Pages 'not afraid of the moment' with historic multi-HR game

NEW YORK -- In a lineup stacked with superstars, it was a rookie hitting in the nine-hole who gave the Dodgers a glimmer of hope in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series.

Andy Pages became the first Dodgers rookie with a multihomer game in the postseason with a pair of shots in back-to-back innings of a 12-6 loss to the Mets at Citi Field, when L.A. needed every run it could get. Pages’ solo homer off Mets starter David Peterson in the fourth made it an 8-2 Dodgers deficit, and a three-run homer in the fifth off Reed Garrett turned it into a 10-5 game.

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Who could have foreseen at the start of the year that Pages would find himself in this position? Born in Havana, Cuba, and a Dodger since he signed with them after defecting in 2018, Pages started this season as L.A.’s No. 3-ranked prospect by MLB Pipeline, and No. 94 on the overall Top 100 list despite coming off a serious shoulder injury suffered in his very first game at the Triple-A level the previous May that caused him to miss most of the season.

Eleven months later, he was making his Major League debut. And now, with the Dodgers’ defensive alignment reconfigured to account for shortstop Miguel Rojas being out with a sports hernia and second baseman Gavin Lux being limited by a hip issue, Pages has a spot in the regular lineup along with a spot in the postseason record books.

At 23 years and 315 days old, he’s the youngest player in Dodgers history with a multihomer postseason game. Steve Garvey had the previous mark at 25 years, 291 days old.

“He’s not afraid of the moment,” said fellow Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández, who has been mentoring Pages this year. “He’s ready. It doesn’t matter how he’s doing, he’s just trying to put together good at-bats.”

Speaking of Dodgers history, Pages is the second Dodgers center fielder to hit multiple homers in a postseason game, and it’s elite company. Hall of Famer Duke Snider did so twice against the Yankees, in Game 6 of the 1952 World Series and in Game 5 of the 1955 World Series.

It made Pages the fourth player with a multihomer postseason game out of the No. 9 spot in the batting order, and not surprisingly, the others were all in the American League. The most recent was the Blue Jays’ Danny Jansen in Game 2 of the 2020 AL Wild Card Series, and before that, Cleveland’s Roberto Perez in Game 1 of the 2016 World Series and the Angels’ Adam Kennedy in Game 5 of the 2002 ALCS -- when Kennedy homered three times.

It’s a case of making the most of an opportunity. Pages, who posted a .917 OPS against left-handed pitching in the regular season, is expected to get another opportunity to start in center field for Sunday’s Game 6 against Mets left-hander Sean Manaea. He struck out Pages twice in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium.

“Obviously, the postseason is so important for the team. It’s a different game,” Pages said. “I’m always ready. I’ll always stay ready when the team needs me, and I’ll be available to do whatever they need.”

What the Dodgers needed in Game 5 was runs. Lots of them. The Mets jumped on an ineffective Jack Flaherty for three runs in the first inning and five in the third as the Dodgers opted to save bullpen resources for what lies ahead in the series and, if they can hold off a Mets comeback, the World Series.

“Everybody on this team knows that there’s no deficit too big for us,” Pages said. “We can score with any team. We just try to go out there and score as many runs as possible.”

Hernández, the mentor, wished Pages could have properly celebrated his two-homer night instead of quietly packing for a flight back west for Game 6, when the Dodgers will try again to punch their World Series ticket.

Ditto for Lux, who experienced some of these same postseason firsts back in 2019, when he was playing in the NLDS against the Nationals as a 21-year-old rookie.

“[Pages] always has such a good demeanor, he’s never too high or too low. He always looks calm,” Lux said. “It’s really impressive for a guy when this is his first postseason and he’s 23 years old. To see those results come like that against postseason pitching is pretty cool.”