Dodgers News: D-Backs Manager Believes Merrill Kelly Felt He Had Something to Prove vs LA

What a time to change a narrative.

The Dodgers struggled to reach base against Diamondbacks Game 1 starter Merrill Kelly in their crushing 11-2 NLDS opener loss that set the tone for the rest of the series.

LA looked shell-shocked by the third inning after Kelly thoroughly outperformed Clayton Kershaw to steal home-field advantage as the visitor in their eventual series sweep of LA.

Kelly's manager Torey Luvollo noticed a different attitude from his starter and attributed his successful upset win to a simple mentality change toward his opponent.

"I had to answer a lot of questions about Merrill over the past couple of days with the way the Dodgers have banged him around in the stadium. I think he had a mindset going into this that he wasn't going to let anything like that happen to him again. I think he took it personal. And he went out there executed at a very, very high level."

via Torey Luvollo, post-game comments

Arizona's Game 1 starter had never won a game against the Dodgers before last Saturday night, but the righty picked the perfect time to do so if there ever was one. 

After the Diamondbacks chased Kershaw from the game with six runs in the first, Kelly did the rest by silencing the potent Dodger lineup over 6.1 innings of shutout baseball. 

Kelly definitely set the tone for the rest of the series, as Diamondbacks' pitchers combined to allow just six runs to the Dodgers across the three games.

Kelly is now getting set for Game 2 of the NLCS, while the Dodgers are back at home wondering what went wrong.

For a player that was unable to beat the Dodgers in his entire career, that Game 1 start had to give him a lot of confidence moving forward. 


Published
Caleb Nguyen
CALEB NGUYEN

Caleb is a recent graduate of Cal Poly Pomona with his B.S in Communications through Multimedia Journalism. Always having a deep love of sports, sportswriting has always been a passion of his.