It's fair to say that Game 1 of the National League Division Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals did not go as planned.
The best pitcher in the game and the likely NL MVP, Clayton Kershaw, faced off against another bona fide ace and true gamer in Adam Wainwright. All signs pointed to it being a classic pitcher's duel, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.
Wainwright never settled in and wound up allowing 11 hits and six earned runs in 4.1 innings of work, and the Dodgers had built a 6-1 lead heading into the sixth inning.
Kershaw was rolling through six, striking out five straight at one point, before Matt Carpenter snapped him out of it with a solo home run in the seventh.
Then the wheels fell off in the eighth, as Kershaw allowed four straight hits to open the inning and six total, with a bases-loaded double from Carpenter finally chasing him out and putting the Cardinals up 7-6 in the process.
A Matt Holliday three-run home run off of reliever Pedro Baez capped the scoring for the Cardinals, and they wound up needing all three of those runs, walking away with a 10-9 victory in the series opener.
After a shockingly high-scoring first game, the two teams are back at it Saturday night for Game 2 with a 9:30 p.m. ET first-pitch time.
With the Cardinals looking to jump out to a big series lead before heading home and the Dodgers hoping to even things up, here's a look at each team's keys to a Game 2 victory.
Keys for the Cardinals
Get a Quality Start from Lance Lynn
Props to the Cardinals bullpen for holding it together after Wainwright's early exit, as the Dodgers easily could have piled on and put things completely out of reach.
A total of seven relievers combined to throw 4.2 innings, allowing five hits and three runs. Not great numbers, but a solid job making the best of a bad situation.
Carlos Martinez and Trevor Rosenthal both topped the 20-pitch mark in their appearances, while the other five relievers threw 13 or fewer pitches, so no one pitcher out of the pen was overly taxed. However, it would certainly set the team up better for the rest of the series if it could get a quality start from Lance Lynn and head into the travel day with a relatively fresh bullpen and a chance to reset for Game 3.
Lynn has been a workhorse for the Cardinals this year, reaching the 200-inning mark for the second straight year with a career-high 203.2 and going 15-10 with a 2.74 ERA and 1.262 WHIP in the process. They were productive innings too, as he turned in 24 quality starts to rank among the National League leaders in that category.
His Game 2 opponent, Zack Greinke? Notably absent from that list, as he finished the year with 21 quality starts at a 66 percent quality start rate.
The Cardinals are not asking Lynn to go out and twirl a complete-game shutout Saturday, but if he can go six or seven innings and keep the Dodgers from putting up a crooked number, it would be a big step toward jumping out to a big 2-0 series lead.
Another Big Game from Matt Carpenter
A case can certainly be made for Matt Holliday, Yadier Molina or even newcomer Jhonny Peralta, but for my money, the single most important player to the Cardinals' offensive success has to be leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter.
Carpenter made the move from second to third base this year, hitting .272 and leading the National League in walks (95). He was also third in runs scored (99) and eighth in on-base percentage (.375), so while he did not match his ridiculous 2013 production, he was still one of the better table-setters in the business.
Those numbers don't tell the whole story, though, as the Cardinals are simply a different team when Carpenter is producing.
Those numbers represent the Cardinals' win-loss splits during the 158 regular-season games that Carpenter played in this season.
You can add another win to the productive side for Friday, as he was 2-for-5 with four RBI and two runs scored, including a solo home run in the sixth and a three-run double in the seventh, both off of Clayton Kershaw.
"I have the utmost respect for Clayton and what kind of pitcher he is. It makes it more fun when you're playing against somebody that is known as being the best pitcher in the game," Carpenter told reporters after the game.
Game 1 was a big plus for an offense that has struggled to consistently score runs this season, and if the Cardinals hope to keep it up for the rest of the NLDS and beyond, it will all start with Carpenter at the top.
Keys for the Dodgers
Zack Greinke Picks Up His Fellow Ace
Due to the early season back injury that sidelined Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers rotation was never lined up according to plan this season, and Saturday will actually be the first time this season that Zack Greinke has immediately followed Kershaw in the rotation.
As much as teams love to build momentum and string together wins, one of the true signs of an ace is being able to be counted on every fifth day to take the ball and put a stop to any slide the team may be suffering through.
Greinke may not be the ace of Los Angeles' rotation, but he is undoubtedly one of the best pitchers in the National League, and the Dodgers gave him ace money when they signed him to a six-year, $147 million deal.
Now they need him to be that stopper after a tough loss Friday.
A year ago, Greinke was 6-0 with a 1.85 ERA in 10 starts after a loss. He saw more opportunities this season following Hyun-Jin Ryu in the rotation and was solid once again, going 11-6 with a 2.57 ERA in 19 starts.
On top of that success following losses, Greinke has also had the Cardinals' number head-to-head since joining the Dodgers.
Highlighted on that table are two big starts against the Cards in the NLCS a year ago, when Kershaw struggled but Greinke pitched well enough to win his Game 1 start and then earned the victory in a must-win Game 5.
While the Cardinals are simply looking for a quality start from Lynn, the Dodgers would love nothing more than for Greinke to give the bullpen a night off and fire a gem, and he's more than capable of doing just that.
Clutch Hitting from Hanley Ramirez
The entire Dodgers offense was firing on all cylinders over the final month of the season, as they hit .295/.355/.472 as a team and averaged a whopping 6.24 runs per game. Leading the way were the team's two big boppers in the middle of the lineup, Adrian Gonzalez (.897 OPS, 25 RBI) and Matt Kemp (1.047 OPS, 25 RBI).
For what it's worth, Hanley Ramirez hit .352 with an .876 OPS, but he also went homerless for the month and tallied just 11 RBI. That may sound like nitpicking, but fast-forward to Friday night's game.
Ramirez had a solid night on the surface at 2-for-5, but he also left a game-high five runners on base, tallying one RBI on a singe in the third inning.
It was nice to get a couple knocks in the first game of the series, but Ramirez is capable of being a dynamic player in the middle of that Dodgers lineup. He doesn't have to carry the offense right now, with so many other people hitting, they simply need him to keep the train going when they are having a big inning and deliver when he has the opportunity to drive in runs.
(On an unrelated note, he also has to find a way to keep his helmet on his head, am I right? What did it fall off, 10 different times on Friday? Anyway...)
Looking ahead to Saturday's matchup, Ramirez is 2-for-10 with a double (above) against Cardinals starter Lance Lynn, including an 0-for-3 performance against him in the NLCS last year. A big performance against him in Game 2 could be enough to spark a huge postseason from the free-agent-to-be, and that would make an already dangerous Dodgers lineup downright scary the rest of the way.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats are courtesy of Baseball-Reference, and accurate through the start of play on Saturday, Oct. 4.
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