, calling for Jeurys Familia for a four-out save. Familia retired the Dodgers in order in the ninth to earn his first career postseason save. The Mets were playing in their first postseason game since 2006 when they swept the Dodgers in three games. They improved to 3-1 all time in Game 1 of an NLDS, with two of those wins coming against Los Angeles. Game Notes: A.J. Ellis went 1-for-3 and extended his postseason hitting streak to a Dodgers franchise record 11 games. Daniel Murphy joined Carlos Delgado and Edgardo Alfonzo as the only Mets to have homered in their postseason debut. Since current Wild Card format, team who wins the first game is 11-1 since the Wild Card Game was introduced in 2012.

The Dodgers and Mets combined for 27 strikeouts, one shy of the all-time postseason record. Getting to Dodger Stadium for the National League Division Series By NBCLA The Los Angeles Dodgers are urging fans to arrive as early as possible for Games 1 and 2 of their National League Division Series against the New York Mets Friday and Saturday. Friday's game will begin at 6:45 p.m. and Saturday's at 6:07 p.m. There are a few different ways to get to the game. Dodger Stadium Express: The Dodger Stadium Express shuttle bus service from Union Station will begin service at 4:15 p.m. Friday and 3:37 p.m. Saturday, 2 1/2 hours before the first pitch. The service is free for everyone with a game ticket. South Bay Dodger Stadium Express: Service will begin two hours before each game from the Harbor Gateway Transit Center. Dodgers, Fans Celebrate 1988 World Series WinDodgers, Fans Celebrate 1988 World Series Win Car: Auto gates will open at 3:45 p.m. Friday and 3:07 p.m. Saturday. The left field plaza will be open for fans to enter and watch batting practice from 4:15-4:45 p.m. Friday and 3:30-4 p.m. Saturday. Stadium gates will open at 4:15 p.m. today and 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Fans going to today's game will have deal with customary rush hour freeway traffic. Freeway congestion Saturday is expected to be heavier than usual because of the U.S.-Mexico CONCACAF Cup soccer game at the Rose Bowl, set to start shortly after 6 p.m., just like the Dodger Game.

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OCTOBER MOMENT: MATTINGLY YANKS KERSHAW By Rob Neyer But the Dodgers did score, and they did lose 3-1, and the Mets' second and third runs did score just after Mattingly removed Baseball's Best Pitcher from the contest. And so the second-guessers are having a field day. Let's set the scene, then. Entering the seventh inning, Clayton Kershaw had given up just one run, on Daniel Murphy's no-doubt homer in the fourth. Otherwise, he'd struck out 11 Mets and walked just one. Not quite as dominant as deGrom, but close.

In the seventh, though, somehow Kershaw walked the bases loaded, with the three walks sandwiching -- or more accurately, Big Macking -- a ground-out and deGrom's sacrifice bunt. It was the first time Kershaw walked three batters in one inning in nearly two-and-a-half years. To that point, Kershaw had thrown 113 pitches. Which is a fair number of pitches. But perhaps just as relevantly, he'd thrown 25 pitches in the seventh inning alone. With David Wright coming up. Again, Kershaw is Baseball's Best Pitcher. All things being equal. In this situation, all things were not equal. Kershaw was presumably fatigued, and David Wright's a Hall of Fame-caliber player who's absolutely destroyed left-handed pitchers in his career. So Mattingly yanked Kershaw and called upon righty Pedro Baez to retire Wright. Baez looked great during the regular season, with 60 strikeouts and only 11 walks in 51 innings. In his short career, Baez has held right-handed hitters to a .232/.271/.362 batting line. Which is obviously very, very good. Mattingly does have one better righty in his bullpen: Kenley Jansen, and at least a few Twitter wags said Mattingly should have instead summoned Jansen to face Wright. Well, sure. But on which planet? There's not a manager in the majors, or for that matter the minors, who would use his closer in that situation. Maybe with two outs in the eighth inning, but in the seventh? No way, no how. In any event, Baez fell behind Wright 2-and-0, battled back to a full count, then threw a fastball -- a 99-mph fastball, mind you -- down the middle that Wright lined into center field to drive in a couple of runs. In case you missed it: Welcome to Baseball, folks. After the game in the TV studio, Dusty Baker and Gary Sheffield said they would have left Kershaw in the game. Also after the game, somebody asked Mattingly about removing Kershaw. He nailed the answer, citing Kershaw's pitch count, and the penalty for a pitcher facing a lineup for the fourth time, and Wright's history against lefties generally. Second-guessing's just what we do, every October. Because we have to do something, and few of us are lyrical enough to well describe Jacob deGrom's wizardry. But the truth is that managers are smarter and better-informed than ever before, and second-guessing becomes less and less fruitful with each passing autumn. Historic hurlers: Kershaw, deGrom set record in Game 1 of NLDS

By FOX Sports Many experts were expecting a pitchers' duel in Game 1 of the NLDS between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets, with Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom facing off. Nobody expected it to be this historic, though. After just six complete innings, both Kershaw and deGrom tallied 11 strikeouts, setting a postseason record for opposing starters in a game. DeGrom finished with 13. The only previous time both starters had reached double-digit strikeouts in the same postseason game came in Game 5 of the 1944 World Series, when Mort Cooper and Denny Galehouse recorded 12 and 10. The battle of arms will continue Saturday as Dodgers righty Zack Greinke will face rookie Mets starter Noah Syndergaard. Mets' Duda broke a sign at Dodger Stadium during BP before NLDS By FOX Sports Note to all power hitters: With great power comes great responsibility. Apparently, Lucas Duda didn't get the memo. The New York Mets slugger has been taking some impressive (and destructive) batting practice at Dodger Stadium ahead of his team's NLDS matchup against the Los Angeles Dodgers. First, from Thursday: Out of the stadium? That's pretty good. Breaking signs? Now we're talking. Prior to the NLDS opener, Duda launched a ball off this sign in right field, knocking off an 'R' in the middle of it. Hopefully he's able to save some of that power for, you know, the actual games. He will have his work cut out for him in Games 1 and 2 as he faces Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

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Mets take command of NLDS series, beat Dodgers in Game 1 By Jorge Ortiz

LOS ANGELES – You know what they say about the best-laid plans. If you don't, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly can you give a crash course as he sets Friday's box score on flames. It's the sheet of paper that will show the New York Mets took command of the National League Division Series with a 3-1 win in Game 1 because Jacob deGrom outdueled Clayton Kershaw, who still has two fewer postseason victories than Cy Young Awards to his credit. The stats will also reveal Dodgers reliever Pedro Baez, part of a bullpen that improved down the stretch, yielded just one single, but it happened to come at the worst possible time. Isn't that always the case for Mattingly and Kershaw in the playoffs? The Dodgers seemed to have the perfect plan, starting Kershaw in Game 1 over league ERA champion Zack Greinke because the three-time Cy Young winner is a better candidate to come back on three days' rest for a possible Game 4. Greinke would then be fully rested for Game 5. Plus, Kershaw had been on an unreal roll, winning 11 of his last 12 decisions in the regular season while fashioning a sterling 1.22 ERA in that stretch of 17 starts. But Kershaw has yet to prove he can deliver at the same level in October – his five consecutive postseason losses represent the longest such streak in team history – and on this night he wore down in the 90-degree heat, and deGrom did not. While Kershaw was creating needless trouble for himself by issuing three walks in the seventh, deGrom was retiring the last 11 batters he faced on the way to striking out 13 in seven shutout innings. "I got outpitched,'' Kershaw said. "That's basically the moral of the story.'' Well, not entirely. Kershaw was actually brilliant through six innings, striking out 11 and giving up just one run on Daniel Murphy's fourth-inning homer. But the Mets wore him down, and the bullpen fail to rescue him. David Wright's bases-loaded single off the right-handed Baez with two outs in the seventh turned a one-run game into a 3-0 Mets lead and likely will generate unwarranted criticism of Mattingly, who might have stayed too long with Kershaw in previous playoff losses. This time he yanked the struggling left-hander after 113 pitches, and the move again backfired on the Dodgers. "(Wright's) numbers against lefties are really good,'' said Mattingly, pointing out he wasn't going to let the Mets' third baseman face Kershaw a fourth time. "He had walked three guys in an inning. He couldn't put away (Lucas) Duda. He was just kind of out of sync.'' Not unlike the Dodgers for much of the playoffs during Mattingly's five-year managerial tenure. L.A. has made the postseason three times in a row for the first time in franchise history, winning the NL West each time, yet the club is now 6-9 in the playoffs in that spell and is looking at an uphill climb in this series. And though the Dodgers can take solace in having Greinke on the mound Saturday evening, they will be clear underdogs when the series moves to New York for Game 3, pitting Matt Harvey against Brett Anderson.

However, the main narrative to emerge out of Friday's game really should be about deGrom's brilliance. The lithe right-hander with the flowing mane threw tied the franchise postseason record of 13 strikeouts set by Tom Seaver in 1973. DeGrom baffled the Dodgers at times with his slider and improved changeup, and other times he simply blew them away with a fastball that was still sizzling at 97 mph in the seventh. "He was throwing a lot harder than we've seen the last couple of outings he had,'' Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis said. "He definitely had the adrenaline flowing, because his fastball was really electric.'' DeGrom barely faced any trouble in the late innings and victimized lefty hitters for all but one of his Ks. On a larger scale, and in a more important setting, deGrom's performance was reminiscent of his All-Star Game outing, in which he struck out the three batters he faced on 10 pitches. Even when left fielder Michael Cuddyer missed catchable balls in the second and third innings, putting a runner in scoring position both times, deGrom bailed him out by quelling both threats. DeGrom, whose only walk was intentional, hit his spots on both sides of the plate all night, with the fastball and the secondary pitches. "There were a couple of times tonight 3-2 where I threw a couple of changeups,'' deGrom said of a pitch he sharpened during an 11-day hiatus in September. "I would say last year I probably wouldn't have done that. So I think just having a little more confidence out there.'' That wasn't a strong enough statement for Wright, who shared the news conference with deGrom and also hero status. Besides delivering his clutch single in the seventh, Wright worked a 12-pitch walk out of Kershaw in the opening inning, foreshadowing the Mets' tough at-bats against him most of the night. "This guy's a beast,'' Wright said of deGrom. "He's a little modest, he won't admit it, but he's a beast.''

KTLA

President Obama Visit, Along With Dodgers Playoff Game and US-Mexico Soccer Match, to Create Traffic Mess for L.A. Drivers By Tracy Bloom President Obama’s latest trip to Los Angeles, coupled with two major sporting events in the area, could create a traffic headache for L.A. drivers on Saturday. The president’s visit was scheduled to last for just several hours, during which time he would attend a trio events and help raise money for Democratic candidates, according to a White House press release. He was expected to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport at 1 p.m. before heading to L.A.’s Westside area. As with previous presidential visits, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a traffic advisory, warning motorists that multiple closures could cause a traffic congestion.

Traffic could be especially bad this time, however, because his trip to the Southland coincides with two Saturday evening sporting events, according to the Los Angeles Times. At 6 p.m., more than 90,000 soccer fans were expected to pack the Rose Bowl in Pasadena as the United States and Mexico played in the CONCACAF Cup, the Times reported. The crowd will likely be one of the largest this year for a soccer match in the U.S. Shortly after 6 p.m., the Dodgers will take on the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium near downtown L.A. in the second playoff game of the National League Division Series. Traffic jams will likely begin earlier, however, as fans head to both stadiums, according to the Times. Obama is scheduled to depart L.A. for San Diego on Saturday night. In anticipation of the president’s visit, LAPD has urged motorists to avoid the below areas: -Sunset Boulevard between Rivas Canyon Road and Monaco Drive from 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. -Capri Drive between Corsica Drive and Casale Road from 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. -Casale Road between Capri Drive and San Remo Drive from 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. -Amalfi Drive between San Remo Drive Capri Drive from 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. -Capri Drive between Amalfi Drive and Sunset Boulevard from 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. -Pavia Place between Sunset Boulevard and Amalfi Drive from 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. -Sunset Blvd between Westcove Drive and Minorca Drive from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -Allenford Avenue and 26th Street between Sunset Boulevard and San Vicente Boulevard from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -San Vicente Boulevard between 25th Street and Wilshire Boulevard from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -Wilshire Boulevard between Barry Avenue and Devon Avenue from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -Beverly Glen Avenue between Ashton Avenue and Charing Cross Road from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -Mapleton Drive between Club View Drive and Wynton Drive from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. -Beverly Glen Drive between Wynton Drive and Pico Boulevard from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. -Pico Boulevard between Patricia Avenue and Avenue of the Stars from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. -Motor Avenue between Pico Boulevard and Monte Mar Drive from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Additionally, hard closures would be in effect in the following areas and times: -Sepulveda Boulevard between Lincoln Boulevard and Century Boulevard will be closed to vehicular traffic for an 8-minute period sometime between 12:45p.m. and 1:15p.m. -Will Rogers State Park will be closed from approximately 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. -San Remo Drive in the Pacific Palisades will be closed between Casale Road and Amalfi Drive from approximately 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. -Amalfi Drive will be closed between Napoli Drive and Minorca Drive from approximately 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

-South Mapleton Drive will be closed between Wyton Drive and Club View Drive from approximately 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. -Club View Drive will be closed between South Beverly Glen Boulevard and Comstock Avenue from approximately 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. -Cheviot Hills Recreation Center and Park will be closed from approximately 7:30 p.m. on Friday to 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Motor Avenue will be between Pico Boulevard and Monte Mar Drive from approximately 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Letter of Recommendation: Vin Scully By Jacob Silverman Five years ago, a dozen friends and I headed from Los Angeles to San Diego to catch a three-game series between the Dodgers and the Padres. The stated purpose of the trip was a bachelor party for an old friend, but we needed little excuse to follow our home team on the road. When we checked into our hotel, we realized just how closely we had followed them; the Dodgers were staying there, too. This was a little like running into your calculus teacher at the mall. These people aren’t supposed to exist in real life. Excited, we filled out bingo cards with player sightings. But really, we wanted to see only one man: Vin Scully, the team’s announcer since Harry Truman was in office. One morning, Jon, the groom to be, walked into a hotel elevator and found himself eyeball to eyeball with Scully. Jon introduced himself, explained the purpose of his visit and asked if he had any advice. After a thoughtful pause, Scully said, in his dulcet New York drawl, ‘‘Ahh, marriage — man’s most optimistic of endeavors.’’ He wished Jon luck, and that was it. Elevator doors opened, folk hero exited. The encounter set our close-knit group aflame. We pulled our liberal-arts degrees out of their moldering mental storage and began analyzing Scully’s line like the poetry it was, a classic Scullyism — the lyricism, the slightly antique syntax, the dueling notes of mischief and joy. Vin Scully’s Most Legendary Silences: Kirk Gibson’s home run, 1988 World Series: 1 minute, 8 seconds. Hank Aaron’s 715th home run: 1 minute, 45 seconds. Bill Buckner’s error, Game 6 of the 1986 World Series: 3 minutes, 23 seconds. It may seem odd to feel such devotion to an octogenarian baseball announcer, but Scully is a singular figure. He stands apart from today’s broadcasters, who, with a few notable exceptions, are awful. Largely ex-pros recounting their faded glories and AM radio graduates, they gab in the second person as they chew through clichés. Often they offer nothing approaching an insight or a surprising thought for three whole hours — or more. This is perhaps a byproduct of their shifting job description. Once, sportscasters existed for the benefit of people who were listening on radio and would never see the action. They were still necessary in the early days of TV, but the introduction of advanced statistics, on-

screen graphics and instant replay have rendered sportscasters almost redundant. My study isn’t empirical, but I have spent several years streaming the MLB TV package into my frontal lobe, and most games are better enjoyed on mute. You can listen to Scully for hours and never hear a familiar platitude or a half-baked thought. His technique, however, is rather simple. He describes the action in front of him just as he encounters it. His demeanor is jovial, neighborly — Mr. Rogers goes to Chavez Ravine. He quotes Dylan Thomas and offers old-fashioned homilies about the weather (Scully still refers to a breeze as a ‘‘zephyr’’). He coos over children and leads viewers, his ‘‘friends,’’ through stories about everything from the time he went ice-skating with Jackie Robinson to the time he dreamed of being chased by a giant clam (he had just shared an Italian dinner with Tommy Lasorda, you see). In his voice, you can hear traces of radio plays, New York’s prewar slums, Broadway — a lifetime of experience spent in what, in its more romantic era, was called show business. Despite having followed the franchise from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Scully exhibits little bias for the team that employs him. He remains stubbornly impartial, so much so that the occasional Dodgers player has questioned his loyalties. He loves the Dodgers, but his appreciation of baseball is aesthetic, so he celebrates excellence in the Dodgers ace Zack Greinke as readily as he does in, say, Gerardo Parra, a journeyman outfielder whose strong defensive play when he was on the Arizona Diamondbacks made him a Scully favorite. I lived in LA in the 90s and heard a lot of Vin Scully - as well as Angels announcers, whoever they were. He is indeed a poet, and his way... Scully’s connection to the sport is also emotional, and despite his humble demeanor, you can see the specter of mortality creeping into his narrative. He appears deeply content whenever he is at the park, but as with any great nostalgist, a note of sadness runs through his work. It’s a sentiment reflected in a line Scully uttered on a broadcast two years ago, one that was cited by Molly Knight in her recent book, ‘‘The Best Team Money Can Buy.’’ Talking about Yasiel Puig, the Dodgers’ young, charismatic right fielder, Scully took a savoring breath and said, ‘‘Oh, to be 22 and a Dodger.’’ His eloquence is matched by his intuitive grasp of the tenor of a moment. From this understanding comes the most distinctive feature of a Scully broadcast: his use of silence. After a dramatic play, many announcers shout their commentary over the accompanying roar, but Scully knows when to keep quiet, allowing the crowd noise to carry the broadcast. When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run, Scully called the ball’s flight and then went dark for about 100 seconds as Aaron galloped around the bases. In these silences, Scully has said, he is merely ‘‘shutting up’’ so that we, and he, can enjoy the moment. But they more resemble an artist working in negative space, or maybe a great jazz riff — the silence works because it’s punctuated by startling, even virtuosic, flights of improvisation. In August, Scully announced that he will return next season, which will probably be his last. He will call his games without a color commentator, making him unique in the sport. ‘‘It’s a mere moment in a man’s life between the All-Star Game and an old-timer’s game,’’ Scully has said. The 87-year-old is still, thankfully, living in that moment.

SI.COM

Mets’ deGrom outduels Kershaw in Game 1 to leave Dodgers in tough spot By Ben Reiter LOS ANGELES — Three quick thoughts from Dodger Stadium after the Mets beat the Dodgers, 3–1, in Game 1 of the NLDS on Friday night: 1. The Tortoise lost to the Hair The long-locked Mets starter Jacob deGrom threw his average fastball a little under 96 mph during the regular season, but on a 92 degree night he showed, right away, that he’d be bringing it much harder than that. He threw 17 fastballs in the first inning, eight at 97 mph, and the other nine at 98. If deGrom seemed amped up — perhaps overly so — for his first-ever playoff start, Clayton Kershaw, his seasoned Dodgers counterpart, seemed relaxed and in control making his ninth, even though his playoff record so far (1–5 going in with a 5.12 ERA) is really the only blemish whatsoever on his resume. Even an excellent at-bat by David Wright in the first inning, one which resulted in a 12–pitch walk, didn’t rattle him. In the second, he struck out Michael Cuddyer and Ruben Tejada on consecutive slow curves, of 75 and 74 mph. He’d use that looping pitch to record two more strikeouts after that, and through the top of the sixth he seemed to be in command, having allowed only one run — and really made one mistake on 88 pitches, 64 of them strikes. DeGrom held the lead after the sixth, 1–0, but he’d been forced to labor more, throwing 101 pitches. It seemed a classic pitching duel was shaping up, as the starters at that point combined for 22 strikeouts — 11 apiece — but it also seemed that if anyone would crack it would be deGrom, who had come out so fast. 02:45 That is not what happened. While working past the seventh inning seems easy for Kershaw most of the time — he did it in 22 of his 33 starts this year — it hasn’t been as such in the playoffs. He’d completed seven in just one of his previous eight career postseason starts, and the seventh had proven his undoing in both of his NLDS losses to the Cardinals last season, as he allowed a combined eight runs in those frames alone. The seventh ended his night again on Friday. He was pulled after a walk, a groundout, another walk, a sacrifice bunt and then another walk that ran his pitch count to 113 pitches. Then reliever Pedro Baez allowed a two-run single to David Wright to put the Mets up 3–0, and the game out of reach. DeGrom, meanwhile, had no trouble finishing off the Dodgers in order in the bottom of the frame. His last fastball was as hard as his first of the game, 97 mph. He threw 121 pitches, and surrendered five hits, a walk and no runs. Tyler Clippard allowed the Dodgers to scratch out a run in the bottom of the eighth to make things somewhat interesting, but then Jeurys Familia closed them out. This was not another disaster start by Kershaw, by any means. But it was, again, a disconcertingly non-dominant one, at least in the seventh inning. He is now 1–6 in the playoffs. DeGrom was simply better, and he is 1–0. 2. Terry Collins’s lineup proved prescient

The Mets’ Game 1 lineup looked surprising to some, for this reason: manager Terry Collins started four lefthanded hitters, including deGrom, against baseball’s best southpaw. But Collins knew a couple of things. One was that, managing his first postseason game after 1,688 of the regular season variety, he wasn’t going to all of a sudden start messing around too much. The second was that Kershaw is even more dominant against righties, who batted .192 against him this season with a .511 OPS, than against lefties (.203 B.A., .554 OPS). “I’ve looked against Clayton Kershaw’s numbers against right-handed hitters, and they’re outstanding,” Collins said before the game. “So it doesn’t matter, to me, where you hold the bat. You better get in there and get a good pitch to hit, and I think our lefties can do that.” They did. The left-handed hitting Daniel Murphy — who kept his regular job at second, even with Wilmer Flores, a righty, on the bench — opened the scoring by crushing a 2–0 pitch from Kershaw deep to right to lead off the top of the fourth. And in the seventh, in which the Mets would tack on two more, lefties Lucas Duda and Curtis Granderson drew two of the walks, the latter of which spelled the end of Kershaw’s evening. In total, lefthanders accounted for all four hits that Kershaw allowed, and six of his eight baserunners. In fact, Collins would have almost certainly been better off had he started a fifth lefthanded hitter, the rookie outfielder Michael Conforto. He went with Cuddyer in leftfield instead, and the results were nearly disastrous. Not only did the 36-year-old go 0 for 3, but he badly misplayed two balls that, combined, likely added at least 15 pitches to deGrom’s tally, and probably by himself kept him from working an eighth inning. The first was in the top of the second, when Cuddyer came in on a Justin Turner liner only to retreat too late, and had the ball carom off his glove. The second was an inning later, when he looked as if he were running through quicksand as he attempted to track down a seemingly harmless Corey Seager pop fly, and couldn’t get there before it bounced over the wall for a ground-rule double. DeGrom was so dominant that neither gaffe ultimately mattered, but even though the Mets might face southpaws in as many as three of the remaining four games of this series, Cuddyer’s adventures in leftfield have likely come to an end. 3. Zack Greinke must pitch to form in Saturday’s Game 2 Is Game 2 a must-win for the Dodgers? Well, no, not technically; it’s a best-of-five series, after all. But the Dodgers’ success this season has been largely predicated on a pair of starters, Kershaw and Greinke, who form the most dominant duo any team has fielded in nearly half a century. Their combined regular season ERA, 1.90, was the lowest for a pair of teammates with at least 25 starts apiece since 1968 — the year before the mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10. The idea that the Mets could beat Kershaw and Greinke on back-to-back nights might seem implausible, but as even Greinke said on Thursday, “I wouldn’t say anything’s guaranteed.” A loss on Saturday would put the Dodgers in a 2–0 hole and facing a Game 3 in which they will be on the wrong side of what should might prove this series’ most lopsided pitching matchup, Matt Harvey versus Brett Anderson. Game 2, in other words, is about as must-win for the Dodgers as a non-must-win game can get.

NEWSDAY.COM

Tale of two franchises: One rich, one prudent

By David Lennon LOS ANGELES - tFor years, the Dodgers and Mets, separated by 3,000 miles and nearly $200 million in payroll, supposedly represented the right way and the wrong way to resurrect a major league baseball team. The Dodgers had their owner chased out by Bud Selig for running the franchise in a reckless, negligent fashion. They were sold for $2.15 billion in 2012 and immediately dumped more millions into the team, soon toppling the Yankees with the sport's highest payroll. In New York, everyone wondered why the Mets, another Tiffany franchise, couldn't become a league powerhouse overnight. Instead, the cash-strapped Mets had to preach patience and take the longer view. Yet Friday night, both were in the exact same place: NLDS Game 1 at Dodger Stadium, which wound up a 3-1 Mets victory. The bigger question: Which franchise is in the better place? With money no object, the Dodgers really don't have to worry about finances, at least for now. But constantly growing payroll, at an unchecked rate, is no guarantee of success either. We know what side Sandy Alderson has taken in this debate. But in getting the $101-million Mets to 90 wins -- a year late, by his '14 proclamation -- this October should provide him with his "I-told-you-so" moment. When given the chance before Game 1, however, Alderson wasn't about to take a premature bow. "It's not a chance to say anything," he said. "Just part of the gig. We'll see what happens." Depending on how you see the Cubs' Jake Arrieta, the Dodgers possess two of the best three pitchers on the planet in Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. Beyond that, what has $300 million done for them? In part, it's saddled them with close to $75 million in dead money, paid to players no longer on their roster -- and that's not counting the luxury tax. So this group -- let's call them the ex-Dodgers -- has a payroll higher than six teams, including the Astros, who just beat the $220-million Yankees in Tuesday night's AL wild-card game. The Dodgers ate $16 million on Michael Morse and $10 million on Dan Haren, both traded to the Marlins during the offseason. They shipped $18 million to the Padres to chew up some of Matt Kemp's $160-million deal. Brian Wilson was released with $9.5 million left on his contract. Those are just some of the highlights and, in the Dodgers' view, just the cost of doing business. Collateral damage, if you will. But no matter how you judge what's happening in L.A., it's incredibly inefficient. Even with a new GM in Andrew Friedman, who earned his reputation by turning the tiny-market Rays into a frequent contender, the Dodgers still don't hesitate to reach for the wallet.

While there's no speedier method of obtaining higher-caliber talent, it can back teams into some pretty large holes, as the Yankees have discovered. Only now are the team's top prospects being given the chance to flourish in the Bronx, as Greg Bird and Luis Severino did. But toward the end of the regular season, the Yankees showed their age and were beaten by a younger, fresher Astros club. With the Mets, it's not as if they really had a choice. The fallout from the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme inflicted financial damage on the Wilpons' operation, and the Mets -- always among the sport's top spenders -- went the opposite direction. This season, even after their midseason trades, the Mets still are in the bottom third in payroll. They managed to exceed expectations anyway. "The size of the payroll becomes shorthand for quality," Alderson said. "Most often in the offseason. It doesn't always prove to be true during the season. From my standpoint, I just ignore it. "You do the best with what you have. It's easy to make mistakes with a big payroll. It's tougher when you make mistakes with a smaller payroll because you don't have as much backup to bail you out. But from my standpoint, I'm never worried about what other people have. We've always felt that we've got plenty." When the dust clears on this Division Series, we'll get to see which philosophy prevailed. Regardless of how the Dodgers and Mets got here, only one is moving on. Then we'll see if the winner paid retail or got it at a discount.

NEW YORK TIMES

Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw Takes the Loss, but Don Mattingly Takes the Criticism By Karen Crouse LOS ANGELES — Don Mattingly’s first two postseasons as a manager were not a total loss. “Every day you learn,” Mattingly said this week as his Los Angeles Dodgers prepared for their National League division series against the Mets. In last year’s N.L.D.S. opener at Dodger Stadium, Mattingly waited one batter too many before yanking his wilting starter, Clayton Kershaw, who gave up a go-ahead three-run double to the Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter in the seventh inning of a game that St. Louis held on to win. So on Friday, after a wilting Kershaw walked Lucas Duda on five pitches to open the seventh and also issued free bases to two of the next four batters, Ruben Tejada and Curtis Granderson, by letting them wiggle free from 1-2 counts, Mattingly made his move. With the Dodgers trailing by 1-0, Mattingly brought in a right-handed reliever, Pedro Baez, to face David Wright, who came through with a two-run single that proved to be the difference in the Mets’ 3-1 victory in front of a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium. Get the big sports news, highlights and analysis from Times journalists, with distinctive takes on games and some behind-the-scenes surprises, delivered to your inbox every week.

The loss belonged to Kershaw, who was charged with three runs and allowed four hits and four walks, with 11 strikeouts, in six and two-thirds innings. “I got outpitched,” Kershaw said, acknowledging the effort of Jacob deGrom, who allowed five hits over seven innings and struck out 13 to earn the win. But Mattingly’s performance was the one placed under the magnifying glass as Dodgers fans, in what has become a rite of fall, second-guessed his decision-making. On Twitter, some were calling for his firing even after an R.B.I. single by Adrian Gonzalez in the eighth gave the Dodgers hope. With two outs, Justin Turner, who represented the tying run, lined out to end the inning. Mattingly explained the method behind his move. He noted that Kershaw had thrown 25 pitches in the seventh inning to bring his count to 113 and, had he remained in the game, would have faced Wright, who hit .351 against left-handers in the regular season. “We felt David’s numbers against lefties were really good,” Mattingly said. And Kershaw, he added, “was just out of sync a little bit.” Daniel Murphy broke a scoreless tie in the fourth when he deposited a 2-0 fastball from Kershaw into the right-field stands. “Obviously Murphy put a good stroke on the ball,” said Kershaw, who rued his 3-2 pitches to Tejada and Granderson in the pivotal seventh. “That pitch to Tejada, I really wanted to have that one back,” he said. “The other one to Granderson, just kind of a good battle.” Kershaw added, “Obviously, you can’t walk that many guys.” Asked how badly he wanted to finish the seventh inning, Kershaw shrugged. “I put myself in that spot,” he said, “so not so much room for arguing.” Kershaw may not have gotten the job done late, but the Dodgers’ hitters, by not getting to deGrom early, put Mattingly in the fans’ cross hairs. Referring to deGrom, Mattingly said, “I thought we did a pretty good job of not chasing the changeup or breaking ball down, but with that, you end up chasing some elevated fastballs, and he ended up beating us with that.”

ESPN DEPORTES

Dodgers y Mets abren la contienda Por Rigo Cervantez LOS ÁNGELES.- Los Dodgers de Los Ángeles y los Mets de Nueva York inician su Serie Divisional este viernes por la tarde noche, a partir de las 9:30 P.M. del Este , en el inmueble de las Lomas de Chávez Ravine.

Es la primera contienda de las cinco que contempla esta confrontación, donde el primer equipo que acumule tres victorias, avanzará a la Serie de Campeonato, para enfrentar al ganador del duelo entre Cardenales de San Luis y Cachorros de Chicago, por la supremacía en el Viejo Circuito. El duelo monticular tiene como protagonistas al zurdo Clayton Kershaw, por parte de los dueños de casa, quien durante la temporada regular tuvo una cosecha de 16-7, con efectividad de 2.13. Para el nativo de Dallas, Texas, de 27 años de edad, se trata de su intervención en el duodécimo juego de postemporada, noveno como abridor, en los que luce marca de 1-5, con efectividad de 5.12 Por tercera temporada consecutiva, Kershaw ha sido el lanzador con el mayor número de ponches, incluyendo un total sin precedentes de 301, en el año que culmina. El triple ganador del Cy Young enfrentó en la presente campaña a los Mets en dos oportunidades, logrando totales de 1-0, con efectividad de 0.56, mientras que de por vida, han sido 9 los duelos que el zurdo ha sostenido ante los neoyorquinos y tiene una marca de 6-0 y efectividad de 1.34. Por su parte, el diestro Jacob deGrom, quien curiosamente es tan solo tres meses más joven que Kershaw, logró en la temporada regular del 2015, una cosecha de 14-8, con efectividad de 2.54. El Novato del Año en el 2014 en, por la Liga Nacional, nació el 19 de junio de 1988, en DeLand, Florida y se enfrentó una vez a los Dodgers, en este año, saliendo sin decisión. De por vida, el diestro tiene marca de 0-2, efectividad de 3.66, en tres confrontaciones, en las que su mayor amenaza ha sido el primera base de los Dodgers, el mexicano Adrián González, que le batea para .375, con 3 imparables en 8 turnos, incluyendo un cuadrangular y 5 carreras impulsadas. Sobre la debacle de Kershaw en la pasada Serie Divisional 2014, frente a los Cardenales, el mánager de los Dodgers, Don Mattingly, lamentó que la prensa solo se enfoque en el resultado final de aquel juego que le costó la eliminación a su equipo. “Nadie habla de los seis episodios que lanzó sin permitir carreras, ni de las jugadas defensivas que debieron haberle dado un tercer out para cerrar el séptimo capítulo y yo, en su momento, me sentí muy mal por eso,” señaló el dirigente de los Dodgers, quien adelantó que no habrá sorpresas en la alineación que presentará para el duelo inicial ante los Mets, ni en cuanto a la confección del plantel de 25 jugadores que utilizará en esta Serie Divisional. “He hablado en forma individual con todos mis jugadores y todos conocen su papel en esta serie,” explicó el timonel azul. Mientras tanto, Terry Collins, el mánager de los Mets, no pudo menos que recordar su pasado con la organización de los Dodgers. “Aquí me dieron mi primer puesto como dirigente en ligas menores, aquí aprendí de béisbol, el béisbol de los Dodgers, hablando y escuchando a los grandes peloteros de ese momento, como Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, y Maury Wills, entre otros. Y si hoy puedo estar sentado, hablando con ustedes en este lugar, todo se lo debo a los Dodgers.”

Sin embargo, esa gratitud no impide que su equipo venga decidido a llevarse todo el botín de Chávez Ravine, como lo expresa su campo corto, el venezolano Wilmer Flores cuando ESPN le preguntó si los Mets se irían satisfechos de Los Ángeles, dividiendo triunfos con el rival: “Estaríamos contentos con ganar los dos juegos,” respondió el pelotero, de 24 años de edad, quien interviene en su primera postemporada, pero aseguró que ellos pueden descifrar a Kershaw. “Él tira muchas rectas adentro, tiene una magnífica curva y sabe cómo utilizar su repertorio de lanzamientos. Pero nosotros tenemos que aprovechar los errores que el cometa,” detalló Flores. Por su parte, el jardinero izquierdo de los Dodgers, Carl Crawford, uno de los 18 peloteros que puede tener a su disposición Don Mattingly, con experiencia en juegos de postemporada, tiene su propia visión de cómo encarar esta clase de compromisos: “Nosotros estamos preparados para hacer todas esas pequeñas cosas que necesitamos ejecutar en el terreno de juego. Tenemos que mantenernos tranquilos, no tratar de hacer esto más grande de lo que en realidad es y encarar estos juegos con la mayor normalidad posible.” En el otro extremo del vestuario azul, el contraste de este plantel lo representa un debutante en estas lides, un joven pelotero que apareció en la gran carpa en la presente temporada, luego de ser considerado como uno de los más brillantes prospectos de ligas menores, hasta hace unos cuantos meses. “Ha sido algo irreal, estar aquí. Luego de haber iniciado en Doble-A y ahora encontrarme listo para jugar aquí, en la postemporada, resulta algo extraño,” dijo el juvenil Corey Seager, uno de los candidatos que tiene Mattingly para ocupar el puesto de parador en corto, junto al veterano, ganador de una Serie Mundial, Jimmy Rollins, otro de los peloteros de experiencia que ayudan al desarrollo de los novatos como Seager. “Es muy bueno el poder contar con compañeros que no solo han estado ahí, en instancias como esta, sino que lo han ganado todo, que cuentan con una gran experiencia y hablando con ellos, lo que me han dicho, es que trate de jugar con la mayor normalidad posible,” aseguró Seager.

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