Roki Sasaki was originally signed by the Dodgers to be a part of the starting rotation, not the bullpen.
Eight starts into his big league career, and Sasaki posted less than pedestrian results, dealing
with command issues before being placed on the injured list with a right shoulder impingement. It took four months and a season-long catastrophic display from the bullpen for Sasaki to make his return to the Dodgers, and in his playoff audition, he finally showed Dodger fans and the baseball world why he was so highly coveted last offseason.
And in his postseason debut, pitching in the ninth inning for the first time in his career, he set the Cincinnati Reds down in order to send the Dodgers to the NLDS to set up a date with the Philadelphia Phillies.
As the Dodgers continue to assemble their pitching staff against Philadelphia, the question now concerns which pitcher will be the man to tack on the high leverage innings out of the bullpen, and Sasaki just might be the guy, writes Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic.
“I trust him, and he’s going to be pitching in leverage,” Roberts said. “I don’t think the moment’s going to be too big for Roki.”
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When the calendar flips to the month of October, Kiké Hernández transforms from a below-league average depth option to one of the greatest postseason hitters in baseball history. The trend has continued this year, as Hernández logged four hits in the Dodgers two-game sweep of the Reds in the Wild Card series.
What has helped Hernández produce in a big way in the postseason is the chance to have a fresh start, considering that he hasn’t been a league-average hitter in the regular season since 2021, notes Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times.
“The beautiful thing about the postseason is that once we get to the postseason, everything starts at zero. You can have a bad year and you flip the script and you start over in the postseason. You have a good postseason, help the team win, and nobody ever remembers what you did in the regular season.”
The Dodgers and Phillies finally meet again in the postseason for the first time since Philadelphia took a second straight NLCS from the Dodgers in 2009.
The Phillies took four of six from the Dodgers this season, and despite the Dodgers finishing with a worse record compared to Philadelphia, Dave Roberts is still confident in his team’s ability in repeating as championships, with the Phillies series being the next obstacle in their way, writes Mirjam Swanson of the Orange County Register.
“I think we can win it all,” Roberts said. “We’re equipped to do that, we have the pedigree and we have the hunger and we’re playing great baseball.”
