World Series Game 5 turning points: David Price
By Bill Felber
One-dimensional offense
Throughout the Series, the Dodgers’ problem was a team-wide inability to expand its home-run oriented attack. Across 54 innings of World Series play, Los Angeles scored just 16 runs, of which only seven scored on anything other than a long ball.
And it’s not like the seven non-home run producing events were inspiring…they included two singles, two sacrifice flies, two errors and an infield ground out.
Because the Dodger offense produced so few scoring opportunities, that lack of dimensionality was not much in evidence Sunday, but it could be found. In the second, Yasiel Puig delivered a one-out single, but neither Chris Taylor nor Austin Barnes could move him.
Similarly in the third, David Freese lucked into a triple when J.D. Martinez lost sight of his fly ball in deep right. The ball dropped harmlessly and rolled to the wall. In that particular circumstance, statisticians estimate a 67 percent chance that the run would score…a big deal since it represented the tying run in a World Series game that Dodgers had to win. In that situation, a sacrifice fly from the Dodgers’ best hitter, Justin turner, was mandatory. But Turner grounded harmlessly to short, Kike Hernandez flied to right, and the threat was zeroed out.