Los Angeles Dodgers World Series loss: By the Numbers

The Los Angeles Dodgers are World Series losers yet again and the numbers surrounding the loss are staggering in retrospect.

For the second consecutive year, the Los Angeles Dodgers had to watch a team celebrate a World Series win at Dodger Stadium. The 5-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox ended the series in five games and has now extended the team’s World Series drought to 30 years.

The five-game series was closer than the final box scores will indicate, there were some positives to the Dodgers play but ultimately the better team won.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers needed a key pitch or key hit they were unable to execute; when it was the Red Sox who needed it, they executed. That was the overall difference.

In baseball numbers never lie (okay maybe Ryan Madson‘s ERA) and these are the key numbers that spelled the Dodgers doom.

7.36

That was the ERA for Clayton Kershaw in this World Series. Needing to stave off eliminiation in Game 5, Kershaw gave up a two-run home run in the first inning and that was all that was needed to eliminate the Dodgers.

Compounded by his four-inning, five-run effort in Game 1, it is not a hyperbole to say that Kershaw had a disastrous World Series. He gave up 14 hits in just 11 innings and gave up three home runs in the clinching loss.

If this was the last of Kershaw’s contributions to the Dodgers then frankly it was awful.

Seven

Ryan Madson had a 3.86 ERA in the World Series. A deceptive stat that hides the fact that Madson was at his worst in the series.

Of the seven runs that Madson inherited all seven runs scored. In Game 1, Madson could not keep a 3-3 tie, in Game 2 he allowed the Red Sox to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead and in Game 4, he turned a 4-0 lead with seven outs to go into 4-3 game.

Madson was effective in the NLDS and NLCS in putting out fires, in the World Series his game was more of tire fire. His ineffectiveness ultimately doomed the Los Angeles Dodgers.

.180

Give credit to the Red Sox pitching, they did very well. But one can argue that by hitting .180, the Dodgers gave them a lot of help. Up and down the lineup the Dodgers were atrocious, there wasn’t really one guy, it was a real team effort.

Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson, Enrique Hernandez and Max Muncy all had 12 plus at-bats in the series and they combined for to 8 for 60, translating to a .133 average and four RBIs. The Dodgers just didn’t cut it with the bats and Red Sox did, that is the series in a nutshell.