With a 2-0 lead in the National League Championship Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers now return home and give the ball to Tyler Glasnow in Game 3 hoping he can repeat his last outing.
Glasnow has thrown 7.2 shutout innings this postseason with 10 strikeouts and a 1.17 WHIP across two games. His first appearance was out of the bullpen before starting Game 4 of the NL Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, where he tossed six shutout innings with just two hits allowed and eight strikeouts.
If the Dodgers get another start like that from Glasnow, they’ll have a good chance of taking a commanding 3-0 series lead. But as Glasnow gets ready for his start, he’s trying to keep everything simple and not let the moment get too big.
“Just not try to do too much, make it any bigger than it needs to be,” Glasnow said. “Just game plan like any normal start and just let the extra adrenaline have my stuff play up and bit go into it trying to do too extra or too little. Just treat it like normal. I think it helped me with my last start, and I’m feeling good right now physically, so just kind of take it like a normal start.”
Glasnow also faces the challenge of following two of the most dominant postseason performances in recent memory, starting with Blake Snell before being followed by Yoshinobu Yamamoto the following night.
Snell tossed eight shutout innings and Yamamoto followed with a complete game while allowing just one run.
“Just super impressive,” Glasnow said of their performances. “I think just to start a series like that on the road and to pitch two really good games and come out with two wins is huge. So I’m in a good spot for tomorrow, and yeah, I’ll do what I do, do my game planning, and then go out and hopefully pitch well.”
It would be difficult for Glasnow to outperform the previous two pitchers, but he also doesn’t have to. The bar has been set so high, that failing to meet it can still be an extremely good performance.
However, Glasnow is hoping he can build on the previous outings from Snell and Yamamoto, and that good pitching becomes somewhat contagious for the group.
“For me, I think sometimes I think it sounds cool and it’s kind of magical, but I think it’s kind of like if you just go out and pitch well,” Glasnow said.
“Because we have a lot of good starting pitching, I think because we have a lot of good hitting, I think a lot of times it will line up all together at some points, and the then sometimes in the season it won’t. I just think statistically, the odds are that we will pitch good all together at some point, or if it does kind of have some sort of momentum effect.
“I hope it does because then it would help me out tomorrow. But I don’t know. I think, I hope, I guess is my short answer.”
Tyler Glasnow: Dodgers pitching clicking
The Dodgers’ starting pitching has been nothing short of dominant in October, and it’s carried over from a fantastic September for the group. After a lot of struggles during the season, the turn around could not have come at a better time.
“Yeah, it’s perfect timing,” Glasnow said. “I feel like towards the end of the season we started playing really good baseball and then as the postseason has started we’ve all just kind of clicked and gotten on a new level. The vibe is really good in the clubhouse. Everyone is feeling great. It’s just a good time to get hot, for sure.”
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