It wasn’t an impassioned speech. But it proved to be a prescient point.
In the hours before Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, the Dodgers‘ offense was gathered for their typical pregame hitters meeting when Aaron Bates, one of the hitting coaches, spoke up and offered a reminder to the room.
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In this series, Bates knew there would be moments of adversity. And in this ballpark, where 45,000 crazed Philadelphia Phillies fans have created one of the best home-field advantages in all of baseball, the Dodgers needed to be ready to react and respond.
“The intensity and the fans were going to be there early in the game,” he told them, as infielder Miguel Rojas later recalled.
“If something happens early, if Schwarber hits one 800 feet and the roof blows off this place, don’t worry about it,” he added, according to third baseman Max Muncy, “Because when they’re dead silent in the seventh or eighth innings and we’re winning, that’s all that’s gonna matter.”
In the nine innings that followed, that’s exactly how the script played out.
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The Phillies landed an early punch, ambushing Shohei Ohtani with a three-run second inning that had Citizens Bank Park shaking on the scale of a small earthquake.
Then the Dodgers answered back, rallying to a resilient 5-3 win that gave them an all-important leg up in this best-of-five series.
“It’s a message that, when you hear it, it sounds silly,” Muncy said of Bates’ pregame reminder. “But, there’s a lot of truth to it. When you come into places like this, it’s very hostile, it’s very loud.”
It certainly was in the second inning, when J.T. Realmuto hit a two-run triple that opened the scoring and knocked the defending champions to the mat.
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But as they’ve shown so often over the last two Octobers, even when they’re down they never seem to be out.
“Get through the loud crowd and that sort of thing,” Bates said, modestly downplaying his hitters’ meeting speech. “Just make sure you stick to your plan, stick to the course. And we did a good job doing that.”
The Dodgers shrugged off the early adversity, with Ohtani allowing no further damage over a six-inning start; finishing his postseason pitching debut with nine strikeouts and four monumental scoreless frames after the second.
Read more: It must be October, because Super Kiké Hernández is here. ‘Track record speaks for itself’
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Their lineup, meanwhile, chipped away at the deficit, chasing Phillies ace and Cy Young Award candidate Cristopher Sánchez from the game on Kiké Hernández’s two-out double in the sixth.
In the seventh, the actual knockout blow arrived on a game-deciding swing from Teoscar Hernández. With two outs in the inning, and the Phillies on the verge of an escape, he blasted a go-ahead three-run home run.
Just like that, South Philadelphia fell silent.
“When you can hear a pin drop in the stadium, that’s the ultimate feeling in baseball,” Muncy said. “I felt like the people in the upper deck could hear us cheering in the dugout.”
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Early on in Saturday’s game, the Phillies’ daunting home stadium was providing the opposite environment.
Sánchez was carving Dodgers hitters up with wicked sinkers and fall-off-the-table changeups. On the other side, Ohtani ran into trouble in the bottom of the second.
Read more: Hernández: Dodgers save Shohei Ohtani, not the other way around, in monumental Game 1 NLDS win
The inning started with a walk to Alec Bohm, when Ohtani missed with a full-count fastball. That was followed by a single from Brandon Marsh, who got a down-the-middle fastball in a 2-and-2 count and shot a base hit to center.
As Ohtani tried to settle down, a chorus of taunting chants — Sho-Hei! Sho-Hei! — came raining down around him.
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Then, pandemonium was unleashed on one Realmuto swing.
After missing with a first-pitch slider to Realmuto, Ohtani left a 100.2 mph heater in the heart of the zone. The location rendered the velocity irrelevant. Realmuto barreled it up, sent a line drive screaming into right-center, then chugged all the way to third after the ball got past Teoscar Hernández in the gap.
A fly ball two batters later — which served as a sacrifice fly thanks to Hernández’s inability to cut the ball off on Realmuto’s triple earlier — made it 3-0.
In the moment (and with the way Sánchez was pitching), it felt like an almost insurmountable lead.
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In the dugout, however, the Dodgers thought back to Bates’ pregame message.
They were staggered, but didn’t submit. They were rattled, but not wrecked.
“Gotta give credit to Aaron Bates on that one. He made sure all the hitters knew about it,” Muncy said. “You just got to find a way to weather that storm and understand what the end goal is.”
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani delivers during the third inning against the Phillies on Saturday. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The turnaround began with Ohtani, who despite striking out four times as a batter followed Realmuto’s triple by retiring the next 10 he faced. His only other trouble came in the fifth, when the bottom two hitters in the Phillies’ order reached base with one out. But even then, Ohtani buckled down, getting Trea Turner to line out and Kyle Schwarber to swing through a curveball that ended the inning.
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On the night, Ohtani and the Dodgers’ relievers limited the Phillies’ big three of Turner, Schwarber and Bryce Harper to just one hit in 11 at-bats.
“I use the word compartmentalize a lot, but this epitomizes compartmentalizing,” manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani. “To go out there and give us six innings, keep us in the ball game, I just don’t know any human that can manage that, those emotions. How do you not take [the hitting struggles] to the mound?”
Eventually, the Dodgers’ offense found life too.
With two outs in the sixth, and Sánchez having given up only two hits all night, Freddie Freeman sparked a rally with a five-pitch walk. Tommy Edman took a sinker the other way to put two aboard.
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That brought up Kiké Hernández, who continued his habit of October heroics by jumping on a slider from Sánchez that caught a little too much plate. Hernández roped a line drive down the left-field line. Freeman and Edman scored, with the latter running through a stop sign before sliding safely across the plate.
Just like that, Sánchez was knocked out of the game. What had been a raucous crowd earlier suddenly grew tense.
Then, in the seventh, Teoscar Hernández made the comeback complete.
Teoscar Hernández celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the seventh inning for the Dodgers against the Phillies on Saturday. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
After Andy Pages led with a single and Will Smith (who entered the game in the fifth inning after missing the wild-card round with a fractured hand) was hit by a pitch from David Robertson, the Phillies summoned top left-handed reliever Matt Strahm and watched him get Ohtani to strike out for the fourth consecutive time (something he had done in a game only once before in his career).
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By getting Strahm on the mound, however, the Dodgers had favorable right-on-left matchups. Mookie Betts couldn’t take advantage, popping out to third for the second out. Hernández, on the other hand, didn’t miss, sending an elevated fastball sailing high into the autumn night.
“I watched videos [of him]. He likes to go up in the strike zone. I think that’s when he’s stronger,” Hernández said. “[I was] not trying to overswing or anything like that. Try to bring in one run to tie the game. But he left it over the strike zone.”
And as the ball landed in the right-field stands, the once rollicking ballpark fell into a stunned silence.
Back in the dugout, Muncy said, “a lot of people were yelling at Bates, like, ‘Hey, you were right!’”
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Bates, once again, deflected when asked about the moment.
“We were really just excited that Teo got him eventually,” he said. “It was a great swing, using the whole field. That’s what Teo does. He stuck to his plan throughout the day. And then they make a mistake and he gets him.”
Still, the attitude he’d preached before the game had helped the Dodgers jump back in front. And from there, a new-look bullpen plan managed to collect the final nine outs.
Projected Game 4 starter Tyler Glasnow came on in relief of Ohtani in the seventh and pitched a scoreless inning that ended on a double-play ball. He left behind a bases-loaded jam in the eighth, but was bailed out when Alex Vesia got a fly ball to end the inning.
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The ninth belonged to newly ascendant closer Roki Sasaki, who continued his late-season resurgence as a reliever by working around a one-out double to Max Kepler to collect his first career save.
And when the final out was recorded, somber Phillies fans filed out into a quiet night.
“We knew we were going to be winning in the seventh inning. He said it,” Rojas said, referring to Bates’ speech one more time. “He said that we were going to have an opportunity to come back in the game, and it happened. The guys stuck together. … That’s why we’re a team.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
