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BOSTON — Modern baseball, with its luxury-tax leveling of the playing field, is increasingly won in the margins, like card-counting at a blackjack table. It entails defensive shifts that vary by count, player evaluations based on launch angles and spin rates, and versatile rosters designed to provide a minute edge.
The Los Angeles Dodgers like to believe that they are ahead of the curve. They have used their substantial financial resources to build a Swiss Army knife-roster chock-full of former All-Stars, providing such flexibility that, as General Manager Farhan Zaidi said recently, there is no such thing as a bad matchup.
But Manager Dave Roberts’s incessant tinkering imploded on Tuesday night at the most inopportune time, as pinch-hitter Eduardo Nunez — in the game to counter a pitching move by Roberts — belted a three-run, seventh-inning homer that sealed the Boston Red Sox’s 8-4 victory in the opener of the 2018 World Series.
It was the first meeting between the two storied franchises in the World Series since 1916, and the two best offenses in each league outshone a rare Series-opening meeting of elite pitchers, Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Chris Sale of the Red Sox.
What had evolved into a battle of the bullpens turned when Roberts, with the Dodgers trailing by 5-4, went to the mound after the right-handed Pedro Baez struck out Xander Bogaerts for the second out in the seventh with two aboard.
Rather than leave in Baez, who had yielded an intentional walk to J.D. Martinez, to face Rafael Devers, Roberts turned to Alex Wood, a left-hander.
That prompted Red Sox Manager Alex Cora to call on the right-handed Nunez to hit for the left-handed Devers.
After taking a curveball from Wood for a ball, Nunez lined the next pitch to left field, just barely high enough to clear the Green Monster. As it did, he celebrated with his right hand in the air and mimicked shooting an arrow as he crossed home plate.
It was a cutting shot by Nunez — but perhaps not an unexpected one: Wood has allowed 14 home runs this year — all of them to righties.
There were plenty of regrets all around for the Dodgers, who chased the Red Sox all night but could not reel them in.
Manny Machado, who has had a tempestuous postseason, was booed vigorously during pregame introductions by a crowd that still remembered his late, spikes-up slide last season that compounded Dustin Pedroia’s knee injury. Machado was on his best behavior on Tuesday — he politely retrieved catcher Sandy Leon’s mask for him after a wild pitch — and played ably.
Still, his night was a tale of what might have been.
Machado was productive at the plate, driving in three runs with a single, a groundout and a fly ball. But the groundout came with two runners in scoring position in the fifth against Matt Barnes, and the sacrifice fly came with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh against Ryan Brasier.
And both times, Cody Bellinger failed to deliver a hit in the next at-bat.
And in the field, Machado turned one made-to-order double play but came within a whisker of starting two others. On the first, he ranged deep in the hole at shortstop and made a slick throw to second baseman Brian Dozier, whose relay was an instant late. On the second, Machado’s quick release on a chopper wasn’t quite enough to turn two.
The near misses loomed large.
After Steve Pearce avoided a double play in the third, Martinez drove him home with a ringing, two-out double off the center-field wall — about 415 feet from home plate — to put the Red Sox ahead by 3-2.
In the fifth, Bogaerts just beat the throw from Dozier that would have allowed the Dodgers to escape unscathed from a bases-loaded, none-out fix. Instead, Mookie Betts scored on the play and Rafael Devers followed with a single to score Andrew Benintendi, which put the Red Sox ahead by 5-3.
Neither a thunder and lightning storm, which passed through the area an hour before the first pitch, nor the 53-degree weather was enough to compel either pitcher to wear sleeves. For Sale — who cut the long sleeves off his throwback White Sox uniform and pitched in 34-degree weather in April without sleeves — this is standard operating procedure.
The Red Sox, in general, looked far more comfortable in their environment at the start.
First baseman David Freese lost a foul pop by Betts, who took advantage of the second life by stroking a single to center field. He stole second on the next pitch, then raced home when Benintendi grounded a single just past diving second baseman Dozier. And when right fielder Yasiel Puig overthrew the cutoff in a vain attempt to get Betts, Benintendi advanced to second.
After Kershaw retired Pearce on a pop up, Martinez ripped a single to left center that scored Benintendi — after he ducked to avoid getting hit by the line drive. It was four batters into the game, and the Red Sox had a 2-0 lead.
But Sale, who had not looked the same since missing most of the final two months with a balky shoulder, could not make the early advantage stand up. He allowed five hits — including a solo home run by Matt Kemp — and walked two, and though he struck out seven, he was lifted after walking Dozier to begin the fifth.
It was the second consecutive playoff start in which Sale has been unable to get an out in the fifth inning. In between, he was hospitalized for a stomach illness — though he joked, with a straight face, that it was due to a bellybutton ring infection.
“There’s no holding back now, I think,” Sale said on Monday. “My job’s been the same since the first day I got here: You hand me the ball when you want me to throw it and take it out of my hand when you want me to stop.”
That, of course, is the manager’s decision — and one that Roberts was ultimately made to regret.