McAdam: Late offensive wakeup call after Friday marathon helps seal Game 4 win

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps it was the inevitable cooling off of an offense that had been so productive all season and through the first 11 games of the postseason.

Or maybe it was nothing more complicated than fatigue, following seven hours and 20 minutes and 18 innings of baseball from the night (and early morning, if we're going to get technical about it) before.

But there were the Red Sox, with exactly one hit and no runs to show for themselves after six innings Saturday night, just nine outs away and four runs down to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were seemingly poised to tie this World Series.

"It looked like, through the first part of the game, you had a bunch of tired baseball players out there,'' said Andy Barkett, the Red Sox assistant hitting coach. "I don't know if it was tired guys, or just really good pitching. Maybe a combination of both.''

It certainly didn't help that the Red Sox were getting nothing whatsoever from their two most productive hitters: Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez.

In Friday night's long march, Betts was hitless in eight plate appearances, reaching just once via an intentional walk. It wasn't any better in the early going Saturday, with Betts hitless his first three at-bats.

Martinez wasn't any better. He was 0-for-3 Friday before being lifted for a pinch-runner following an intentional walk, and Saturday, he had two strikeouts and a line out to short to show his first three trips to the plate.

But in the seventh inning, things began to change for the better, as a late-inning comeback sent the Sox on their way to a wild 9-6 victory.

First, Rich Hill was lifted, which should have elicited cheers from the Red Sox dugout. Hill had kept the Sox pitifully off balance the first two-plus times through the Boston lineup, expertly spotting his 90 mph fastball with a sharp curve. The Red Sox hitters never found their rhythm, in part because, over the year, they've demonstrated that they fare far better against the game's hard-throwers rather than finesse pitchers who try to beat them by changing speeds and showing precise command.

"We like hitting the fastball, there's no two ways about it,'' conceded Barkett.

"I think the numbers show (we're partial to facing high velocity),'' concurred hitting coach Tim Hyers. "We have more trouble with (the soft stuff). We've made adjustments to it, but if you compare the two, I think our guys perform a little bit better against velo (velocity)."

Beyond preferring the high octane you often get from late-inning relievers, there was the matter of plate discipline -- or rather, lack thereof.

On Friday night, locked in the pressure-cooker of an 18-inning battle, the Red Sox got jumpy, with a number of hitters intent on winning the game with one swing. As such, they got out of their game plan and began swinging at pitches out of the strike zone.

"Guys were chasing, trying to be heroes,'' said Barkett. "We were swinging at balls, which were also doing last night and early tonight. Just like anybody else, it's hard to get hits when you're swinging at balls. But when we let them come into the strike zone and make them pitch to us, obviously we're the most dangerous team in baseball offensively.''

But with Hill gone and the velocity cranked up, the Red Sox soon responded. The big blow didn't come from an obvious choice. In fact, it came off the bench, as pinch-hitter Mitch Moreland greeted Ryan Madson by belting a three-run missile into the right field bleachers.

Not Betts, not Martinez. But someone who wasn't even in the starting lineup.

"We've won 108 games, and obviously we've got some guys, MVPs and that-type guys on our team,'' said Moreland. "But it's taken all 25 of us to get where we are today.''

The hit parade was underway. After Moreland gave them life and brought them to within a run in the seventh, Steve Pearce added a homer off hard-throwing closer Kenley Jansen.

That was partly because the velocity was dialed up, but also, unlike Hill -- whom most Sox players had never faced before -- the hitters had seen enough of the Los Angeles bullpen. That played a role, too.

"When they're familiar with guys, and start to see them a little bit more -- got a good luck Friday night, and the first two games -- they make pretty good adjustments,'' said Hyers. "The more we see them, I feel like it's a pretty good advantage for out hitters. Get Rich out of the game, and get to the bullpen. Obviously, they have some good arms. But we've seen them, faced them. We can talk about what's happening. I think some of the guys were thinking the same thing.''

In the ninth, with the game tied and Brock Holt on second representing the go-ahead run, the Sox went to Rafael Devers off the bench for a big pinch-hitting appearance off Dylan Floro. Devers had been particularly overly-aggressive on Friday, but he was more dialed in this time.

"You're hoping and praying like hell that he's not going to try to hit it nine miles out of Dodger Stadium,'' said Barkett. "All we need is a knock up the middle, and on this stage, 22-years old, he was able to get a line drive up the middle and compose himself. It was pretty impressive.''

And perfectly in keeping with a more successful game plan the Red Sox offense had over the final third of the game.