“Sean Manaea keeps Mets' NLCS hopes alive after Game 1 loss”

Family and friends will say goodbye to Mabeline Mullins Glasshagel on Monday in Wanatah, Indiana. The 78-year-old died last Tuesday in a hospital in Valparaiso. She left behind two daughters, two sisters, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews. One of those nephews, Sean Manaea, will not be able to attend the funeral. A left-handed pitcher for the New York Mets, he is tasked here at Dodger Stadium with stopping one of the hottest teams in postseason history while Aunt Mabel, his mother Opal's sister, is laid to rest.

“It’s a small town,” Manaea says. “Everyone knows everyone. Basically my whole family will be there. I’ll have some friends at the game.”

Manaea grew up in Wanatah, a town of about 1,000 people and less than 1.5 square miles. His father, Faaloloi Manaea Jr. – the son of a Marine who served in World War II – served in Vietnam and was then stationed in Indiana. There he met Opal. They settled in Wanatah, where Manaea grew up with as solid a Midwestern work ethic as you can get. His father worked in a steel mill and his mother in a car factory.

Manaea is the embodiment of this work ethic. The 34th first-round pick in 2013 out of Indiana State, Manaea has more career wins (77) than any other first-rounder in this draft — 11 years and five organizations later. His pursuit of improvement is limitless.

In late July of that season, after watching Chris Sale pitch, he changed the way he threw a baseball. He dropped his overhead diaper and lowered the angle of his arm. He also changed the grip of his changeup, switching to a one-seam grip. Since the reinvention, Manaea is 7-2 with a 2.98 ERA in 14 starts.

As his family says goodbye to Aunt Mabel today, the Mets need Manaea more than ever. The Dodgers look as unstoppable this week as any team has ever looked in October. They won NLCS Game 1 on Sunday by the same score as a loss, 9-0, and faced almost as little resistance.

There is a name for what the Dodgers became, and it dates back to the 1630s. Through the streets of Puri, a city in India, people pulled a huge chariot with an image of Krishna as part of an annual festival. It was said, probably apocryphally, that devotees sacrificed themselves by throwing themselves in front of the barrel wagon. This tradition gave rise to the word “Moloch,” which has come to mean a merciless force that can destroy anything that stands in its way.

See also Dodgers, Los Angeles.

These Dodgers threw 33 consecutive scoreless innings, tying the Orioles' 1966 postseason record. They outscored the Padres and Mets 23-0 during that run. They beat the Mets in Game 1 with so much offensive baseball that it was the biggest shutout blowout without the need for a home run 1 among the 389 postseason games ever played.

Like pearls on a necklace, Los Angeles strung together nine hits, seven walks and — get this — two unnecessary but well-executed sacrifice bunts to steamroll New York. It wasn't pretty in the competition unless you're a fan of swing decisions. The Dodgers painted a masterpiece there.

The Dodgers not Track 22 of the first 23 pitches from the zone thrown by Mets pitchers Kodai Senga and David Peterson. Six of their nine hits, including four of the five that scored runs, came after a Dodgers hitter tipped the count in his favor by not chasing out of the zone.

“You gotta take what they give you,” Dodgers coach Robert Van Scoyoc said of hitting. “It just depends on how they pitch. So there’s not one formula that we try to use.”

That night, Senga couldn't find his splitter or the strike zone. He needed help. The Dodgers delivered none. Senga walked four of the first eight batters. Three of them scored. The router was turned on.

“He was struggling with his command, and I thought they recognized that,” Van Scoyac says of his hitters, “and kind of put pressure on him by making him try to throw strikes, and that affected him. “

The Dodgers make pitchers sweat. Only the Yankees and Brewers chased pitches less often than the Dodgers. They were even better in Game 1, limiting their chase (24%) than they had during the season (29.1%, well below the league average of 31.8%).

“You know, it's like, who cares about the soup recipe as long as it ends up being the same product?” Van Scoyoc says. “So yeah, some nights it’s slug, some nights it’s hits.

“That's what we do. We're talking about being adaptable and taking advantage of what the other team gives you and finding different ways to win the game. And this game tonight, with the way they lined us up, was the reason we had to win the game.”

The Mets were stunned. They thought Peterson was the bullpen weapon of choice to neutralize Shohei Ohtani. But Ohtani killed that idea the first time he saw him, in the third inning and with Los Angeles taking a 4-0 lead with a 116.5 mph laser of a run-scoring double. It was Ohtani's second run-scoring hit of the night. Peterson ended up wasting 40 throws at a low-leverage spot as Mets manager Carlos Mendoza hoped to buy time for his offense to wake up against stalled Dodgers right-hander Jack Flaherty. Instead, the deficit simply grew larger.

By the eighth inning, the Mets had seen enough of Ohtani. When Ohtani faced José Buttó with two runners on to bat, Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner marched to the mound with instructions to throw Ohtani cautiously. Buttó more than obliged; He threw four pitches not even close to the plate.

But if you avoid Ohtani, the game just becomes another MVP, Mookie Betts, immediately proving his own greatness with a base-clearing double. Since early September and the first significant pennant race and postseason of his seven-year MLB career, Ohtani is batting .613 with runners in scoring position (19 of 31), including 16 hits in his last 19 at-bats. An unimaginable success rate at any time, but especially at this time of year.

“I mean, there's going to be some variety, and of course he's going to be concentrating on something and executing something,” Van Scoyoc said. “Hopefully it will stay that way in the next few weeks.”

The Mets are already in trouble in this series because Peterson was burned in a low-leverage spot, they have no obvious antidote to Ohtani in their bullpen, and it's obvious that the Dodgers won't come at them with chases like the Phillies have did in the NLDS.

At least New York has the right pitcher on the mound to try to stop the juggernaut. Since Manaea reworked his pitching style and whatnot, the Mets are 11-3 when he takes the ball. Given the Dodgers' evolution, that task has become even more difficult. And considering how much Aunt Mabel meant to him and how much this beginning was his own way of saying goodbye, it only became more meaningful.