The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 5-1 on Saturday night, taking both Game 7 of the National League Championship Series and the pennant itself. The Dodgers will now advance to play the Boston Red Sox in the 2018 World Series (beginning Tuesday) while the Brewers head home for what's certain to be a long winter. How did the Dodgers win Game 7? In part by doing what they needed to do in order to weather Josh Hader's outing.
Coming into the game, it was obvious the Brewers would have Hader pitch at least two innings at some point. From an outsider's perspective, the dream plan for the Brewers had Jhoulys Chacin completing four or five innings, handing the reins to Hader, and then letting him go as far as he could before Jeremy Jeffress and/or the rest of the Brewers bullpen took it home.
The Dodgers didn't play nice, however.
Instead of the aforementioned scenario, the Dodgers jumped on Chacin early, taking a 2-1 lead on a two-run home run from Cody Bellinger in the second. Yasiel Puig followed up Bellinger with a double, and manager Craig Counsell started warming Hader with an eye on preventing an even bigger inning. Chacin got out of the inning, but Counsell pinch-hit for him with two on and two out in the bottom half of the frame. The pinch-hitter, Jonathan Schoop, ended the rally.
From there, Hader checked in and did his thing. He threw three innings, striking out four batters and permitting just two baserunners -- one on a single, one on a walk. The only thing the Dodgers had going in their favor against Hader was that eventually his spot would come up in the order -- at which point Counsell would likely pinch-hit for him in a one-run game. That is indeed what happened, with Hader ducking out and making way for Milwaukee's other arms to start the sixth inning.
Xavier Cedeno was first out of the bullpen after Hader. He faced one batter, allowed a single through the shift, and exited. Closer Jeffress, who had struggled throughout the postseason, then came in and ... things didn't go so well. Jeffress allowed another single and then recorded two outs before yielding a three-run homer to Puig on a slider.
Just like that, the deficit flipped from 2-1 to 5-1. Jeffress would recover and combine with Corey Knebel and Brandon Woodruff to keep the Dodgers off the board the rest of the way, but it wouldn't matter. The Dodgers had done their damage for the night, and their pitching made it stand up.
If the Brewers' plan was to maximize Hader's outing, then the Dodgers' plan was to maximize the non-Hader outings. That's exactly what they did -- and that's why they're heading to the World Series.