LOS ANGELES – Manny Ramirez knows what it’s like to come back from a 3-0 deficit in a league championship series (sorry, Yankees fans), so he’s not about to panic now.
Manager Joe Torre’s Dodgers returned here yesterday staring at a 2-0 deficit to the Phillies in the NLCS, but there was no sign of panic from either Torre or his players heading into Game 3 tonight at Dodger Stadium.
“We’ve still got a lot of confidence,” Ramirez said after Friday’s 8-5 loss at Philadelphia in Game 2. “They’ve won the first two games, but it’s not over. We’ve got to keep going. You don’t win the series in two games – you’ve got to win four.”
Despite Ramirez’s bravado, no doubt earned when he was a member of the 2004 Red Sox team that came back from a 3-0 hole against the Yankees in the NLCS, this is uncharted territory for the storied Dodgers.
In eight trips to the NLCS, no Dodgers team has ever faced a 2-0 deficit.
“We’ve dug ourselves a little bit of a hole,” third baseman Casey Blake said Friday. “We’ve got the will to win and the desire to win, but we’re just not getting it done right now.”
The Dodgers aren’t getting it done in the won-lost column because they aren’t getting it done at the plate. Philadelphia pitching has dominated L.A. hitters, who are batting just .221 with a whopping 22 strikeouts in the first two games combined.
Catcher Russell Martin and right fielder Andre Ethier lead the Dodgers’ strikeout parade with four apiece, although Ethier has been among the few offensive standouts with a .375 average (3-for-8).
“They were trying to prove a point, and they mean business,” Ramirez said of the Phillies’ pitching. “They want to win, and they pitched great. It’s on them to keep it up.”
The Dodgers also aren’t getting much from the vaunted starting pitching that was so dominant in L.A.’s sweep of the Cubs in the opening round. Derek Lowe and Chad Billingsley were both battered around in the first two games, particularly Billingsley in Game 2.
Billingsley lasted just 21/3 innings Friday night, getting shelled for seven earned runs on eight hits and three walks.
“No excuses,” Billingsley said. “It just wasn’t a fun night for me, and it hasn’t been a fun series for us.”
Even so, the Phillies still appear unlikely to cakewalk to their first World Series appearance since 1993.
The biggest hump of all for Philadelphia: Los Angeles’ home-field advantage. The next three games are in Dodger Stadium, where the Dodgers swept a four-game series from the Phillies in early August.
Torre, who among other comebacks rallied the Yankees from a 2-0 deficit to the Braves in the 1996 World Series, is counting on that experience and that home-park edge to revive his current club.
“You don’t get to this time of year without having the capabilities of winning three or four games in a row,” Torre said after the Dodgers’ 8-5 loss Friday night in Game 2. “When you’re playing a seven-game series, momentum is such a huge factor. You can get it back with one game, so that’s all we really have to think about.”
And that’s exactly what Torre told his team in the clubhouse after Friday’s loss, according to several Dodgers.
“We’ve worked too hard to get to this point,” Blake said. “Joe reminded us how hard we fought, how we had our backs against the wall in August and still got into the playoffs. We’re going to remember that.”