Andy Pages hit a comebacker to the mound.
Orion Kerkering threw away the Philadelphia Phillies’ season.
With the bases loaded in the 11th in Game 4 of the National League Division on Thursday, that’s how the Dodgers secured a 2-1 walk-off, series-clinching win that sends them to the NL Championship Series.
On a throwing error from Kerkering, who initially booted the broken-bat grounder before retrieving the ball in front of the mound.
On a toss home that went sailing to the backstop, even as catcher J.T. Realmuto motioned for Kerkering to throw to first.
On a brutal, confounding decision from the Phillies reliever, one that allowed Hyeseong Kim to score from third and pandemonium to be unleashed inside Dodger Stadium.
“Instant classic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“That ranks up there,” third baseman Max Muncy added.
In what started as a pitchers’ duel between two dominant starters, then morphed into a battle of the bullpens that stretched into extra innings, the Dodgers finally prevailed with a rally in the 11th. They loaded the bases on singles from Tommy Edman and Muncy, then a two-out walk from Kiké Hernández.
Pages came to the plate next, and swung through a first-pitch sinker from Kerkering, a 24-year-old right-hander in his third MLB season.
Then, in a blink, came the shocking end.
Pages hit another sinker that broke his bat and sent a two-hopper to the mound. Kerkering didn’t field it cleanly, with the ball hitting off his foot and bouncing in the direction of the plate. But by the time he grabbed it, Pages was still only halfway up the first-base line.
Had he thrown to first, Pages almost certainly would have been out. The inning would have ended without a score.
Instead, Kerkering panicked, rushed a throw, and came nowhere near hitting Realmuto — who had been pointing for him to throw to first — in the glove.
The ball sailed to the backstop. Kim crossed the plate, then went back and stomped on it again just to be certain.
Kerkering bent over in immediate regret, as the Dodgers came pouring out of the dugout to mob Pages near first base.
“I thought he was gonna throw it to first,” Pages said in Spanish in an on-field interview. “But when I saw him throwing home, I figured this was over.”
“I looked home, and the ball was in the net,” added Hernández, who was running to second base on the play. “And the place was going crazy.”
How the Dodgers defeated the Phillies in the 11th inning in Game 4 of the NLDS.
All afternoon, the tension had been building at Chavez Ravine.
Through six innings, both Tyler Glasnow and Cristopher Sánchez had kept their respective opposing lineups off the board. In the seventh, both teams broke through with a run after getting relievers onto the mound. And from there, the drama only continued to build, as the clubs went back to trading zeros to force the game into extras.
Long before the end, there were star-worthy moments. Mookie Betts drew a bases-loaded walk off Phillies closer Jhoan Durán to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh. Roki Sasaki entered in the eighth for what became three perfect innings of relief, retiring all nine batters he faced.
By the end, it was almost easy to forget about the starting pitching performances that shaped such a quintessential, low-scoring, nerve-racking October dog fight.
In his first start of the postseason, Glasnow pitched six scoreless in which he struck out eight batters, leaned heavily on a fastball that had extra life, and stranded all six runners who reached base against him.
On the other side, Sánchez matched him step-for-step, flummoxing the Dodgers for the second time this series with six scoreless frames of his own to start the day.
Finally, in the seventh, both lineups found something.
The top half of the inning began with a major decision from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who elected to pull Glasnow after 83 pitches (for context, he had thrown 70 total pitches the previous 18 days) and with the bottom half of the Phillies order due up.
Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers against the Phillies in the fourth inning Thursday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Emmet Sheehan took over, but he immediately faced danger. J.T. Realmuto poked a leadoff single to center with a good piece of hitting on a two-strike slider. Then, Sheehan appeared to have gotten a double-play grounder from Max Kepler — only to miss Mookie Betts’ throw while covering first. The ball bounced into the camera well. Kepler advanced to second. The error would prove to be costly. Nick Castellanos roped a line drive just inside the third-base line in the next at-bat, doubling home Kepler to open the scoring.
Sheehan, however, settled down, limiting the damage there with an inning-ending strikeout of Trea Turner.
And even in the face of their first deficit of the day, the Dodgers responded, knocking Sánchez out of the game with one out in the bottom of the seventh after an Alex Call walk and Hernández single.
In an aggressive move from a manager fighting to keep his team’s season alive, Phillies skipper Rob Thomson summoned the flame-throwing Durán for an eight-out save. But he would get only one before blowing the lead, walking Betts with the bases loaded later in the inning (following a Pages grounder that moved the runners, and an intentional walk to Shohei Ohtani).
Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki exults after a strikeout in the ninth inning against the Phillies in Game 4 of the NLDS.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
From there, the game lay in the hands of both teams’ bullpens.
Sasaki retired all nine batters he faced from the eighth to the 10th. The Phillies also posted three straight zeros, thanks to some help from what was their projected Game 5 starter, Jesús Luzardo. Alex Vesia stranded a Phillies runner at second in the 11th by striking out Harrison Bader in a 10-pitch at-bat.
Finally, the Dodgers built a rally in the bottom of the 11th.
Edman hit a one-out single off Luzardo, and was replaced by Kim as a pinch-runner. Muncy also singled two batters later, allowing Kim to speed all the way to third. With Hernández up, the Phillies summoned Kerkering for a right-on-right matchup. But after walking Hernández to load the bases, it all came down to Pages.
And, it turned out, a decision from Kerkering that ended the Phillies’ seasonand moved the Dodgers another step closer to a World Series title defense.
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