Giants ace Logan Webb, catcher Patrick Bailey named Gold Glove Award finalists originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — As expected, the Giants have two Gold Glove Award finalists. But one of the names is a bit of a surprise.

Catcher Patrick Bailey is a finalist for a third time in three years in the big leagues and should pretty easily win his second straight Gold Glove, making franchise history. The other Giant, though, is pitcher Logan Webb, who made huge strides defensively after years of working on being better at holding runners. Matt Chapman, last year’s winner at third base, was not a finalist after a season impacted by a hand injury.

Bailey looks like a very strong bet to become the first Giants catcher to win multiple Gold Glove Awards and he could win the Platinum Glove, given to the best defensive player in each league. He led the Majors in Fielding Run Value and it wasn’t even close; Bailey finished at 31 and no other MLB player was higher than 22. 

Bailey also ranked as the game’s best pitch-framer, and again it wasn’t close. At 25 Catcher Framing Runs, he was miles clear of NL runner-up Gabriel Moreno, who was at six. He also was among the league leaders in Caught Stealing Percentage and CS Above Average. He nearly doubled the Defensive Runs Saved (19) as the next closest catcher and led all NL position players. 

Assuming Bailey wins his second Gold Glove, he would become the first Giant to do it in back-to-back years since Brandon Crawford in 2014-15. 

Chapman was also looking for back-to-back wins, but a couple of IL stints put him in a hole statistically. He played just 128 games and finished second among NL third basemen in Fielding Run Value, fourth in Outs Above Average and fifth among NL third basemen in Defensive Runs Saved. The frontrunner is Ke’Bryan Hayes, the 2023 NL winner who led the league in just about every advanced metric this year while suiting up for the Pirates and Reds, but Chapman was also behind Chicago’s Matt Shaw and Ryan McMahon, who was traded from the Rockies to the Yankees in July.  

Webb is the newcomer, but this is a long time coming. He has spent a long time trying to get better at controlling the running game, and he always has been strong on comebackers, a necessity as a groundball pitcher. The SABR Defensive Index makes up a percentage of the final voting and the last time their data was released to the public, Webb ranked as the leader among NL pitchers. 

There aren’t a lot of great defensive statistics for pitchers, but Webb led the NL group in Defensive Runs Saved and tied for eighth in the league in Net Bases Prevented. He committed just one error in 207 innings. Rick Reuschel (1987) is the only Giants pitcher to have won a Gold Glove.

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The Dodgers haven’t so much beaten opponents this postseason as they have worn them down. A lineup that underperformed for much of the summer has been relentless, resourceful and unstoppable in the fall.

And deep. Did we mention deep? Because while the Dodgers have stars at the top of that lineup, it’s been the players at the bottom who have done the most damage.

Tuesday’s 5-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series is the most recent example of that. The Brewers managed to keep Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in check, only to see Teoscar Hernández, Tommy Edman, Kiké Hernández and Andy Pages knock them down repeatedly, combining for seven hits, three runs and three RBIs to give the Dodgers a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series which resumes Thursday at Dodger Stadium.

And that’s been a trend all postseason: The sixth through ninth hitters in the Dodgers lineup are slashing .302/.391/.448 with 14 RBIs and a playoff-best 35 hits in eight games. The top five hitters in the order are batting .235.

“It's just that trust and belief we have in each other that if you don't get the job done, the guy behind you is going to do it,” said Kiké Hernández, whose two hits Tuesday raised his postseason average to a team-high .379. Hernández has also scored a playoff-high seven runs.

“We know that, one through nine, we have the best and deepest lineup in the league.”

And the hits have been important ones, with Teoscar Hernández tying the score with his second-inning home run and Andy Pages, banished to the bottom of the order after managing just a single in his first 27 postseason at-bats, untying it three batters later by doubling in Kiké Hernández.

“I was just looking for a pitch in the zone that I could hit well,” Pages, who drove a 1-1 change-up into the right-field corner, said in Spanish. “Obviously it was really important. It put the team ahead. But more important was that I was able to make good contact.”

Read more:Yoshinobu Yamamoto's stellar complete game helps lift Dodgers over Brewers in Game 2

Making contact and putting the ball in play has been a hallmark of the bottom half of the Dodgers’ lineup — and it’s probably a big factor in its success. Even with his struggles, Pages has struck out just six times in eight games; leadoff hitter Ohtani has fanned more that twice as often.

“Any time you can create traffic, especially in the postseason, it puts a lot of pressure on the opposing pitchers,” Max Muncy said. “And any time you can get guys on base, it just amplifies that and they’re more liable to make mistakes.”

“From the beginning,” Teoscar Hernández added, “it’s putting pressure on the other side. We still have to go there and get our job done.”

The postseason spotlight is one Kiké Hernández and Edman have thrived under before. Hernández is batting .330 in his last seven postseason series with the Dodgers, almost 100 points better than his career regular-season average. And Edman, who matched Hernández with two hits Tuesday, was named MVP of the NLCS last season after hitting .407 in the Dodgers’ victory over the Mets.

“Those guys, they were made for this moment,” Teoscar Hernández, who leads all postseason players with 10 RBIs. “Kiké, I know he's doesn't get a lot of opportunities in the regular season, but he knows what he can do.”

“He was a player who was born for this moment,” Pages added of Kiké Hernández. “He’s demonstrated that. And he keeps doing it.”

Another key to doing well in the postseason, Teoscar Hernández said, is not paying attention to it. Each game, he said, offers another chance for success or failure and in the playoffs, each game — and each at-bat — is magnified.

So it’s all about what you’ve done lately. Play the game, celebrate the victory or mourn the defeat, then flush it and get ready to do it all over again.

Read more:Hernández: The Dodgers' latest starting-pitching flex? Make the bullpen a non-factor

“I know we have big names in our lineup. We have really good players,” he said. “But at the same time, we still have to go there and get our job done. It's not because we had a good lineup that we score a lot of runs. We go there with confidence, with a plan and the just try to execute.”

If they can do that two more times at home this week, the Dodgers can end the Brewers season and give themselves a week’s rest before returning to the World Series for the second time in as many years.

“We’re good. We’re really good,” said Kiké Hernández, who is one of the reasons for that. “The experience, the trust that we have in each other, that if we're down in the game early, we're going to find a way to come back and tie it or take the lead.

“We're 2-0 in the NLCS, but the goal is to win a World Series, not to win two games on the road. And as we're still playing the Milwaukee Brewers, we're going to focus on them and take it one day at a time. We haven't really accomplished anything yet.”

But when they do, expect the accomplishment to come from the bottom up.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Technically, Roki Sasaki was available to pitch in relief for the Dodgers on Tuesday night.

Realistically, he wasn’t.

“I wouldn’t say unavailable,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “But it is unlikely that we will use him.”

The Dodgers had only one potential silver bullet, and it wasn’t even loaded for Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

They still won. They still took the best-of-seven series to a place where it’s out of the Brewers’ diminutive reach.

Read more:Yoshinobu Yamamoto's stellar complete game helps lift Dodgers over Brewers in Game 2

How?

By making their bullpen a non-factor.

The possibility of one of their relievers blowing the game was eliminated by a complete game thrown by Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Another late-inning scare was avoided because of a persistent offense that tacked on insurance runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.

With a 5-1 victory at American Family Field, the Dodgers extended their lead in the best-of-seven series to two games to none.

Two more wins and the Dodgers will advance to the World Series for the third time in six seasons. Their dreams of becoming baseball’s first repeat champions in 25 years are starting to take realistic shape.

Ninety-three teams have taken a two-games-to-none lead in a best-of-seven postseason series. Seventy-nine of them have advanced.

In other words, this series is over.

If the Philadelphia Phillies couldn’t overturn a 2-0 deficit against the Dodgers, the tryhards from Milwaukee certainly won’t.

With the next three games at Dodger Stadium and Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell scheduled to start those games, the most pressing question about this NLCS is whether it will return to baseball’s smallest market for Game 6.

Don’t count on it.

The Brewers’ bullpen was supposed to be superior to the Dodgers’, but that advantage has been negated by the Dodgers’ superior starting pitching.

Reaching this stage of October has forced the Brewers to exhaust their relievers, so much so that by the time setup man Abner Uribe entered Game 2 in the sixth inning, he might as well have been Tanner Scott.

The Brewers’ bullpen was suddenly as rickety as the Dodgers’, and that was with Sasaki just spectating.

The uncertainty over Sasaki’s ability to take on an October workload is suddenly in question, and that should make for some nervous moments between now and the conclusion of the postseason.

Sasaki’s failure to close out Game 1 sounded alarm bells, and rightfully so. The converted starter still looked exhausted from his three-inning relief appearance against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the NL Division Series. His fastball velocity has gradually declined over postseason, and he’s the type of pitcher who isn’t nearly as effective when he’s throwing 96 mph instead of 100 mph.

“It’s one of those things that we’re still in sort of uncharted territory with him,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers provided an elegant solution for a frightening problem: Throwback starting pitching.

A day after Snell faced the minimum number of batters over eight scoreless innings, Yamamoto registered three more outs in a three-hit performance.

The only run charged to Yamamoto came on a homer hit by the first batter he faced, Jackson Chourio.

For Yamamoto, the start represented an opportunity for redemption.

Redemption for his loss to the Phillies in the NL Division Series and redemption for his start in this ballpark three months earlier, which marked the first time in either the majors or the Japanese league that he failed to pitch out of the first inning.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy didn’t place much stock in that early-July game in which Yamamoto registered only two outs and was charged with five runs.

Read more:Just how much are the Dodgers charging for World Series tickets?

“He’s going to make the adjustment,” Murphy said. “He’s been really, really good. He’s been one of the five best pitchers in baseball.”

However, Murphy warned, “We’ve studied him, studied him, studied him.”

So when Dodgers catcher Will Smith called for a fastball on the first pitch of the game and Yamamoto delivered it, Chourio was ready to pounce. Chourio sent the ball over the right-field wall to move the Brewers in front 1-0.

The Brewers didn’t score again.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Milwaukee Brewers have used the slogan “Magic Brew” as the tagline for their postseason run.

On Tuesday night, the Dodgers made it feel like the magic was running out.

In their first truly stress-free win of these playoffs, the Dodgers slowly suffocated the Brewers in a 5-1 Game 2 victory in the National League Championship Series, riding a complete game from Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a relentless attack from their star-studded lineup to leave the plucky, but overpowered hometown Brewers very nearly left for dead.

In every which way, this one felt like a mismatch.

Milwaukee’s staff ace, Freddy Peralta, couldn’t limit the damage against the Dodgers’ juggernaut lineup, giving up three runs in a 5⅔ inning start.

Milwaukee’s typically opportunistic offense led the game off with a home run, then hardly touched Yamamoto en route to the Dodgers’ first postseason complete-game performance since a José Lima shutout in the 2004 NL Division Series.

Even on defense, the Brewers came up just short. In very nearly the same spot as where he robbed Max Muncy of a grand slam in a mind-bending double play in Game 1, Milwaukee center fielder Sal Frelick drifted back on another drive from Muncy in Tuesday’s sixth inning, made a similar leaping effort at the wall, but this time came up empty as the ball barely cleared the fence.

The Brewers, plain and simple, failed to stack up against the defending World Series champions.

And now, with a commanding 2-0 lead as the NLCS shifts to Dodger Stadium, it would require a major surprise for the Dodgers to let this series return here again.

Despite winning six of their first seven games in this year’s playoffs, little of the Dodgers’ October success had come easy.

In each of their previous three wins (all of which came by just one run), their opponent had the winning or go-ahead run in scoring position in the final inning — including a bases-loaded ninth-inning jam at the end of Monday’s NLCS opener.

In the game before that, the Dodgers let the potential tying run reach base in the eighth. Go back one more contest, and the tying run was at the plate against the team’s shaky bullpen.

On Tuesday, however, there were no late-game theatrics.

Behind Yamamoto’s nine-inning gem, the team imposed its will from the start (well, almost) to the finish.

Only in the first inning, when Jackson Chourio went deep on Yamamoto’s first pitch, did it feel like the Magic Brew was being stirred.

But then, the 27-year-old Japanese right-hander immediately quelled it, turning in yet another historic pitching performance from a Dodgers rotation beginning to make them feel routine.

Yamamoto was unfazed by a string of early traffic, working around a Muncy error in the second, singles in the third and fourth, and his lone walk of the night in the fifth.

He was dominant down the stretch, retiring his final 14 batters while finishing with seven strikeouts on just 111 pitches.

The Dodgers’ offense, meanwhile, quickly staked him to a lead. In the top of the second, Teoscar Hernández tied the score on a towering home run to left before Andy Pages shot a two-out RBI double down the line for a 2-1 advantage.

And from there, the Dodgers didn’t relent, eventually pulling away after Muncy’s home run in the top of the sixth.

With a swing that both stretched the Dodgers’ lead and etched his name into Dodgers postseason history, Muncy took Peralta deep on the right-hander’s final pitch, hitting his 14th career playoff home run (a franchise record) on a scorching line drive to center.

For a brief moment, some in American Family Field cheered, believing Frelick had denied Muncy of a long ball just like he did on the Game 1 double play.

Alas, Muncy kept rounding the bases this time as Frelick revealed his glove to be empty. And from that point on, a crowd of 41,427 watched in relative silence, as the Dodgers scored again in the seventh (on an RBI single from Shohei Ohtani, breaking a one-for-23 slump going back to the start of the division series) and the eighth (on an RBI single from Tommy Edman) to give Yamamoto breathing room to finish his complete-game domination.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.