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This week on the podcast Jacob and Eric run through the NLCS as haphazardly as it felt watching for seven straight days. The Dodgers were running their all-too-familiar playoff-exit playbook, until they weren’t. Three wins in three days brought them back to the World Series for the third time in four years.
The Dodgers will play the Rays, making this a meeting of the teams with the best record in each league, a World Series rarity in the wild card era.
Please send all of your questions to tblapodcast@gmail.com, or tweet us at @ericstephen or @jacobburch. Credit goes to Brian Salvatore for making us sound halfway decent
Dodgers rewind
Julio Urías closed out the NLCS with three perfect innings, the first Dodgers reliever to last at least that long while closing out a postseason game while earning the win in 39 years. The last Dodgers reliever to do so while not allowing a run, before Urías, was Larry Sherry, who had a World Series to remember in 1959.
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The rookie swingman right-hander pitched the final three innings of Game 2 to close out a win, tying the series, than pitched the final two innings of Game 3 to put the Dodgers ahead in the series. Saves weren’t an official statistic yet but he would have earned saves in both games. In Game 4 he settled for the win, pitching the final two innings scoreless while Gil Hodges hit the game-winning homer in the eighth.
The game in question, relating to the Urías outing, was the Game 6 finale, when Sherry recorded the final 17 outs without allowing a run, winning the clincher that gave the Dodgers their second championship, and first in Los Angeles.
For the series, Sherry allowed one run in 12⅔ innings and was named World Series MVP. He pitched five full years in relief for the Dodgers, posting a 112 ERA+, and further added to franchise lore by getting traded to Detroit in April 1964 for a minor league outfielder named Lou Johnson, a sweet deal for the Dodgers.
Podcast links
Episode link (time: 1:09:51)