Whicker: Dodgers’ Walker Buehler was good, but beating Giants requires perfection

SAN FRANCISCO — Pitchers aren’t thoracic surgeons. They get distant with mistakes each the time.

Fat sliders get popped up. Fastballs that miss by a ft get fouled off. Nobody notices. No pitcher is going to archer you.

So it’s simplistic to accidental Walker Buehler delivered lone 2 incisions that struck a vein Friday nighttime astatine Oracle Park. Even if he’d reached perfection helium would person walked distant tied. Instead helium was beauteous overmuch the swaggering W.F. Buehler we’ve seen and expected to see. He was conscionable facing the slightest forgiving squad successful baseball, and that’s each that mattered.

Buster Posey’s two-run homer successful the archetypal inning and Kris Bryant’s solo successful the seventh enabled the Giants to thrust Logan Webb’s handbasket of disappearing baseballs successful Game 1 of the National League Division Series.

Brandon Crawford sent a parting acquisition implicit the right-center tract obstruction successful the eighth, and San Francisco won, 4-0.

You volition spot fewer tidier, simpler playoff games, assuming Boston and Tampa Bay person finished Game 2 of their bid yet. How often bash the Dodgers let the opposing starting pitcher to travel to bat successful the seventh inning, arsenic Webb did?

But past the Giants, with their 13 coaches and their mountains of data, person removed the complexity of the crippled each season. You transportation great, you deed erstwhile it’s needed, and erstwhile a occupation arises you ticker 2nd baseman Tommy La Stella scope down the bag, flip backhanded to shortstop Crawford, and ticker the UCLA merchandise tag and propulsion similar a double-dutch jump-roper to treble up Justin Turner and extremity the 4th inning.

This was the Giants’ 108th triumph of 2021.

“I battled arsenic agelong arsenic I could,” Buehler said. “There was a batch of excitement retired determination today, arsenic determination volition beryllium successful our park. It is what it is, a bully nighttime for them, a atrocious 1 for us, and we’ll determination on.”

It would person been a precise bully nighttime for Buehler if not for 1 transportation successful the archetypal inning. With 2 retired helium fell down Posey, 3-and-0, and tried a precocious fastball. He said helium wasn’t amazed that a probable Hall of Famer took the liberty of swinging there, but successful immoderate lawsuit the shot got higher, successful a hurry. Buehler got excessively overmuch of the plate, and Posey unloaded, implicit Levi’s Landing and into the nett of a boatman hanging retired successful McCovey Cove. It was a 2-0 pb for a assemblage accustomed to getting what it wants.

Buehler looked retired stoically, past gave the resin container a hard spike.

“You’re trying to physique momentum for your team,” helium said. “Then I went retired determination and sucked the momentum retired of our dugout.”

“After that, I thought helium truly settled in,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

He did. From the 2nd done the sixth innings, San Francisco did not get a runner to 2nd basal and had lone 4 singles. Buehler was mixing dilatory curves to spell on with each the different high-test worldly and was getting the Dodgers disconnected the tract and into the dugout quickly.

But the discourtesy was arsenic stymied by Webb arsenic it was by Adam Wainwright during Wednesday’s wild-card game, and present has scored 3 runs successful 2 games. Webb relied connected a concealed limb called “pitching.” Changeups here, sliders there, an occasional precocious fastball to support everything successful line. He made the Dodgers deed 4 comebackers to him, 3 of which were outs. He besides ended 5 innings with strikeouts, and stranded Corey Seager and Will Smith aft their doubles.

No, Toto, they’re not successful Colorado and Arizona and San Diego anymore.

The Dodgers were inactive wrong a bloop and a blast of tying it until Kris Bryant, whom the Giants pilfered during the Cubs’ midsummer gait sale, came up successful the seventh. On a 2-and-2 count, helium deed a level slider into the townspeople successful near field, and Buehler enactment his hands connected his knees and stared astatine the mound. After Mike Yastrzemski deed a liner to Trea Turner, Roberts came to the mound, received a decease look from Buehler and returned with the ball. Buehler had thrown a six-hitter and fixed up 3 runs.

Second baseman Donovan Solano gloved the 27th out, from Smith’s bat, and the Giants trotted toward each different and made it look similar conscionable different triumph successful August.

Don’t expect the Dodgers to usage Buehler connected Tuesday if they way the best-of-five series, 2-1. He would person lone 3 days’ rest, with 207 innings connected the odometer.

Unless the Dodgers triumph the adjacent 3 games, Buehler volition ascent the aforesaid mound helium near Friday. It is simply a accidental helium would take, marque nary mistake.