Major League Baseball

Giants shut out Dodgers with help from key defense and windy conditions

Updated Oct. 12, 2021 3:23 a.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts grabbed his bat by the barrel and started to swing it at the ground. He had just used it to line a 100 mph drive toward left field for a near-certain hit, but Brandon Crawford had intervened.

Betts’ only recourse was to take aim at the ground. For most of Monday night at Dodger Stadium, aggressive winds hindered batters’ efforts to knock out hits and record runs. Then Crawford timed a leap just right, extended his glove and snagged some treasure. It was the second of only two times all night that the Dodgers managed to put two men on base, and if not for Crawford’s efforts, they would almost certainly have scored their first run of the game in the seventh inning.

Instead, the Giants held on and shut them out, 1-0, for the second time in this NLDS, taking a 2-1 series lead.

"The biggest defensive play of the game," San Francisco third baseman Evan Longoria said. "No doubt."

Longoria supplied the game’s biggest offensive play in the fifth inning, when he walloped a misplaced Max Scherzer fastball to left field. He said he could not possibly have hit it harder, but he was still uncertain it would clear the fence. That’s how windy it was.

Before first pitch, the foul poles swayed. During the game’s first plate appearance, Scherzer lost his balance and fell off the mound. He said he felt like the wind was pushing him toward home plate. A few batters later, a sizable collection of trash had accumulated on the left-field warning track, and a few more pieces waited in center. Across the field, players noticed that the wind also dampened the crowd noise. No one could have predicted this in Southern California.

"I mean," Crawford said, "I hardly even remember a light breeze here most nights."

He has a lot of memories here. Monday marked Crawford’s 79th career game at Dodger Stadium, almost as many, for example, as Betts himself. Crawford has been doing this a long time. At 34, he is the sport’s oldest shortstop by two years. Men his age don’t play the position anymore. But the man to his right, Longoria, has two years on him. When Crawford jumped to make the crucial catch, Longoria leapt, too, to will the ball into Crawford’s glove.

The Giants are largely a collection of too old guys, too young guys and guys with too few skills to interest other teams. And yet, behind Crawford, Longoria, Buster Posey and far too large a supporting cast to list here, they paced all their peers in wins this season. Now they lead the Dodgers in this National League Division Series. Like Longoria’s leap, what they’re doing doesn’t always make sense, but it usually works.

With three right-handed hitters about to bat for the Dodgers in a key seventh-inning situation, manager Gabe Kapler had a right-hander and a left-hander warm in his bullpen. He chose the left-hander, Jake McGee, who struck out Austin Barnes on three pitches and then surrendered the screaming line drive to Betts. Whatever works.

After their 4-0 Game 1 loss, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admonished his hitters. After Monday’s defeat, Roberts shared a far rosier opinion of his offense’s performance.

"Collectively, I thought we did a nice job tonight," he said. "Better than the goose eggs we threw out."

It’s true: The Dodgers didn’t chase at the rate they had in the series opener. Scherzer dominated after he adjusted to the wind, and his teammates launched far more balls into play than the Giants. It just so happened that the wind and Crawford conspired to suppress those. And at this point, it does not matter how they lost. It matters only that they lost.

Led by the always stoic Crawford, the Giants took the win in stride. The Dodgers were left looking like Gavin Lux, staring toward the outfield in pure disbelief after the wind halted his 107 mph, ninth-inning drive just shy of the warning track. He had pumped his fist when he hit it, confident he had tied the game.

But he had not. He had ended it. For the second time in six days, the Dodgers will have to win a game or go home for the winter tomorrow.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.