MILWAUKEE — The damage was done quickly, repeatedly and painfully.
A dribbler up the middle and a short-armed throw got the leadoff man on. A four-pitch walk. Then with two outs, a changeup in the opposite batter’s box was poked into right for a couple of runs. A curveball that dropped right down the heart of the plate. Another curveball in the same location, only taken the other way.
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In the span of three two-out pitches, Hyun-Jin Ryu sunk the Dodgers’ chance at a postgame champagne shower. A return trip to the World Series will have to wait, with their odds of starting Game 1 at Fenway Park on Tuesday just as high as the odds of their season ending. It was not a drawn-out bleeding, but instead an ambush that broke out every time a baseball came out of Ryu’s left hand with spin.
“I left them hanging and obviously I got punished for it,” said Ryu through his interpreter Bryan Lee. “I feel terrible.”
Gifted a one-run lead, Ryu stumbled. He allowed four runs in the first inning — more earned runs than he had allowed in any start this season — in an eventual 7-2 loss in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. The contact was weak but brutal. Only one ball, a Mike Moustakas double, was struck harder than 92 mph, as Ryu’s biggest flaws were pitch location, the defense behind him and pure, dumb luck on balls put into play. But that’s the postseason. If you’re not sharp, you’re battered, no matter how pretty it looks.
During Game 2 at Miller Park, Ryu found a way to escape similar batted-ball luck. He navigated his way through 4 1/3 innings, allowing just two runs and minimizing damage to the extent that the Dodgers were able to recover for a 4-3 victory. Facing a patient Brewers lineup, he found his way deep into counts and used his vast array of pitches to induce weak contact.
The Brewers abandoned this approach on Friday night. Only one at-bat in a four-run first exceeded five pitches in length. Only three of the first nine batters took a called strike on the first pitch. Facing a 2-1 count, Jesús Aguilar, an All-Star who slugged 35 home runs this season, didn’t look middle-middle, instead taking a belt-high pitch in the opposite batter’s box and poking it into right field to give the Brewers the lead.
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Moustakas doubled home Aguilar on the very next pitch, a hanging curveball. Ryu hung another curveball immediately after that, and Erik Kratz knocked it through the hole to score Moustakas. The damage was done, with Dodgers manager Dave Roberts not even having enough time to get someone stretched, let alone warm in his bullpen.
“We were trying to get him early,” Moustakas said. “We’d get good pitches early in the count, and he’s a guy that commands the ball really well. You don’t want to get to two strikes against him because he can mix things up a little more. We were looking for something out over the plate, and we got some good pitches to hit and didn’t miss them tonight.”
“I thought they just had really good teeth in playing against him today, and they executed better than we did,” catcher Austin Barnes said.
“I feel like they had a pretty good approach against him today. They made him pay for soft stuff in the zone up.”
Roberts was in a paralyzing position. If he got the bullpen warm, he could leave them gassed for a potential Game 7 on Saturday. If he sat and waited, the game could get out of reach to the point that the Brewers could rest prime relievers Corey Knebel, Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader and be fully prepared for the winner-take-all scenario.
After the second inning and another Brewers run, Roberts directed Game 4 starter Rich Hill, who pitched just three days prior, to head to the bullpen. An inning later, Julio Urías entered, starting the rotation of fatigued arms that, besides Ryu, should all be available for Saturday.
“They were taking good at-bats against [Ryu],” Roberts said. “There’s the thought of trying to go to your ‘pen in the first inning or the second inning, but there’s a significant cost potentially for a potential Game 7. So I just felt that we needed to get some more innings out of Hyun-Jin to keep our highest leverage guys available for a potential Game 7.
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“It would have been an all-hands-on-deck situation where we would have gone to the ‘pen earlier. But, again, to be all-in in a game and to not come out on the winning side of it, then there’s a significant cost.”
Oh, and the Brewers? Knebel was expended for just 25 pitches over a smooth 1 2/3 innings. Jeffress was burned for only 13 pitches over an inning after having three days’ rest. Hader’s night was complete after just a few warm-up tosses, with extra runs in the late innings rendering his services unnecessary. The Brewers will have their best reliever, and perhaps the best reliever left in the postseason, available and rested for multiple innings in what could decide the Dodgers’ fate.
To not keep the game close — the Dodgers would cut the margin to within three in the fifth, sending the tying run to the plate in the form of their two best hitters in Justin Turner and Manny Machado, only to come up with nothing — could prove fatal.
The Dodgers are still confident in their standing, in their experience, in the brilliant young right-hander they’ll start in Walker Buehler as well as the bullpen pieces (and a potential return of Game 1 and Game 5 starter Clayton Kershaw) that stand behind him. Buehler last pitched in a winner-take-all scenario in Game 3 of the 2015 College World Series, as his Vanderbilt squad faced Virginia for the second consecutive season looking to defend its national title. Buehler went three innings and allowed two runs on a right elbow that would eventually require Tommy John surgery after he was drafted that summer.
“I mean, Game 7 to go to a World Series, I don’t know if it gets more high stakes than that,” Buehler said. “And I think if you approach it the right way — it’s hard to put into words what could happen and what we hope happens.”
Jhouyls Chacín silenced the Dodger bats during Game 3, but he also started a regular-season game against this same club that ended with 21 runs on the board. But the Dodgers, for the third time in their last four tries, failed to win a potential series close-out game. In each of those three losses, be it Yu Darvish in last year’s World Series Game 7, Walker Buehler in Game 3 of this year’s National League Division Series or Ryu on Friday, the starter let the chance to win slip from their grasp.
Darvish was horrible as the Astros reportedly noticed he was tipping his pitches, the runs he allowed in the first pair of innings ultimately doing the Dodgers in. Buehler came undone in the second inning, allowing a Ronald Acuña Jr. grand slam, only to have his teammates rally to tie it in an eventual 6-5 loss.
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Ryu’s failures struck quickly, early and often, as the Brewers scored four runs before the bullpen phone could even ring.
“It was difficult to find a rhythm, and giving up back-to-back hits definitely hurt,” Ryu said. “I feel sorry for my teammates who prepared for the game. I just couldn’t execute my pitches, and I just gave up the momentum there in the first inning.”
Top photo of Hyun-Jin Ryu by Jon Durr-USA TODAY Sports