It seems some of his opponents thought the same thing.
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“My stomach pretty much sank when [Lux] hit it,” third baseman Evan Longoria told reporters after the game. “I couldn’t believe it didn’t [go out]. I guess it was our night.”
“I hardly ever remember a light breeze here most nights,” Crawford said after noting he also thought the ball was gone.
The extremely gusty winds helped keep Lux’s ball in play, allowing outfielder Steven Duggar to make the game-sealing snag in center field. ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeted after the game, “Gavin Lux hit the final pitch of the game 106.9 mph and at a 22-degree launch angle. Batters this season, on balls hit 106-107 mph and at 22-degree launch, were 55 for 62 (.887) with 38 home runs. The Dodgers had four such hits this year. All were homers. Lux thought he had one.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has since blamed the wind for his team’s loss, though he conveniently ignored the fact that his team was the beneficiary of the gusts on more than one occasion.
Longoria and Crawford made the two biggest plays for the Giants on the evening. Longoria hit a solo home-run in the fifth inning that ended up being the only scoring play of the night, and Crawford made a leaping catch for a line-out in the seventh inning that denied Dodgers’ star Mookie Betts what likely would have been an RBI single.
