By Ron Kaplan, contributor
Unless you’re a Red Sox fan, this one was pretty ho-hum. Boston beat the visiting LA Dodgers, 8-4. Neither of our boys were involved in the highlights.
Ian Kinsler started for the home team and went 0-for-4. Click here for an interview he did about Boston’s drive to the World Series.
Joc Pederson entered the game for the Dodgers as a pinch-hitter in the seventh, leading off that inning by grounding out sharply to second, although not to 2B Kinsler, since the Sox were in a shift. Pederson remained in the game and again grounded out to second to lead off the ninth, this time to his co-religionist.
In an ESPN ranking of both teams by Sam Miller, Pederson was listed at #28:
We really can’t stress enough how incredible the Dodgers’ platoon system is this year — with two guys at almost every position who would start on the vast majority of teams — but here it is again: Pederson is a pretty good defensive center fielder who slots in between Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto on the 2018 OPS+ leaderboard, and he is going to end up starting fewer than half the Dodgers’ postseason games. Fun fact: When I was drawing up the list of 50 players in this World Series, he was the last name I recalled, after Dylan Floro and Blake Swihart, because you actually can forget that Joc Pederson, near star, is even on this team.
Kinsler was ranked #33:
This might be overly optimistic, considering the man just had easily his worst offensive season and some extremely humbling at-bats against Gerrit Cole in the American League Championship Series. But Kinsler’s defense is still fantastic, he still usually puts the ball in play, he’s got great awareness and I’ve just got a weird hunch he’s worth watching in this series.
Game Two starts tonight at 8:09pm ET.
Ron Kaplan (@RonKaplanNJ) hosts Kaplan’s Korner, a blog about Jews and sports. He is the author of three books, including The Jewish Olympics: The History of the Maccabiah Games and Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War.
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