Luke Weaver shuts down the Dodgers in Game 4 to continue the improbable surge

New York Yankees catcher Austin Wells called for 139 pitches from six pitchers Tuesday in World Series Game 4. Each one arrived like dishes from a restaurant menu to a food critic. Some went exactly as planned. Some were overcooked, some undercooked. I had something very specific in mind when I asked Wells which offer was his favorite out of the 139.

“Fastball. Mookie,” Wells said with a big smile.

Bingo. The specialty of the house.

Before the Dodgers went in full point formationto let a World Series game—a possible World Series clinching game— Got away like loose change through couch cushions, Game 5 hung in the balance when Yankees manager Aaron Boone bumped his closer, Luke Weaver, into the game to face Mookie Betts for the tying run in the seventh inning.

What happened in that confrontation and what it means for Game 5 and what baseball is left in this series could turn the World Series in a very different direction. The The Yankees would win Game 4 with a camouflage score of 11-4. But don’t kid yourself: Weaver vs. Bett’s fight was huge. And Weaver won it in a very big way.

“I came into today ready for a great game,” Weaver said. “I wanted to leave it all out on the pitch. It’s the last fight before they get to act. We don’t want to lose. I want to be able to live with myself and put my head on the pillow that I gave it my all.”

New York led 6–4 when Boone called on Weaver to face Betts with Tommy Edman at second base. The count was 2-and-2 after Weaver tried two fastballs and two cutters from the outside corner of the plate. Wells, the rookie catcher, noticed something in Betts’ body language.

“He did this,” Wells said, mimicking how Betts, when he took two of those pitches, leaned over the plate with his head and upper body.

“I know he tries to take the ball the other way, especially with the runner on second base,” Wells said.

Wells called for an elevated four-seam fastball on the infield. Many catchers prefer not to risk an inside pitch late in the game to a hitter who can tie with one swing. Wells defied convention, not on a whim, but because of his powers of observation. Weaver heard the call on his Pitchcom device and never doubted it.

“He’s looking for the ball away and trying to shoot it that way,” Weaver said. “That’s his strength. And he has an ability to put the bat on the ball. And many times put some velo behind him.

“I have to pitch. I mean, it’s so easy to pitch to—I did it early in the at-bat—to kind of jerk. You don’t want to hit somebody, but you know you have to be in that pitch. And that the human element can sometimes play a role, especially in a big moment where you feel like you need to be really relaxed and fluid.

“And the conviction has to be all or nothing going in there. I think there was such a calmness to give it another chance that, hey, we’re not doing it again. It’s all or nothing. I was able to just stay behind. (Wells) had mentioned staying behind – like always throwing right by him. Yep. And that’s a big cue for me when I’m really trying to establish those pitches at the plate.”

Weaver let loose with a 96.6 mph laser just over the top of the strike zone and into the infield he wanted. Betts took a massive cut and whipped.

“That’s Mookie Betts,” Wells said. “He doesn’t swing through fastballs. But when Weave gets his fastball up there, it explodes. Nobody hits it.”

Betts’ hands are so quick that he’s just as likely to hit a home run as he is to swing through a four-seam fastball. He had 23 of each all year. Betts had seen 774 fours and struck out swinging at just seven of them. Basically, Betts is so hard to get a fastball past that he fans on a four-seamer roughly once every full moon.

“It was one that I just look back on,” Weaver said, “and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s sweet. That was nice.'”

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It was the third time Betts faced Weaver in the series. In Game 1, Betts dug out a low two-strike changeup for a sacrifice fly. In Game 3, Betts chased a 2-0 cutter and grounded into a double play.

“It’s a tough pitch to execute in general, just the arm side up and in,” Weaver said of his Game 4 fastball. “I mean, I know what he’s trying to do. He’s a great hitter. He’s trying to get over the plate and drive it and do his thing. And he did a good job with the changeup in Game 1 to get that sac fly .

“And then yesterday I knew I had to find a way to get the ball to the right place. And obviously tried to get the double play, and obviously succeeded well. But tonight was just … you can’t just be predictable.”

Weaver went back for the eighth. He retired the insanely hot Freddie Freeman on a fly ball. Nobody beats Freddie these days, not even Weaver. Freeman joined Lou Gehrig (1928) on Tuesday as the only players to hit four World Series home runs without striking out.

But then Teoscar Hernandez and Max Muncy were no match for Weaver. Like Betts, they also struck out. Weaver was so intent on going back to the ninth and finishing what would have been a seven-out save that he ran past Boone on the dugout steps without allowing his manager to speak to him. Yes, he blew his manager off so Boone had no choice but to leave him behind.

“I’m trying to keep my cool,” Weaver said. “I mean, I’m trying to stay calm and not overdo it, but he looked at me like he was going to ask me something and I just said, ‘No.’ I felt a little rude about it, but I think it’s a moment I think we can move past because I thought, ‘Don’t ever ask me that again’.”

I asked Weaver if pitching coach Matt Blake had to catch him.

“No, I just went to where I’m going to sit,” Weaver said. “I mean I just left so you knew where to be.”

Boone and Blake read the body language. Weaver had no intention of going anywhere.

“Oh yeah, they got the message,” Weaver said. “I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s great’ — in a nice way. “I’m going out again.” So I wanted it. I wanted it all day. I thought about it all day.”

Weaver said from the moment he arrived at the ballpark he was prepared to go three innings in a game the Yankees were staring into the face of elimination. Thanks to Dodger’s causal strategy, it wasn’t necessary.

Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts was committed to staying away from every one of his top six relievers in a deficit situation. So he took a 6-4 game and left it in the hands of the last man on his staff, Brent Honeywell. The Yankees beat Honeywell for five runs. By leaving the game with Honeywell, Roberts caused these dominoes to fall:

Punt formation gave the Yankees a full-throttle Weaver (he only threw 21 pitches) and a lot more confidence up and down the lineup.

“In my head, it was three innings,” Weaver said, “but obviously it’s nice not to have to go through that. Yeah, that’s the best-case scenario. I mean, our offense came through. We knew they would, right? That was only a matter of time.

“But I’m ready to go three tomorrow if I have to. We sleep when we need to, but we recover and do those things, but we’re fine right now.”

Until this year, Weaver, 31, had bounced among six organizations with a 27-42 record, a 5.14 ERA and no saves. Everything changed this winter for the journeyman.

“I’ve always struggled with the consistency of my leg kick,” he said. “I felt like the way I was moving would always create this similar reaction and it would always create, more than anything else, stress on my arm and like bad feedback. And then I would always tell myself if I could just throw flat-footed, like you just end up, like you’re playing shortstop …”

Last winter, he set up a net at the end of his Florida driveway, marked off 60 feet, 6 inches and threw down a bucket of balls. At first he stood on one leg “and found the way you see where I float with my leg over my other leg.”

“Then I threw and threw and threw.”

All winter it was just Weaver throwing into a net like this – no leg kick.

“But what I noticed every time I threw was that I felt a clean, efficient throw,” he said. “I felt it looked different. I felt like it ticked off every category I could look at for me personally as a pitcher. Movement, consistency, durability, next day recovery. And I just said, you know what? What do I have to lose? Like I’ve done everything. I’ve tried everything.”

He didn’t tell Boone or Blake what he was up to. When he started throwing with his shortened delivery in spring training, they were shocked — and not too happy.

“I went into camp and I blindsided them and I felt bad that I did that because I didn’t communicate that,” Weaver said. “But I was so focused and it never once crossed my mind that I’m going to tell anyone about this.

“Because every single day I was just in this bubble and my driveway throwing into a net and just immersing myself in what I was doing. And it was just… The confidence level kept growing and growing and growing and the joy of feeling good and feeling, ‘Oh man, I can throw this ball anywhere I want.’

“And from there it was about, ‘Hey, I don’t have to worry about my arm when I wake up every day. I don’t have to worry about, ‘should I have it today?’ and all the many things. And I look at it now, it’s the healthiest I’ve ever felt. I didn’t have a problem all year.

“It’s the hardest I’ve ever thrown. It’s the most consistent I’ve been in the world. I mean, all the stuff, right? We see it across the board. I’m sitting there going, ‘Holy shit.’ That’s how I envisioned my career, right? That’s what we want out of our careers. It came pretty late, but better late than never.”

I reminded Weaver of another guy who became famous for pitching in the World Series without a leg kick: Don Larsen. I asked Weaver if he got the historical reference.

“I don’t,” he said. “I’d love a few seconds.”

I told him about the perfect game Larsen threw in the 1956 World Series—for the Yankees against the Dodgers.

Weaver may not be perfect, but he’s close. Since picking up his first save on September 4, Weaver is 4–0 with a 1.08 ERA over 25 innings. He’s the Yankees’ best weapon. Anyone who can blast Betts with a fastball is a piece you want on the board when the season is on the line. The Dodgers and Betts had an option to take him off the board for Game 5. They gambled.

“This,” Weaver said of pitching in the World Series, “is beyond infinity, beyond anything you could imagine. Like, it’s Buzz Lightyear stuff. It’s been great. I mean, we’re playing some close games over the the postseason, and it’s high, high stress, right? That’s like all you want.”

The journeyman, who spent the winter throwing pitches into a net in his driveway, sits behind ace Gerrit Cole as the Yankees’ best option to get the series back to Los Angeles. He’s rested enough to get more than three outs again. Thanks to the eighth-inning explosion made possible by the Dodgers’ collaboration, the Yankees’ clubhouse was brimming with confidence after Game 4. You could tell. You could see it. It was written in the team’s itinerary in large letters clubhouse monitors: “Win ​​tomorrow. Fly on Thursday.”