COMMENTARY Ramirez epitomizes Dodgers' talent He continues to be a game-changer, leading L.A. to a rout of Atlanta in Game 3 By Mark Saxon | ESPNLosAngeles.com Photo: ESPN LOS ANGELES -- Teams that advance deep into October tend to have a narrative that adheres around them. In some cases, it's the team that gets hot in September and just keeps going. Or, it's the battle-tested team that struggles series after tough series and learns to adapt and survive. Some teams eke by with just enough offense by pitching the other team into submission. Other teams batter down fences long after their starter has left the game. Somebody asked catcher A.J. Ellis the other day to describe the Los Angeles Dodgers' identity. "Honestly," Ellis said, "I feel like it's talent." The Dodgers have thrown their talent at the Atlanta Braves in waves in this National League Division Series, and it's beginning to put them in an enviable position. The Dodgers took a two-games-to-one lead with Sunday night's 13-6 win over Atlanta. No sooner do the Braves emerge from the trials of facing Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher on the planet, then they stumble into Zack Greinke, who would be the best pitcher in just about any other city. Hanley Ramirez has six extra-base hits in his first three career playoff games, tying Dodgers legends Steve Garvey and Duke Snider for the most in a series in team history /USA TODAY Sports They pay their leadoff hitter $20 million and he barely merits a mention most nights, though Carl Crawford certainly did Sunday, his three-run home run igniting the Dodgers' offense. Their first baseman might be the most analytical hitter in the game. Their closer is the best pitcher no one has ever heard of. Aside from Kershaw, though, there is really only one towering talent in the Dodgers' clubhouse. The scary thing for the Braves is the guy who's sitting in their dugout pulling the strings has known all about it since the day he learned he would be playing L.A. Manager Fredi Gonzalez may not have seen eye to eye all the time when he was together with Hanley Ramirez in Miami, but Gonzalez is a veteran baseball man. He knows freakish ability on a baseball field when he sees it. "I told Donny [Mattingly] when he was injured, this guy could tilt the field," Gonzalez said earlier this series. Ramirez has certainly tilted a lot of Dodgers runs to the plate in these three games. He's batting .538 with four doubles, a triple, home run and six RBIs. Not bad for a guy who had never had a postseason at-bat until Thursday night. The six extra-base hits is the kind of thing only two Dodgers ever have accomplished in a postseason series and they're pretty good names if you're a Dodgers fan: Steve Garvey and Duke Snider. And it has put the Dodgers on the brink of advancing. In fact, their position is practically ideal, with two more chances to clinch, facing high-mileage starter Freddy Garcia on Monday, and with Kershaw standing by ready to pitch Game 5 on normal rest. Mattingly knows hitting. He knows potential and he knows results. So, going into this season, his message to Ramirez was fairly consistent. He told him he's too good to bat .250. Ramirez, a former batting champion, hit .243 in 2011 in Miami and .257 between Miami and L.A. last season. Photo: San Gabriel Valley Tribune When the Dodgers have been able to keep him on the field, Ramirez has been their driving force all season with about half the media attention Yasiel Puig was getting. Now, with one of the great breakout performances in recent playoff history, his years of obscurity are over. "I just kept telling him, 'I want the whole world to see you. I want the whole world to see how good you are,'" Mattingly said. Players are supposed to be nervous for their first playoff series. Ramirez may have shown a nerve or two in his first at-bat, a strikeout against Kris Medlen on Thursday night, but the rest of the series has been a continuation of his regular season. He has made major league baseball games look like Sunday afternoon softball games. His teammates marvel at his ability to play so well while looking so happy. His 1.040 OPS trailed only Miguel Cabrera among players with at least 300 plate appearances this season. Now, he gets to do it in games people in other time zones might actually stay up to watch. He said he's enjoying October baseball so far. How could he not the way things are going? "It's an unbelievable feeling, just the energy around you -- in the dugout, on the field, in the crowd," Ramirez said. Ramirez feeling the energy /MSN Fox Sports Just think if he were healthy. For weeks, he has been dealing with an irritated nerve in his back and the related hamstring tightness. In fact, it seems like virtually every key Dodgers hitter is on the verge of going down at any moment, perhaps the No. 1 worry for Mattingly at this point. Puig had to retreat to the clubhouse mid-game to get a little treatment on his knee. Crawford joked that he was on "so many medications" after flipping into the stands to make a catch Sunday and, perhaps, bothering his chronically sore lower back, he wouldn't know how he felt until Monday. In other words, closing out the series Monday -- which would afford the Dodgers three days of rest heading into the NLCS -- would be entirely preferable to flying all the way across the country again for a Game 5 in Atlanta. The Dodgers players, who say they were a little surprised at the lack of energy in Dodger Stadium when the game began, would like to see maximum pressure applied to the Braves on Monday night. "Make them squeeze the bats a little harder, grip the ball a little harder," reliever J.P. Howell said. But, of course, these types of things are entirely unpredictable at this time of year. If the Dodgers don't close this thing out in one of the next two games, their identity will be the talented team that went practically nowhere. __
think it was chris who said it the other day, yahoo's tim brown writes some good shit Hanley Ramirez, rejuvenated and relevant, leads Dodgers past Braves in Game 3Yahoo! Sports -- 12 hours agoLOS ANGELES – He's bigger than you think, Hanley Ramirez is. Broader. Thicker. He walks with that heaviness sometimes, in the later innings when his body is weary, especially heavy for a man who plays shortstop and twice stole more than 50 bases in this league. He wears his jersey rakishly unbuttoned, like it can't hold him, not tonight it can't, that big chain and cross dangling, and he holds his bat high, and kicks his front leg high, and fellow ballplayers don't understand how all that doesn't kill his bat speed. But it doesn't. Never has. Somewhere along the line, the world began to underestimate Hanley Ramirez. He was hurt. He didn't really want to play. He was tired of being a Florida Marlin. He had made his money. The perception of him had changed, and whether it was self-inflicted or not was a matter of where one stood in relation to an unflattering career arc. The Marlins, for one, unloaded him, happily, as they are prone to do. He said Sunday night, after he'd hit three more line drives and the Los Angeles Dodgers had played to the brink of the NLCS, that those were terrible times, when a weak shoulder had made him half the player he expected of himself. "I don't want to remember those moments," he said. "It was awful." But, yeah, at 29, suddenly he's bigger than you thought he was. Wearing the white jersey and playing shortstop and batting third is who he is again, and in a place where they're suckers for stars. In a division series that means the world to the Dodgers, who are trying to make something of themselves again too, it is Ramirez who has never been better, and he'd been pretty damned good once before. In three games against the Atlanta Braves, including Sunday's Game 3 won 13-6 by the Dodgers, Ramirez is batting .538. The Dodgers are a win away, with a full ballpark awaiting Monday night's Game 4, with Clayton Kershaw in reserve if that doesn't work out, and with Ramirez swinging the bat like there's not a pitch or a pitcher who could beat him. Against a pitching staff that was the finest in the National League over six months, Ramirez has seven hits in 13 at-bats. He's homered, tripled, doubled four times and driven in six runs. Watch every pitch of those 13 at-bats, every subtle weight shift, the way he starts high and finishes higher, grander, and the way the ball leaves the bat, hard and backspun, and a greater question arises. "Yeah," A.J. Ellis said, "I don't know how he got out six times." After he'd doubled off Julio Teheran, tripled off Alex Wood and singled off Jordan Walden, all part of a 14-hit uprising by the Dodgers, Ramirez seemed touched by how wonderful the game could be again. He'd watched so many October baseball games from his home in Miami and never played in one himself. He'd sat through the San Francisco Giants' celebration last October, and he told himself often that next year would be the Dodgers and him playing for something like that. Not everybody wins, of course, but Ramirez wanted a shot at it. "We're here now," he said. He's still not whole. Every day, like the men on rosters all over the game, he trudges into the trainer's room and tends to his back and his hamstring and whatever else may have arisen. Don Mattingly, his manager, had rested him plenty in the season's final weeks, because of days like today. Ramirez fought him plenty, too. He wanted to play. "I just kept telling him," Mattingly said, "'I want the whole world to see you. I want the world to see how good you are.'" Ramirez would nod and report to the bench, waiting for the important games and the important at-bats, allowing his body to catch up to the time of season. Along came the fourth inning Sunday night. Ramirez laced a line drive into left-center field. He turned first and headed to second base, pulling up slightly as he arrived. Braves center fielder Jason Heyward noted Ramirez's deceleration and he, too, slowed. And then Ramirez dug for third base. He beat the throw easily. The Dodgers scored four runs that inning. They are better for him. Since the trade two Julys ago, Ramirez has played 150 games as a Dodger and batted .312 with 30 home runs and 101 RBI. The three playoff games, you know about. "When I got here, they changed everything around me and in my mind," he said. "From the first day, Donnie, I remember when I got to St. Louis and when I walked into his office, he just told me to just be you." Part of that has been injuries. The rest has been production. And at a time the Dodgers are trying to become relevant again, so is Hanley Ramirez, and it seems to suit them both. In fact, they're both a little bigger for it. __
