Soon after the Dodgers' shutout home loss to the Brewers in Game 3 of the NLCS, manager Dave Roberts, whose team is down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series, was asked about his catcher for Game 4 on Tuesday:
Coach Dave Roberts is asked about Yasmani Grandal: We’re playing Austin tomorrow pic.twitter.com/ZNGY9ytHvC
— Steve Saldivar (@stevesaldivar) October 16, 2018
"Austin" would be usual backup catcher Austin Barnes, and "Yas" would be Yasmani Grandal, the Dodger starter behind the plate under more normal circumstances. The current circumstances, though, are anything but customary.
Grandal is in the midst of a nightmare postseason. Coming into Monday's Game 3 against Milwaukee, Grandal was buried under the weight of a career .094/.256/.188 line in 24 postseason games. Then he went 1 for 4 with three strikeouts and as his lone hit a well placed pop-up "double" ...
Over four at-bats tonight, Yasmani Grandal saw 16 pitches. He whiffed on 6 of them, had another 4 called strikes, and fouled 1. He struck out 3 times. His lone ball in play was a ground-rule double with a 74 MPH exit velocity and 16% hit probability.
— Positive Residual (@presidual) October 16, 2018
He is lost out there. pic.twitter.com/x1dzG70ywx
He also left five runners on base. He also committed another passed ball, which gives him three in his two NLCS games. His Game 3 passed ball on top of Grandal's multitude of other struggles was enough to make even Mary Hart breathe a little fire from the premium seats ...
Mary Hart has not had any Entertainment Tonight from Yasmani Grandal.
— Ryan Walton (@RyanWaltonSBN) October 16, 2018
Here she is yelling at him for another passed ball. pic.twitter.com/Ljl5vaFqmO
Even the wild pitch from Walker Buehler in the sixth was one Grandal should've probably smothered ...
Grandal's NLCS Game 1 was bad enough to make us write about it, and here we are writing up his second appearance in the series in a similar manner. As Roberts noted above, Grandal was a key part of their success in the regular season -- he's a skilled pitch-framer who put up an OPS+ of 120 with 24 home runs in 140 games. But his October tribulations have led to booing like he's probably never heard before. Perhaps more wounding was this ...
There’s a crowd of Dodgers fans chanting “We Want Austin,” calling for Austin Barnes to enter for Yasmani Grandal. Yikes.
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) October 16, 2018
To hear the manager tell it, those fans will get what they want in Game 4.