FULL REACTION ⚾ Dodgers sweep Brewers behind Ohtani’s 3-HR, 10-K Game 4 | SportsCenter
Hookie, six scoreless innings, 10 strikeouts, three home runs. What can you say about what show Otani did tonight? Uh I said it yesterday. I mean, it’s like we’re kind of like the Bulls and uh he’s Michael Jordan, so he uh he took it he took it over for us and what a time to show up. He had been struggling so bad offensively. Obviously, it became a big story what he hadn’t been doing on offense. Did you see a night like this coming? I mean, a night like this is possible anytime with show. So, I mean I mean he still affected the game in other ways getting some stakes and then drawing a couple offs and whatnot. Um but I mean you know it’s it’s show you know he’s uh he just showed why he’s the best player. Mookie, it’s not easy to get here. You guys are going back to the World Series and doing it in emphatic fashion. Nine and one in the playoffs. What does it mean to be where you’re at right now? Uh it’s special. It’s special. But we got to flush it all. Get a little time to rest up. Uh we’re all old so we need a little a little a little rest period and we’ll be ready to go next week. Congratulations Mookie. They look scary right now. Xavier Scruggs here to talk about it. Um talk about scary is Show Otani and the what’s interesting is the context here because he really was not hitting very well at the plate and he busted out in a big old way. What did you see from Shi today that maybe we haven’t seen ever before? I just saw an adjustment to stay on the the pitches that he saw today. Other than, you know, him facing some really nasty lefties previously, some tough matchups. I felt like today he saw the ball a little bit deeper, was more aggressive earlier in the count. You think about this, the last home run that he hit off of Trevor McIll, one of the best closers in Major League Baseball, just being aggressive, ready to go early on the fast ball, and he was very decisive on what he wanted today. There was no offbalance. There was no trying to guess. He knew what he was looking for. Knew it exactly what he wanted to do. The best single game performance we’ve seen ever in this game. 100 pitches as well and six shutout innings, strikes out 10. Maybe his best outing of the season. You would you say? I I think so. And and the reason why is because there was so much swing and miss. 19 swing and miss today. And and did it a lot with the split finger. You were talking about it during the highlight. It just had so much movement, so much depth to it. the ability to move it to both sides of the plate, but also he was able to attack with that fast ball. He threw a 100 mph pitches today. So, you could tell there was a little extra velocity on his stuff, a little extra movement. He was amped up for the game on the offensive side and on the pitching side. Listen, we’re just sort of responding to this in the moment and what what just happened. But if you sort of back out big picture, this is kind of like a little leager who’s the best pitcher and the best hitter on your team, but he’s the best pitcher and best hitter in baseball at this point. I mean, I don’t was the best pitcher, but best player. Absolutely. What What put in context what we just saw here tonight? I I think it’s hard to put it in words, but I think what we’re seeing is just somebody that’s getting better over time. He’s already the best player, but we’re continuing to see him get better each time out. Think about what Mookie Betts was just talking about. Like when Otani is available, anything is possible. The fact that we’re seeing him continually find ways to one up himself to me is the most impressive thing that we’re seeing. But now it’s even more important because it’s during postseason time, right? This is why Show Otani took his time on the rehab side of things from a pitching standpoint so he could be at full strength going offensively and from a pitching standpoint now in the postseason. And it’s not just him, it’s the depth of their whole rotation. Think about Snell day one. Think about Yamamoto Glass now yesterday and Show Otani. It doesn’t get any easier. Yeah. Well, we’ve been talking about this all week, how dominant these pitchers have been. They’ve all been lined up. You could say this Dodgers team maybe slightly underperformed. They’ve they’re so loaded with talent during the regular season. They’ve won 14 of their last 15 now. They’ve hit their stride. We faced a really really talented team that played really really good. we were part of tonight an iconic, you know, maybe the best individual performance ever in a postseason game. I I don’t think anybody can argue with that. Guy punches out 10 and hits three homers. Um I’m really proud of our team. I admire our team. Enough has been said. The narrative has been said many times, but um you know it came to an end tonight to a team that is not only talented, played great. And we’ve talked a lot about the pitching and you just mentioned how many pitching performances they had in this series. What did you make your offense? Was it their pitching? Was a little bit of everything. Just what’ you see from the offense over the four games? So, since the beginning of time in baseball when you’re you have dominant pitching on the m throwing 98 to 100 every guy and uh tremendous offspe pitches, the command they showed. Will Smith deserves a ton of credit. Um yeah, I said it was dominant pitching. If you want to say our offense, I think most offenses would struggle, you know. Go here in the front row. Sophia Murf, when you think about this team and, you know, some of the performances you got from the young guys, right? Guys like Chad and Miz and Caleb. Um, what what do you want them to take away from this season and and the experience of the DS and playing against a team like the Dodgers? Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a great experience. Um, but that’s where you got to go. That’s why the little things matter. That’s all the things we harp on matter because we don’t have as big a margin of error when you don’t you’re not your team is not filled with the same amount of talent. So, um we learn a lot from it. We had a lot of young players. You mentioned Durban, you know, uh Cheerios in his second year. Um you know, he looked pretty comfortable the whole series. So, it’s uh yeah, a lot of good things. Chad Patrick, Miz, a lot of guys stepped up. So, um, excited about that for them that they have experienced this. They’ve seen it firsthand. They know how precious it is. Um, you lead the league in in wins and you do some great things for the franchise, but still, you know, there’s there’s work to be done. So, the emotional series and the Cubs is you guys have to know the Brewers Cubs thing well. you have to have been part of it to understand how it really zapped um a lot out of us emotionally and then to have to come back and play right away. Um I think and then we lose a one-run game and it just takes us off us. It took us off it a little bit and then the pitching performances by the Dodgers uh you know basically uh put the hammer down. questions back here to Paul Murf. Not a lot of free agents. I mean, this is pretty much the team you could run back with next year. How do you feel about that? And how much looking forward to get another shot at it with largely the same group? Yeah, I mean, uh, we’ll see. You know, you say that, but that’s not just how it always works. But um right now we just have to sit back and look at our health and make sure guys are getting healthy, guys that need offseason um procedures and things to get done uh can stay healthy. Uh we give them a plan of attack going forward. And uh yeah, I mean I love the guys. I love I love what they bring to the table. I love their possibilities um going forward. Um but like every year we’ll look we’ll look a little different for sure. Let’s bring in Jessica Mendoza who got a chance to watch this one uh front and center. And Jess, uh does your thoughts on on what we saw from show Otati tonight? I mean, can we have the reaction that you saw like every Dodger player have? Because that’s exactly what I was doing. And you know, it’s crazy. I I I cover the Dodgers. I’m in LA all the time. You know, you see show and it’s always it’s never a surprise, right? You’re always like, “Oh my gosh, this is show haven and show.” This was a whole another level. And I mean to be honest, he’s had one postseason game where we’ve ever seen him pitch and hit. But the fact that he’s coming in in a clinching game to be able to take the team to the World Series 10ks when he hit that third home run. I mean, it’s like, are you you’re not human. We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s absolutely insane. And I I’m I’m talking about someone who’s been watching them all year long. You know, it it felt a little You’re not old enough to remember this, but the Reggie Jackson third home run against the Dodgers in the World Ser like like I can’t believe what we’re seeing right now. And um I know you love to look at a guy’s swing and he had not been swinging the bat particularly well. Three for 29 coming into this game. What did he iron out? Because he certainly fixed it in a hurry. You know, it’s interesting because, you know, we’ve been talking about all week on Get Up is just the fact that he’s he’s flying that front side and just how much teams and starting with the Phillies, by the way, they’ve been tacking him inside and because of that, his front side had been flying and then he was flying at so many different pitches. I really believe, David, because the fact that he was pitching, it was like everything got brought down a notch. And this is what’s ironic. When he hit that first home run, I was going that was like a almost like a 80 85% swing. Yes, I know this is mind-blowing. and he’s hitting the ball out of the park, but it’s like he just toned it down because he had to cuz his I I’ve been around him in games that he’s pitching. He’s not sitting there watching film. He’s not sitting there thinking about his swing, going and taking hacks in the cages. All he’s doing is thinking about pitching. So, you eliminate all the things that he had. And that to me, it was like he lessened the concentration on his swing and that front side finally stood in there. Three home runs. It was unbelievable. Yes. And then you go to what he did on the on the mound and Dave Roberts has been sort of taking it easy with him, working him along, nursing him through the season, trying to build up his his pitch count and then he goes 100 pitches today and the Brewers just could not touch him. What did you see from him on the hill? You know, I saw him really being able to mix up his pitches because, you know, when show Otani is going right, obviously you get excited about the fast ball that can hit a hundred, the breaking balls off of that, but to me it was his unpredictability and and we’ve seen the starting rotation be ridiculous. But when you look at his idea of being able to hit his spots, but then also the Brewers chasing off the plate and once he saw that he could expand the zone, that’s when he really started locking into me because early in the game, you know, he knew the pitch count was going to be an issue. He wanted to stay in this game. It’s a conversation he had with Dave Roberts. Something that he has been pushing towards. People forget he was throwing max of four innings, then a max of five innings. He threw one six inning game before the postseason even got here. You’re thinking, what are you going to get from this guy? He made an effort to make sure and say, “Hey, I want to be able to go as deep as possible.” You saw it early, but once the chase started kicking in, it was like he just knew he could expand that zone and use all his pitches. An absolutely singular performance tonight by uh Shay Otani and this Dodgers team. I mean, go back before the season, everyone knew this was going to be this scary outfit. They had all this talent and then kind of the season started and maybe they didn’t quite play up to those expectations, but since then they’ve won 14 of their last 15. What are you seeing of the team as a whole right now, Jess? You know, it’s a combination of things because honestly, I mean, when you look back over the course of this season, and I was just I was actually just talking to a bunch of people about this because people forget how many injuries they did have in their starting rotation and how awful, to be honest, the team really was piecing together starts and they were going just bullpin games at one point in the season because all the dudes you see right now that are healthy that make up this staff were not a part of this team for a bulk of the season. That’s what’s so ironic. So, they all get healthy near the end, right? As as far as a collective group, but specifically what I’m seeing is a pressureless ease that it’s like once they got out of the regular season and they didn’t have the best record. And honestly, they weren’t even like within the division. It was like they didn’t even put the Padres’s away early like you thought they were going to do. And so, you saw more pressure to me. I had their last two weeks of the season. Then they get to the postseason, they’re like, “Okay, now now it’s what we do.” The depth of their lineup, David, is what stands out to me because before it was like, remember Muki, two months could not hit a baseball. Yeah. And he was able to figure it out at the end of the season and now you’re seeing even Show Otani, everyone’s going to forget how much he struggled early on in this postseason because they had so many other guys put it together. It is uh an awesome lineup and an awesome rotation right now. And it’s a scary bunch if you’re either the Mariners or the Blue Jays and they’re fighting over there in the ALCS. Jess Mendoza giving us her thoughts as the Dodgers move into the World Series once again. All right, back here with Xavier Scrugs. Um, let’s talk about this. They’ve got a week now before game one of the World Series. Uh, do you is that an advantage for them? I mean, they haven’t had to use a lot of lot of parts so far getting four games here. I I think the one thing and Jess kind of mentioned it too is just the health of this team is important, right? So, I think even the time off doesn’t quite kill their momentum. If anything, it helps them ultimately continue to stay healthy. We talked about Shoi Otani being healthy at the biggest part of the season. I think the same thing goes for Snell Yamamoto as well. Don’t forget Yroi Suzaki who has now turned into the closer of this Dodgers team was hurt for a good portion of the season as well. So I think and and now having him go backtoback days, those things help you ultimately get rejuvenated, get refreshed going into this next series. And honestly, David, nothing seems to be stopping them. I don’t think a couple of days is going to stop this Dodgers team from continuing to play upper at upper echelon in every single facet of the game. How much of the the Dodgers game were you able to watch and just your your feelings on what we saw from Otani? Well, with the technology, we were able to see the whole thing. And and I’m telling you, David, it’s it’s really impressive what Shot Otan has been able to do because a lot of people were concerned with him with the first three games offensively. And it seemed like he let the other guys, the pitchers in this, uh, be able to do their thing. And then he said, “Okay, boys, I want to show you what I can do as well. I can I can throw six shutout innings. I can also go deep not once, twice, but three times and have a flare for the dramatic. And the third time was really cool just because he had a one-tw count and he was able to then uh capitalize huge on that one-two count, hit it right up the middle, but he was dominant. He was dominant with his breaking stuff. He was dominant with his fast play. He was dominant uh with his splitter as well. He features so many pitches that it’s just very confusing for a hitter to be able to try to zero in not only on a pitch but on a zone. And that’s what made it really hard. And let me tell you something, the Milwaukee Brewers are a really good team. They have the best record in all of baseball. And he made them look like a B team. And that right there says a lot. Yeah, they they just could not touch him. All it was just so so many swinging misses uh from Otani in that against that Brewers lineup. Um, if you back out here a little, Eddie, and I don’t want to turn you into a baseball historian like Tim Kirk or something, but is there anything to compare to what we saw in the postseason from Show Otani tonight? No. No. Not Not today. Not even John Williams calling on the PA here behind me. Uh, you can’t look, this is he is he is some kind of special. And I received so many text messages from former major leaguers uh just telling me, “Look, man, this this guy’s ridiculous. This guy is this guy’s doing things that are just unheard of. A leadoff home run after putting up a zero and facing four hitters in the top half of the fourth inning. Then he walks, then he hits another home run, then then he strikes out guys. It is different. And he they built it up. If you look at it, he didn’t pitch at all last year. This is a completely different Dodger team, a different staff. Um, it is built around starting pitching. It is built around experience and what he is able to do out there. Um, even the Hall of Famers, the future Hall of Famers, Mookie Betts, you look at Freddy Freeman, um, Clayton Kershaw, they haven’t seen anything like it. And not only that, they name him the MVP of the series. And let’s not forget what Blake Snell was able to do, Yamamoto, he was able to do. Um, and it doesn’t matter glass now yesterday. This this guy’s at a different level. and because he’s at a different level, um, we were all in awe of it. By the way, I’m also hanging out with Tim Ken. I left him over there the in the in the big club, but but he was just throwing out stat after stat, history after history, and it’s awesome. David, uh, go run over and get Timmy and have him come on back and we’ll talk to him. We’ll talk to anybody at this point, Eduardo. It’s just such an amazing night in baseball. Uh, thanks for thanks for dialing in from the airport. You got it. You got it. Appreciate you. All right. And now we got Doug Landville who’s uh who’s there at the game. Doug, your turn to pipe in. What do you Can you hear me? What do you think of Otani tonight? I can Oh, I can hear you. I mean, the only adjective to describe showing Otani is if you use his own name. I mean, it’s Otanic. That’s all you could say because I mean, how do you describe someone who’s able to do everything he just did tonight? I mean, it’s you’d say like with all the Hollywood producers around here, you’d say it’s like based on a true story. I mean, this guy just hit three home runs in a clinch game at the NLCS against a team that won 97 games, by the way, and then struck out 10 batters and shut out over six innings. I mean, who does that? And then, by the way, hit a ball out of the stadium on top of that. I mean, so everything he does raises the bar of what’s possible in baseball and it seems to be singular in the one that who can actually accomplish it. But to be that good against a great Brewers team and to shut them down and then single-handedly beat them by himself, I mean, it’s just remarkable. And every time he does something, you just your jaw drops. You’re trying to call the game, but you’re also like, what am I looking at right now? Um, by the way, I’m going to steal that one. Otonic, because you know what it reminds me of it. Ruthian, right? That Ruthian is a term we use in baseball for somebody who does something so outlandish you can’t compare it to anything. And these two guys are sort of at times they’re in the same paragraph, are they not? Yeah. I mean, it it’s you think about Bruce and Otani, but the fact that he’s pitching at this level and also the power game, he has three MVP trophies already on top of this. I mean, so the performances there and the thing is when he was playing with the Angels, he didn’t make the postseason. So, you kind of feel like you were deprived of him being able to show what he could do on this stage. And now the world knows very clearly what this guy can do. And if you if you pitched this script to a producer, you would they wouldn’t believe you to say this is actually a true story. This guy went 5050 last year. 5050 50 home runs, more than 50 stolen bases. And he did it in a game that he went six for six with three home runs and two stolen bases. I mean, come on. So now he’s doing it in the postseason. And you know, you just sit there and your jaw drops. But the only word to describe him is his own name. I mean, he is Otonic and we’ll see where he goes from here, but right now he just literally won the NLCS and he dominated on both sides of the ball. It’s just jaw-dropping. [Music]
SportsCenter reacts to the Los Angeles Dodgers beating the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS to earn a series sweep and a return trip the World Series. They discuss Shohei Ohtani’s historic game, as he became the first player in MLB history to hit three homers as a pitcher in a postseason game.
0:00 Mookie Betts interview
1:06 Xavier Scruggs on Ohtani’s performance
3:56 Pat Murphy news conference
7:57 Jessica Mendoza reaction
14:16 Eduardo Perez reaction
17:29 Doug Glanville at Dodger Stadium
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