ARLINGTON — Nine innings from the extinction of their season, the Los Angeles Dodgers were on the verge of going home without getting much of anything from their transcendent player, Mookie Betts. The Atlanta Braves had made Mookie moot by, of all things, attacking him with fastballs.
The man with the fastest hands in baseball had seen 29 fastballs in the zone and done next to nothing with them: two singles. His spray chart against those pitches was defaced with too many pop-ups and fly balls to the right side.
After Betts took batting practice before National League Championship Series Game 5, I asked him if the Braves had surprised him with the way they pitched him.