How the Dodgers Beat the Cardinals in the N.L. Wild-Card Game
It took until their final turn at the plate, but the Los Angeles Dodgers survived a do-or-die wild-card game against the St. Louis Cardinals, walking away with a thrilling 3-1 win on a night when neither offense could find much purchase.
The game was billed as ace versus ace, but Max Scherzer of the Dodgers was done after four and a third innings and Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals was pulled after five and a third. Both teams’ bullpens stepped up, but the depth of the Los Angeles offense, which helped power the team to 106 wins, came through in the end when Chris Taylor hit a walk-off two-run homer to left center in the ninth inning, overcoming recent struggles to push his team to the next round of the playoffs.
“Think small and big things happen,” Taylor said when asked about his attitude toward big situations in an on-field interview after the game. “That felt good.”
Chris Taylor of the @Dodgers is the second player in MLB history to hit a walkoff homer in a winner-take-all playoff game despite not starting the game.
The other was Aaron Boone in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.
— Stats By STATS (@StatsBySTATS) October 7, 2021
Taylor’s big hit came after both teams had struggled to do much of anything offensively. The Cardinals got three hits from second baseman Tommy Edman, but the rest of the team went 2 for 27 with nine strikeouts. The Dodgers were not much better, collecting six singles to go with Taylor’s home run.
The Dodgers ended up using five relievers after Scherzer’s early exit. Each did his job, but Kenley Jansen, the team’s closer, shined the brightest, slamming the door in the top of the ninth by striking out the sluggers Paul Goldschmidt and Tyler O’Neill for the final two outs.
With the win, the Dodgers advanced to a division series against their biggest rival, the San Francisco Giants, who won 107 games this season, ending a streak of eight division titles for Los Angeles.
“We’ve been battling all year,” Taylor said. “I expect a hard-fought series.”
The Cardinals, who were the National League’s second wild-card team with 90 wins — 16 fewer than the Dodgers — qualified for the postseason thanks to a late surge in which they won 17 straight games. But given one chance to survive in the postseason, they came up just short.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/06/sports/cardinals-dodgers-score