Cardinals take Game 3, Dodgers call for Kershaw on short rest

Five of the last six National League Championship Series have featured the Cardinals or Dodgers. The Cardinals won the pennant last year; the Dodgers won the financial pennant this year. These are supposed to be heavyweights, division winners, a pair of titans stuffed into the cruel steel cage of a best-of-five series. The Cardinals won, 3-1, but it was also a night of questions for both teams, some with answers.

What Game 3 of the National League Division Series was, then, was a display of the shortcomings or potential problems that both teams were hoping would fix themselves. Normal teams lucky and talented enough to get into the playoffs usually have flaws. The Cardinals (a ruptured dam of player development) and the Dodgers (stacks of hundreds having a tribble orgy) aren’t supposed to have flaws. And yet they do. Or they might. They don’t know for sure, though they have suspicions.

The Cardinals’ problem was their shiny, dented new player. The traded a small fortune in Cardinals bucks to get John Lackey, hoping he would a) provide a battle-tested veteran presence to their playoff run and b) work for a rookie’s salary next year, thanks to a unique clause in his post-Tommy John contract. It was a bold gambit... except the Cardinals didn’t count on him being completely ordinary at best, replaceable at worst. This was a major threat to their best-laid plans.

All they could do was hope. Lackey was bad-to-mediocre in September, just as he’d been since joining the Cardinals. But it was possible that was all a mirage, and that he would be the same guy who shut down the Tigers in last year’s ALCS and handled his new teammates well in last year’s World Series. So they took a gamble in the crucial 1-1, mid-series rubber match. Well, it looked like a gamble, but they really didn’t have much of a choice given the alternatives were rushing Michael Wacha back from his injury-inspired stint in the bullpen or pushing Shelby Miller up a day.

Lackey was tremendous, confusing to the Dodgers, and as good as the Cardinals could have hoped. And the positives resonate not just for this specific game, either, but for the future, for a possible NLCS and World Series. The Cardinals started the year with options and options and backup plans for the rotation, so they had to be stunned that they needed support in July. With one postseason game left at home, they can feel good about the Choose Your Own Adventure that led to them counting on Lackey instead of trying to beat him. He seems like a pitcher worth trusting if they get to the next round.

The Dodgers’ problem -- well, the obvious one -- is they have to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL every time they bring in a reliever, hoping to unstick the old one before it does damage the new one can’t fix. They don’t have anyone outside of Kenley Jansen they wholly trust. One day the quasi-hero is J.P. Howell and the anti-hero is Scott Elbert. On Tuesday it might be different. Instead of Howell successfully cleaning up a Brian Wilson mess, it might be Wilson unsuccessfully cleaning up a Brandon League mess. This is the most expensive bullpen in history, remember. Efforts were made to guard against this sort of thing.

A bullpen is a big deal, though, only if the rotation needs help getting through the sixth inning. That doesn’t describe the Dodgers ... except they’re without a fourth starter and Hyun-jin Ryu, their overqualified third starter, might not be healthy enough to be the 120-pitch ox the Dodgers need in the playoffs. He was good, possibly great, while getting squeezed by an erratic strike zone just a touch more than Lackey was, too. It was a risk to give Ryu his first start in nearly a month in a 1-1 series, considering the alternatives if they lost.

That alternative is Clayton Kershaw on three-day’s rest, which is a scenario that ended the Dodgers’ season last year. The difference is that leading into that final start last year, Kershaw was coming off an outstanding outing. Not only that, but he was pulled after just 72 pitches last year -- 72 pitches of calm, effective Kershaw. The decision to start him last year was easy.

This year, Kershaw’s coming off a vampire of a start, blowing past 100 pitches early and getting shelled in the process. People who know better were talking about sign-stealing and other such nonsense. Look back at the highlights and watch A.J. Ellis’s glove. Sets up there, moves here. Sets up there, moves here. Kershaw was missing his spots like a September call-up. After his long season that started with an injury, it’s easy for the outside observer (me!) to guess that he’s hitting a late-season wall.

Three day’s rest? After that outing? Okay, but only if you have a strong bullp ... my goodness, this is quite the gamble. And one that still might work, considering that Kershaw is still the best living pitcher until the next election. It would have been a much, much more comfortable gamble, though, if the Dodgers had a game to play with. I’d still take three-day Kershaw over Shelby Miller prepared however you want, but the Dodgers are still nervous, and for good reason.

The Cardinals entered the NLDS with an enigmatic veteran who was acquired specifically because they didn’t want to deal with an enigma. The Dodgers entered the NLDS with world’s most expensive and erratic bullpen, and they also had a three-man rotation that might not have a healthy third man.

The Cardinals got good news: Lackey looked great.

The Dodgers got good news: Ryu looked great.

After that, the bad news was shoveled onto the Dodgers’ side of the fence. They still don’t have a bridge to Jansen, even though that’s what they paid for, and even though they could REALLY USE THAT BRIDGE right now. Both teams found a few things out. Only one of them feels good about all of it.