Los Angeles Dodgers' big bats make noise, turn tide in NLDS

WASHINGTON -- Patrick Corbin had spent the past two years terrorizing Los Angeles Dodgers hitters, relying mostly on a biting, tilting, low-80s slider that closely resembles his fastball until it's too late to adjust. But Russell Martin remembered this one key tidbit in a postseason pregame meeting that outlined Corbin's tendencies: With two strikes and runners in scoring position, strikes are highly unlikely.

So when Martin faced an 0-2 count in the top of the sixth inning of Sunday's National League Division Series game -- with two outs, runners on the corners and the Dodgers trailing by a run, their offense continuing to struggle and their season suddenly on the brink -- he focused on tracking pitches and hardly worried about swinging.

He watched a slider break into the dirt and identified the point where he could differentiate it from Corbin's fastball.

He saw a fastball next, sailing up and in, and compared the difference.

"The more pitches I saw," Martin said, "the more I felt comfortable."

Corbin went to the slider again, with the count now even, and this time Martin was the aggressor. The pitch traveled 85 mph, began in the strike zone and dropped just below it, an ideal location in that setting. But Martin lofted the baseball deep into the left-center gap for the two-run double that gave the Dodgers a lead, ignited an improbable seven-run inning, inspired a 10-4 victory in Game 3 and ultimately put the pressure squarely on the Washington Nationals.

The Dodgers' offense was noticeably reeling when the sixth inning began. Their hitters had collected 38 strikeouts in 75 postseason at-bats, only five shy of the record for any three-game stretch within a playoff series -- and then suddenly they erupted.

Their final tally in the sixth: 11 batters; two walks; six hits, four of them for extra bases; and seven runs, all of them with two outs and all of them driven in by three hitters -- Martin, Enrique Hernandez and Justin Turner -- who came back from being down 0-2 in the count. More than 50,000 MLB games have been played over the past 20 years. Before Sunday night, no team had that many two-out RBIs from players who faced 0-2 counts, according to research from the Elias Sports Bureau.

"We just fight," Dodgers corner infielder David Freese said. "You get here by fighting. You get here by being confident. Just passing the baton and moving the chain. We just had an inning where we just showed up and got it done."

The beginning was subtle, as is typically the case, but it also was encouraging. It was a line-drive single to right field from Cody Bellinger, the potential MVP who had accumulated zero hits and five strikeouts through his first eight at-bats in this series. Corbin, who relieved a highly effective Anibal Sanchez after five innings, recorded strikes on his first two pitches. But Bellinger laid off three others out of the strike zone, fouled off a couple of more, then turned on a slider low and away and started a rally.

"He hasn't had much success in the first two games," Turner said of Bellinger, "and he's in there grinding, trying to get locked in, and he wants to be that MVP guy for us that he's been all year. And that at-bat kind of unlocked him."

Bellinger would register another hit, a double, before the end of the inning. But long before that was Freese, hitting for Gavin Lux, beating the shift by sneaking a two-out grounder through the right side, his first of three hits in a game he did not start.

"He has to be going down as one of the greatest October players of all time," Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said of Freese, the man who famously propelled the St. Louis Cardinals to the 2011 World Series. "I don't care what anyone says -- he has to be."

Martin was in the game only because Hyun-Jin Ryu was the starting pitcher. Over the past two years, he mustered only a .665 OPS, 78 points below the major league average. He navigated through the 2019 season with a .220/.337/.330 slash line, but the Dodgers valued him for his personality and his insight.

Martin, 36, spent the first five years of his career with the Dodgers and found his way back with them after a winding path that saw him play for the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates and Toronto Blue Jays. His sixth-inning double was only his second extra-base hit since Sept. 3. His ninth-inning home run was his first postseason homer for the Dodgers since the 2008 NLDS, against the Chicago Cubs, which Martin remembered well.

"That's such a long time ago," Martin said. "A lot of foul tips ago."

Martin's double was followed by a Chris Taylor walk, which was followed by Hernandez -- the Dodgers' third pinch hitter of the inning -- falling behind 0-2, laying off a slider low, then turning on a slider out over the plate and blasting it deep into the Nationals Park outfield.

After signaling for an intentional walk of Muncy, Corbin -- the former Arizona Diamondbacks starter who had held the Dodgers to three runs in 36⅓ innings since the start of the 2018 season -- exited.

The Dodgers had finally gotten to him.