The Dodgers won Game 6 of the World Series, and they did so with yet another largely bad performance at the plate. Struggling on the hitting front for the better part of this series, for Los Angeles to be successful in these games and hopefully secure a second consecutive World Series, the path was no longer to, quote unquote, “find themselves as a lineup”—while that definitely could be accomplished, there is very little outside of faith in these players’ track records to expect a drastic turnaround
at the eleventh hour. Luckily for the Dodgers, they didn’t need to be brilliant offensively; they didn’t even need to be particularly good. All that was required was to seize the moment and maximize the rare opportunity in which it could do damage.
Kevin Gausman, a pitcher who notoriously handles Shohei Ohtani quite well, came out of the gates firing on all cylinders, punching out the reigning NL MVP to lead off the game en route to striking out a whopping six of the first seven hitters he faced. If the Dodgers’ own struggles weren’t enough to paint a bleak picture, they had to contend with an ace who was, by all accounts, at the top of his game.
After Kiké Hernández led off the third with an out, the Dodgers had their first and only opportunity to score against Gausman. Tommy Edman doubled, and Shohei Ohtani was intentionally walked on either side of a Miguel Rojas strikeout, setting up a two-on, two-out situation.
It’d be easy to come here and praise the lineup shifting as the thing that unlocked a bit of scoring, but at its core, this moment was about a big player(s) showing up at a crucial time. While it is not performing well right now, the Dodgers’ offense has a multitude of hitters you believe are able to step up for a single moment and make the difference between winning and losing a season-defining baseball game. As contradictory as it may sound, that’s effectively the case.
Moved to the second hole since Game 5, Will Smith delivered an RBI double, and after a Freddie Freeman walk, it was Mookie Betts, likely this team’s biggest underperformer in terms of expectation and current production (regular and postseason), who got the biggest hit.
Gausman, who had already thrown a fastball up and in past Mookie in that at-bat, tried to do it again, and the Dodgers shortstop was ready for it, dumping it in left field to drive in two runs.
After that moment, the Dodgers’ offense had nothing left, and apart from a wasted opportunity in the eighth, it emptied the tank to the point of not even creating threats. In a game they had to win, the Dodgers finished nine innings with a meager four total hits. But boy, were they timely hits, three of them coming in that glorious third inning.
