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November 9, 2017 Page 5
World Series Loss Means More Heartache
For the Dodgers, they are now forced to
once again focus on next year. How will
the team get better so that it can finally
take the next step forward and become
champions instead of simply making it to
the playoffs or the Fall Classic? Darvish,
Logan Forsythe, Brandon Morrow and
Chase Utley are all free agents, among
others. Clayton Kershaw will be another
year older, coming off of another year in
which he was injured. Corey Seager may
need surgery to repair his ailing elbow.
Drama involving Adrian Gonzalez hovers
around the team. All of those questionable
situations, and more, surround a 104-win
team that finished with the best record in
baseball yet will be looking to improve
upon a year that once again somehow
ended in letdown.
The Dodger season went on for as long as
it possibly could have this year, providing
the team’s fans with a maximum amount
of entertainment value. The year may have
ended with a loss and in disappointment,
but the memories of joy, elation, excitement
and accomplishment will remain. The
only thing to do now is to focus attention
toward next season. The Dodgers have been
through three decades of baseball that have
all ultimately ended in disappointment. Los
Angeles and the team’s fans will once again
look forward to next year in order to finally
rid the franchise of all of its surrounding
regret. •
– Aserrao6@yahoo.com
for Dodgers and Fans
By Adam Serrao
The World Series championship that
has eluded the Los Angeles Dodgers for
so long will have to wait at least another
year to find itself a home in Southern
California. A series filled with amazing
victories, heartbreaking losses, incredible
performances and gigantic meltdowns most
likely could have gone back and forth for
another seven games. Eventually, however,
it ended in favor of the Houston Astros, as
the American League team showed up on
the road in the game that mattered most.
The Dodgers will have a very long offseason
to look back at what went wrong in the
World Series. They’ll also have an even
longer 162-game regular season schedule
to play in order to make another run at the
team’s first championship victory in what
will now be 30 years of heartache.
Heartache probably can’t begin to describe
the feeling of Dodger fans everywhere as
they watched their team quickly take a 5-0
deficit in the only Game 7 of the World
Series that Los Angeles has ever been a
part of in the team’s local history. In the
biggest moment of his career, on one of the
grandest stages in the entire sports world,
Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish failed. The
conclusion to a series that may have been
among the most dramatic ever played ended
in the most anticlimactic fashion possible
as Los Angeles was out of the game and
championship contention from what seemed
to be the opening pitch.
Word came out days later that Darvish
was tipping his pitches, meaning that
batters like George Springer, Jose Altuve
and Carlos Correa knew what was coming
before the ball even reached home plate.
It certainly looked that way. Much of
the blame there can easily be placed on
Darvish--a pitcher the Dodgers acquired
for exactly this situation. How, though,
as coaches, do you leave a pitcher who
clearly doesn’t have it out on the mound
in the most important game of the year
to give up five runs==especially after his
last outing against the same Astros team in
Game 3 in which he looked just as bad?
As far as blame goes, it can certainly
be placed on Dave Roberts and the rest of
the coaching staff for trusting too much in
analytics and not in their own eyes. Many
different questionable moves throughout
the entirety of the World Series simply
culminated in leaving Darvish out on the
mound for far too long. That, combined
with the way that the Dodgers’ best players
sulked and felt sorry for themselves from
the second inning on, gave the team zero
chance at pulling off a come-from-behind
victory in a winner-take-all game in front
of their home crowd.
Ten players left on base only began to
tell the story of a team that clearly did not
want it as much as the Houston Astros.
Cody Bellinger--who looked as if he had
been out partying too late for Halloween
the night before--committed a brutal error
to start the game when he inexplicably
threw a fielded ground ball behind Darvish,
who was covering first base, in a play that
led to two runs and a massive momentum
switch for Houston. Not only was the Los
Angeles home crowd taken out of the game
from that point forward, but Bellinger also
proceeded to hurt the team at the plate.
He struck out three times on the night and
went 0-4, acting as the main, major hole in
the lineup that led to almost zero offensive
production for a team that still managed
to obtain more hits than its counterparts
in the final box score.
The Dodgers were 98-0 this season when
having the lead after eight innings of play.
Yet, in Game 2, Roberts left Jansen in for
his second career six-out save attempt and
the Dodgers wound up losing the game. The
Dodgers were 100-1 in starts by Clayton
Kershaw when he was given at least a
four-run cushion. Kershaw gave up both
a four-run lead and a three-run lead in
Game 5 before being pulled in a loss that
eventually saw the Dodgers go down 3-2
in the best of seven series. Theoretically,
the Dodgers should have won five of the
first six games played against the Astros,
were it not for bad coaching decisions and
All-Star players buckling under playoff
pressure.
Putting the blame game aside, the Astros
were simply the better team. They made
more plays when it counted and fewer
mistakes at key moments in the series.
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