Smith Declines Two ABS Challenges on Turang as Roberts Says the Misses Changed Yamamoto's Outing

The biggest decision of NLCS Game 2 was a tap on the helmet that never came. Twice on Monday, once in the first inning and once in the third, Los Angeles catcher Will Smith declined to challenge a pitch to Milwaukee leadoff man Brice Turang that Sports Illustrated reports would have been called strike three. Both times Turang stayed at the plate, both times he reached base, and both times he came around to score. The second sequence ran straight into the 36-pitch third inning that ended Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s night, and it left manager Dave Roberts explaining afterwards why a call his own catcher owned had changed his ace’s outing.

What exactly did Smith decline to challenge?

Two called balls on would-be third strikes to the same hitter. In the first inning, home plate umpire Chris Segal ruled a Yamamoto pitch a ball when the tracking had it as a strike, the New York Post reports, and Smith let the call stand rather than spend a challenge. Turang doubled on a full-count fastball three pitches later and scored on William Contreras’s single. In the third, with David Hamilton already on second after a single and a steal, a full-count pitch to Turang again would have ended the at-bat, Sports Illustrated reports. This time Yamamoto visibly wanted the review, pointing at his own head from the mound, and Smith still chose not to. Turang walked.

Why does the catcher, not the manager, own that call?

Because the catcher is the one person who sees the pitch the way the tracking system does. Roberts made that logic explicit after the game, saying the club tries to defer to its catchers for challenges because of the view they have, ClutchPoints reports. That deference is the system working as designed on most nights: the dugout is 200 feet from the corner of the strike zone the pitch has to clip. Game 2 is the cost side of the design. The person empowered to overturn the call is also the person who has to judge, in about a second, whether the pitch was firm enough in the zone to be worth one of a limited stock of challenges, early in a game that might need them later.

What did Smith and Roberts each say afterwards?

They described the same two seconds from opposite ends of the decision. Smith’s account was about game state: it was early, the Dodgers had Turang on the ropes, and he figured they could finish the at-bat without risking a challenge, the New York Post reports. On the third-inning pitch specifically, Roberts said Smith did not feel it was a strike in that spot. Roberts’s own verdict was sharper. He said he did not appreciate the decisions, and that looking back, a called third strike changes the outing, ClutchPoints reports. The New York Post framed the answer as a manager trying not to second-guess his catcher in public. Both readings can be true at once, and the gap between them is the story: the defer-to-the-catcher policy survived the press conference, but only just.

How did the third inning unravel from there?

One batter at a time, until Yamamoto had nothing left. Contreras flew out, which should have been the inning’s second out becoming its third, and then Jake Bauers produced the longest plate appearance of Yamamoto’s MLB career, the New York Post reports: a 12-pitch walk in which he fouled off seven straight pitches after reaching a full count, long enough that the battery in Yamamoto’s PitchCom device died and had to be replaced mid-duel. Christian Yelich, the captain Milwaukee benched for Game 1, then singled in two runs on a hung curveball. Yamamoto’s line closed at eight outs and 75 pitches, the shortest start of his playoff career, in a game Milwaukee had already tilted with its starting pitcher’s two throwing errors.

Would the challenges definitely have changed the result?

No, and it is worth separating the outing from the outcome. Roberts’s claim is the narrower one, and the evidence supports it: strike three to Turang in the third ends the inning before Bauers and Yelich ever bat with runners moving, and Yamamoto, who had settled through a clean second inning, likely pitches into the middle innings. The result is a different question. Los Angeles produced three hits all night, scored every run it got without a run-scoring hit, and did not put a runner on against Milwaukee’s bullpen across the last five innings, Reuters reports. This is a series being decided by margins the Dodgers keep donating, from a final-strike walk-off in the division series to Monday’s free baserunners, on a night when Milwaukee’s Game 1 hero spent his off day trading a signed jersey for his own one-of-one card.

What happens next for Smith, Roberts and the challenges?

Game 3 is Wednesday in Los Angeles, with Milwaukee two wins from the World Series and the Dodgers out of margin for donated innings. The practical question is whether Monday changes behaviour: whether Smith challenges the first borderline third strike he sees, whether Yamamoto’s visible request from the mound becomes a standing instruction, and whether Roberts’s deference survives another missed call. None of that requires a rule change or a league statement. It requires one tap on a helmet, the smallest gesture in the sport this October, from the player who chose twice on Monday to keep his hand down.