The Dodgers lost Game 3 to the Astros, but it could have been so much worse

The Dodgers already lost home field advantage in the World Series when the Astros won Game 2 in LA earlier this week, but then the Astros consolidated that win when they took Game 3 as well.

Back in Houston, the Astros’ offense looked as everyone was used to it looking — hitting with power, putting runners on base, and scoring runs early in the game.

They chased Yu Darvish after less than two innings, they put a lot of men on base and threatened to score in what seemed like near-continuous fashion. They almost hit a grand slam that would have tripled their lead at the time. The Astros were clicking.

So yes, the Dodgers are down 2-1 in the series so there are two games in Houston left. But it also could have been a lot worse!

It doesn’t really matter to the Dodgers or their fans at this point (once you’ve been swallowed by quicksand you don’t really care that there are some snakes down there in the pit with you hanging out), but in a bunch of ways it could have definitely been worse.

Take that almost-grand slam from George Springer. That would have made the game 9-3 in the seventh inning with the Dodgers, and while LA couldn’t manage to score two runs after that out nonetheless seven runs, 5-3, is a lot more palatable of a loss than a six-run clobbering that Springer puts an exclamation point on.

The Astros left 12 men on base in the game, more than half of them in scoring position. If even a quarter of those runners had scored things would have gotten even uglier for Dodgers fans to watch on a Friday night when they would have rather been out gallivanting dressed a sexy member of the 101 Dalmatians or something. 5-3 is a semi-respectable finish, 8-3, 9-3, 10-3, etc. is an “I regret forgoing Friday night plans to watch this and I hate everything” finish.

Sure, it seemed like Yu Darvish showed up to Minute Maid Park having left his pitching arm and any sense of command back at LAX, but at least he was the only one!

The other five pitchers that finished the game out for the Dodgers gave up the same amount of hits combined as Darvish did in less than two innings. Kenta Maeda got burned for Game 4 but he pitched a full inning longer than the starter and used seven fewer pitches. They dipped into their bullpen but each reliever’s pitch count was in line with expectations and nobody else got lit up for four runs.

Could have been worse! If you have to use so many relievers just to scrounge through nine innings, the silver lining is definitely that one of them got you to the bottom of the fifth inning and nobody else’s arm fell off along the way. Hopefully some friends were made along the way too but that’s a secondary concern.

There’s also the fact, when considering relievers, that more damage wasn’t done before they even got there. The Astros were making great contact and had some quality hits, so much so that for a few minutes it seemed like more runs had been scored than were actually on the board. They were one base running decision away from at least another run.

So the kitchen was mostly ruined from the fire, but the firefighters managed to save the living room and the entire VHS collection. Just some scorched wallpaper around the doorframe but that can be fixed in Game 4 no problem. Not much to stress about.

Even better, they still scored three runs! Granted, it was against Lance McCullers Jr. and not Justin Verlander’s twin, but they closed the gap from 5-1 to 5-3, which is not nothing in the grand scheme of this series. They lost the battle, but winning the war partially depends on being able to bounce back from game to game, and not feeling like your game plan was immolated on the alter of the baseball gods right in front of you.

There are things they need to fix in that game plan, sure (ahem, Cody Bellinger what’s going on there buddy?) but they are all also fixable. Tweak-able. Come back from the brink-able.

Which brings us to the final bad-thing-draped-in-sparkly-tinsel of this game: it was this game. Game 3! As in, there are up to four more games after this. The Dodgers have time. They aren’t teetering over a pit of metal spikes. They might be in view of a pit — a nice hotel suite away from the pool type distance — but they’re not quite there yet.

This could have happened in Game 5 with Kershaw on the mound, or in Game 6 in a must-win situation.

Game 3 wasn’t a must-anything for LA, even if it seems more like that after the fact from some angles. Every win counts in the World Series, but if you’re going to have a sloppy game like this it’s a far, far better thing (that I do now ... wait that’s wrong) that it happened in the first half of the series rather than the second half.

There’s time to pivot, time to adjust, time to gather themselves up and figure out how to push through and make sure a game like that doesn’t happen again.

Maybe it does happen again, maybe they can’t pull all the threads back together before they snap and the parachute fails and the Astros win and everybody points to not being able to beat a combination of McCullers and Brad Peacock as the reason why that happened.

But that’s not a guarantee, and despite the pit in stomachs of LA fans and some questions to answer before Saturday night for the team, the world isn’t ending just yet.

It could have been so much worse!