LOS ANGELES — The blue towel twirlers stacked three decks high here at iconic Dodger Stadium could tell from the sound.
Yadier Molina was one second ahead of them.
Before the crack of the bat could reach ears, he winced.
The swing Chris Taylor unleashed on the fourth pitch he saw from Cardinals reliever Alex Reyes with two outs in the ninth inning made hard contact on the barrel of the bat, and suddenly the ball was traveling faster and faster, higher and higher, headed toward the yellow seats in left field backed by palm trees and that billboard advertising the Blue Shield of California healthcare company’s slogan.
Blue California.
Bluer Redbirds.
A game as great as Wednesday's should never really be defined by one play in a tapestry of them, but even the greatest games of all-time often boil down to one moment, fair or unfair. And this game will be remembered for the way-too-ripe 88 mph spinning slider from Reyes that Taylor crushed to give his defending World Series champion Dodgers a 3-1 walk-off win in a thrilling National League wild-card game. The home run was a no-doubter off the bat. Cardinals players had started walking off the field by the time Taylor rounded first base with one finger held in the air.
“Heck of a game,” Shildt said after the loss. “One swing of the bat dictated the night.”
No disagreement there. But there will be plenty of it over Shildt’s decision to use Reyes when and where he did. With the game on the line, Shildt picked the reliever who was an All-Star closer in the first half, but a former closer in the second half. He has trusted Reyes often, and Reyes has come through often, but too many times in the second half of the season, that trust was betrayed.
Reyes has walked in a winning run this season. He has given up multiple game-losing home runs, including a grand slam in Milwaukee that nearly crippled the Cardinals' season before their late revival. In what became the final game of the season, it happened again.
Let’s go through how the Cardinals got here, which is headed into an offseason trying to figure out how to take the good from a season-salvaging surge without being able to ignore the fact a team that hoped to win a division did not do that, did not win the wild-card game to get a shot at a division series, and did not stop the stretch of consecutive seasons without a World Series championship from reaching the number 10.
That's a decade, for those keeping score.
While some will only focus on Reyes, because that’s what happens when high-leverage moments don’t work, as big of a story is the red-hot Cardinals offense the Dodgers froze with blue ice.
The Cardinals mustered one run on five hits and went nothing-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Second baseman and leadoff hitter Tommy Edman played his tail off, making multiple great defensive plays while going three-for-five and stealing everything that was not nailed down. His teammates did little to help.
Tyler O’Neill and Nolan Arenado went a combined nothing-for-eight in the game. Other than Edman, Paul Goldschmidt and Dylan Carlson were the only other Cardinals with a hit. Both had one.
After Edman scored on a Max Scherzer wild pitch in the first inning, everything seemed possible. After Scherzer got a quick hook from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, even more so. Eight scoreless innings after one run thanks to a wild pitch. Who knows how many more zeroes would have gone on the board if extra innings arrived?
Shildt won't get credit but should for a series of savvy moves in a tight, dramatic game.
He let starter Adam Wainwright go deeper than some would have after Wainwright allowed just one run on a Justin Turner homer in 5.1 innings.
He lifted Wainwright after Trea Turner got on with a dribbler ahead of Justin Turner, or Wainwright likely would have gone six. Shildt’s decision to not pinch-hit for Wainwright in the top of the sixth after Harrison Bader got hit by a pitch with two outs bit him a little bit because of Trea Turner’s slow-roller down the third-base line in the top half of the next inning. Shildt had prioritized his ace in a game where runs were scarce, but had to diminish the chance of another Justin Turner blast when Trea Turner got on base. A two-run shot would have been crippling. (Turned out it came later.)
Luis Garcia entered for Wainwright and dazzled with 1.2 innings of scoreless relief.
Resisting the temptation to save his closer in a tie game, Shildt turned to Gallegos for the heart of the Dodgers order in the eighth. Good call. And it worked.
Shildt’s replacement of starting shortstop Edmundo Sosa with Paul DeJong protected the tie when DeJong ended the eighth inning with a leaping grab on a Will Smith line drive that likely would have let a run score if it dropped. Sosa was shaky Wednesday. He very well might not have made that play.
Tie game. Tight. The underdog Cardinals were right there. But inning after inning passed and the Cardinals could not find that situational hitting magic that salvaged a season and made a playoff appearance possible.
In the bottom of the ninth, after O’Neill’s third strikeout left the game knotted at one run apiece, Shildt let Gallegos head back out to the bump after a scoreless eighth. Roberts inserted pinch-hitter Gavin Lux. Shildt made a pitching change, bringing in T.J. McFarland for Gallegos, which forced Roberts to scratch Lux for lefty crusher and former Cardinal Albert Pujols.
The Cardinals had burned one of Robert’s preferred pinch-hitters and they had a plan for Pujols. McFarland, Mr. Double Play, gave Pujols nothing good to swing at. Three straight balls. If he walked, no big deal. Get the double play. The fourth pitch was also a ball, but Pujols stung the sinker to center field, where Harrison Bader made the easy out. McFarland got another out from Steven Souza before trouble really began to brew.
Cody Bellinger has been a mess this season. All kinds of out of sorts. McFarland got ahead of him on the first pitch and had Bellinger at 2-2 before back-to-back balls gave him a free pass. With two outs. Argh.
Shildt went to the mound.
Reyes ran in from the pen.
Since losing his closer role to Gallegos, Reyes had refused to allow a run in seven of his 10 outings entering this winner-take-all game. But he had allowed two homers over his last four appearances, and that was not the only context that Shildt will surely spend a chunk of the offseason playing out in his head as he wonders how he might have done things differently if given another shot.
One thing is clear. Gallegos could not have stayed in the game. He had split a nail in the eighth. His return was a decoy to burn Lux. It worked.
Still, others could have entered. The Cardinals' bullpen was not thin. It was stacked.
Genesis Cabrera, who as of yesterday was declared good to go after a recent treatment of his own nail issue, never took the mound. That was a head-scratcher. He did warm up at one point. If he was good to go, where was he? If he wasn’t good to go, why was he on the wild-card roster?
Dakota Hudson never pitched. The former reliever turned starter was available as an X-factor if called upon. The groundball-getter is all better from Tommy John surgery and had been pitching like it. He rarely allows homers.
Also not used was Jack Flaherty, who pushed his way back in time from injury to be used in whatever role worked best. The opening-day starter did not get a shot.
Reyes screamed with fury into his glove after Taylor connected. He immediately pulled up his jersey to cover his face. His teammates consoled him. Shildt defended his reliever and his choice to use him.
Shildt said many times leading up to this game that the Cardinals were going to lean toward leaning on the players who got them here, and Reyes is a part of that group, but the question that lingered over the Cardinals while Dodger Stadium partied late Wednesday night was why Shildt leaned on Reyes one too many times, when other arms were fresh and waiting.
Then again, the way the lineup had frozen, a walk-off against another reliever might have been just as inevitable. Great game. No debate. Familiar troubles underscored it, though, up and down the lineup and on the mound late.
