LOS ANGELES — He was wild, he was frustrated, and he was staring at the sky. Clayton Kershaw seemed to know Don Mattingly would be removing him from the mound after he walked the Mets’ Curtis Granderson to load the bases in Friday’s seventh inning at Dodger Stadium.

Down one run, it was not an irrational decision, not at all. Kershaw had thrown 113 pitches in this Game 1 of the National League Division Series, thrown them harder than he usually does, and his control was getting worse. The man he’d face if he stayed in was David Wright, who worked him for a 12-pitch walk in the first inning. Of course, Kershaw’s seventh-inning struggles in playoffs past loomed large.

So, it made sense. What was questionable was the choice to replace him: right-hander Pedro Baez, a 27-year-old in his second season who possesses an electric fastball but the command of a teenager driving on a learner’s permit.

He is not the one you want in the game in the most important moment of said game. Either Mattingly should’ve used one of his two best relief options, or he should’ve kept Kershaw in.

Mattingly had already committed to the choice for a good 10 minutes: Baez was the only one warming all that time. The Dodgers’ best relief option is closer Kenley Jansen, by a large margin. A radical choice would’ve been to bring him in right there, in what was likely to be the highest-leverage situation in the game. Bringing in the Dodgers’ second-best relief option, set-up man Chris Hatcher, would have been a less radical choice — and probably the right one.

But because the pitcher’s spot was due up third in the bottom of the inning, Mattingly avoided Hatcher. He wanted to save him for the eighth, to set up for Jansen in the event that the Dodgers took a lead.

So he went to Baez, who threw six straight fastballs to David Wright. During the pitching changeover, the Mets’ leader and third baseman had received scouting reports from teammate Michael Cuddyer and hitting coach Kevin Long. After Baez’s first two pitches, both balls, Wright felt he had the 98-mph stuff timed.

Wright worked the count to 3-1, fouled off an inside-corner fastball to bring it to 3-2, and then laced a pitch down the middle back up the middle for the deciding hit of the Dodgers’ loss. Catcher A.J. Ellis wanted the pitch right back on the inside corner. It did not end up there, because, you know, Baez lacks command and all.

“It was just sitting on something hard,” Wright said.

The Dodgers had been sitting on Baez, confident from the inning’s start that leaving Kershaw in to face Wright a fourth time would have been a bad idea.

“We felt like that was going to be the spot,” Mattingly said.

Conveniently, we have a nice way to compare the two presented options in that situation. There is such a thing as a times-through-the-order penalty, and it applies to most, if not all, pitchers. After two times through an opposing lineup, they tend to become less effective. Part of it, surely, is fatigue; part of it is hitters having seen all their pitches; part of it is even the added benefit of pinch-hitters.

Whatever the case, it has never particularly applied to Kershaw. He entered Friday having faced hitters a fourth time through in 289 previous plate appearances. In those chances, they were hitting .211, with a .254 on-base percentage and .274 slugging percentage.

That’s a small sample, sure, but Baez entered Friday having faced hitters in any situation in exactly 300 previous plate appearances. In those situations, they were hitting .229, with a .270 on-base percentage and .375 slugging mark.

The advantage swung in Kershaw’s favor.

To add to it, the Dodgers’ new regime has repeatedly stressed the inherent volatility in relief pitching. The importance of the hot hand is overemphasized throughout baseball. A six-game hitting streak does not portend a hitter extending it. But one place it does exist is in relief.

Hatcher earned the staff’s confidence based on six solid weeks of pitching since returning from the DL. He pitched to a 1.31 ERA. In that same span, Baez had pitched to a 5.52 ERA.

He clearly wasn’t one of the Dodgers’ two best options, and it’s entirely possible he wasn’t the team’s third-best, either. Right-hander Joel Peralta made the playoff roster after a strong September and went on to pitch a perfect eighth Friday night. He was an option. Hatcher should have been too, for one out or for four.

It comes down to this: In the Dodgers’ last six playoff games, spanning three Octobers, Jansen has thrown one inning, less than two percent of the total innings the team has handled. Their best reliever is going unused.

And, at some point, doesn’t the risk of that outweigh the risk of burning him too early in a game?

Contact the writer: pmoura@ocregister.com