The L.A. Dodgers Are Still Alive Because The MLB Playoffs Are Different

If you visit the Baseball Reference page featuring Major League Baseball's all-time playoff batting leaders, you might be surprised to find that among qualified hitters (35 plate appearances), nobody in history has a higher postseason average than Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner.

Turner is 5-for-11 in this year's playoffs with a home run. He has reached base 11 times in 17 plate appearances. Amazingly, this is actually a little bit worse than Turner did in last year's National League Division Series, in which Turner went 10-for-19 and hit six doubles in a losing effort against the New York Mets.

Watching the Dodgers and Washington Nationals play in the NLDS this week, Turner's performance has come, for me, to represent just how different the postseason is. In particular, it has come to represent the way logic and process—increasingly the currency of successful MLB franchises like the Dodgers—stop mattering.

Turner is a damn good player—fun to watch, and probably underrated outside of Los Angeles. But he's obviously not this good. Maybe he has just been lucky, getting hot at the right time. Or maybe he's the real Derek Jeter.

It's interesting to think about: Turner's playoff dominance is either a symptom of the randomness that rules everything around us, or a small piece of evidence that when it comes to baseball, there are mysterious forces at play beyond human comprehension. The scientific term for those forces, pending approval by the Society for American Baseball Research, is vibes.

On Tuesday, Turner and the Dodgers were able to overcome their own recent history of postseason collapses and scrape past the Nationals to extend the Division Series to a fifth and final game. They nearly lost in the same way they always seem to lose crucial playoff games lately: with Clayton Kershaw pitching and the bullpen allowing inherited runners to score as if compelled to do so by divine forces.

Vibes are impossible to ignore when the playoffs come around. They are palpable, even though they may not be real, occupying the space in between what should happen as a result of sound decision-making based on numbers and scouting reports, and what actually does happen. They explain things like the San Francisco Giants' Even Year Bullshit, and the Kansas City Royals more broadly. They force decision making processes to change.

On Tuesday, the Dodgers should have started rookie Julio Urias. They went into the game down 2-1 in the series, and so needing two victories, each equally important. One would have to come in Los Angeles, against Joe Ross. One would have to come in Washington against Max Scherzer. Starting Urias at home, where he was dominant this season, would have allowed them to use a fully-rested Clayton Kershaw in the tough game on the road, and set them up better for a potential National League Championship Series run. But instead, manager Dave Roberts opted for the recently injured Kershaw on short rest. Vibes.

This is the third postseason in a row in which a Dodgers manager has opted to use Kershaw on short rest down 2-1 in the NLDS. Kershaw went into Tuesday's game fighting, as he always seems to be, against the perception that he is bad in the playoffs. (A perception supported by a 4.65 postseason ERA going into the start, and refuted by good-but-not-Kershaw-good peripherals).

It was inevitable that Kershaw would start Tuesday. And it felt inevitable, based on his prior playoff experience, that something would go terribly wrong. After a rough first inning, Kershaw settled down and the Dodgers eased into a comfortable 5-2 lead. Then the manager—now Roberts, previously Don Mattingly—left Kershaw in just a little too long, and saw that lead evaporate. In 2014, it was the Cardinals getting to Kershaw in the seventh inning. In 2015, it was the Mets doing the same.

With a runner on first and two outs in the seventh, Kershaw allowed an infield single to Trea Turner. Then he took Bryce Harper to a full count before walking him to load the bases. After ball four, an ad for Forest Lawn, a chain of Southern California cemeteries, flashed ominously across the LED banner that wraps around the Dodger Stadium concourse. Then Pedro Baez came in and hit Jayson Werth with his first pitch to make it 5-3. Luis Avilan, in for Baez, allowed a single to Daniel Murphy and suddenly the game was tied.

Perhaps if it was inevitable that Kershaw would start on short rest, then it was also inevitable that he would be betrayed: by his bullpen, which let three inherited runners score; by the first-year manager, Roberts, who asked too much of his ace, recently returned from injury; and by his own inability to stay calm and make that one last pitch, or reign in his own self-confidence and realize that maybe he shouldn't have been the one out there throwing it.

It was tempting, at the time, to second-guess Roberts, who set an MLB record this year for pitching changes, pushing the right buttons to turn a no-name bullpen into baseball's most effective group. He should have pulled Kershaw earlier. He should have brought in Joe Blanton instead of Baez to face Werth; Grant Dayton instead of Avilan to face Murphy; Avilan instead of Kershaw to face Harper. (Joe Blanton? Grant Dayton? These are the guys you want in the game?)

Roberts appeared to have made one bad choice after another. But they were only bad choices because they didn't work. That's the thing about baseball. You don't know until you know.

The Dodgers went down quietly in the bottom of the seventh, and Blanton shut down the Nationals in the top of the eighth.

In the bottom of the eighth, rookie outfielder Andrew Toles was hit by a pitch. Andre Ethier, in his first at bat of the postseason, singled against a shift into left field. Then Chase Utley—whose very presence on the Dodgers is an anachronism; who was the worst everyday hitter on the team this season; and who a couple innings earlier was allowed to stay in the game against a left-handed reliever in a situation that might normally see him pinch hit for because the Dodgers' lead at the time seemed safe— singled in Toles to give the team a lead.

Kenley Jansen, with defensive help from Utley, closed the game out in the top of the ninth.

Kershaw tossed 6.2 innings, most of them good, and was left on the hook for five runs. His career postseason ERA ballooned up to 4.83. In the box score, the Dodgers bullpen was responsible for 2.1 scoreless innings and Big Joe Blanton got himself a W.

The Dodgers won because Adrian Gonzalez found his legs and hit a homerun. Because Utley came through in the late innings. Because while Justin Turner might not be the Real Derek Jeter, he has been one of baseball's best third basemen since joining the Dodgers and he had yet another solid game at the plate.

They won because their bullpen, which threw more innings than any in baseball this season, and maintained the lowest ERA, was able to clean up its own mess—even if it couldn't clean up Kershaw's. Baseball is weird. Process only takes you part of the way. But whether or not you're lucky, it helps to be good.

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