LOS ANGELES — Will Klein didn’t start the season in the Dodgers organization, and spent the bulk of the first three rounds of the postseason at Camelback Ranch at the team’s spring training facility keeping
his arm fresh. His first World Series game was his longest outing as a professional. And the Dodgers needed every bit of his four scoreless innings to beat the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the World Series on Monday.
“I realized that when I looked around in the bullpen and my name was the only one still there,” Klein said, laughing. “I was just going to go until I couldn’t, and that’s kind of what happened and, thankfully, Freddie saved us from Yamamoto having to do the same thing.”
Klein was the 10th Dodgers pitcher used in the game, and the ninth and final relief pitcher on the active roster. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was warming up to pitch the 19th inning and beyond had the game continued, two days after his complete-game win in Game 2 of the series in Toronto. Or maybe three days since by then it would have been Tuesday in Los Angeles.
“He would have gone as long as we needed,” manager Dave Roberts said of Yamamoto. “He would have been the last guy.”
“That’s a testament to our team that he’s willing to go do that,” said Freddie Freeman, whose walk-off home run in the 18th inning saved Yamamoto the trouble. “It took every single guy tonight, and for him to want to do that, I think that just shows you who we are as a group. We’ll do anything to win the game. But for him to go out there — and I did see him warming up, and I was like, oh, man that is — we got to keep this guy out of the game.”
Drafted by the Royals in 2020, Klein made his major league debut with Kansas City in 2024 before getting dealt to the A’s at the trade deadline. The A’s traded Klein to the Mariners in January and he was with Triple-A Tacoma when the Dodgers traded for him in June.
In four stints in the majors with the Dodgers, Klein got into 14 games, with a 2.35 ERA and 30-percent strikeout rate in 15 1/3 innings. That included four scoreless outings in the final nine days of the regular season, which followed up a solid six weeks of a 3.86 ERA in the offense-happy Pacific Coast League and a 41.1-percent strikeout rate in between two call-ups to Los Angeles.
Klein was added to the World Series roster along with Edgardo Henriquez, giving the Dodgers two hard-throwing right-handers to combat the Blue Jays. Klein averaged 97.8 mph on his fastball in Game 3, and Henriquez averaged 100.1 mph with a pair of strikeouts in his two scoreless innings immediately preceding Klein.
“In the postseason people talk about the superstars, but a lot of times it’s these unsung heroes that you just can’t expect, and guys, you know, come to pass and pop,” Roberts said. “Tonight was will Klein’s night, and obviously, what Edgardo did was just as paramount.”
Klein had just the sixth relief effort of at least four scoreless innings in Dodgers postseason history, and was the second of those pitchers to earn the win in said game:
Longest Dodgers scoreless postseason relief appearances
- Russ Meyer 5 2/3 innings, 1955 World Series Game 6
- Larry Sherry 5 2/3 innings, 1959 World Series Game 6 (win)
- Rick Rhoden 4 1/3 innings, 1977 NLCS Game 3
- Al Downing 4 innings, 1974 NLCS Game 3
- Clayton Kershaw, 4 innings, 2017 World Series Game 7
- Will Klein, 4 innings, 2025 World Series Game 3
Klein’s win probability added (WPA) of .553 (meaning he improved the Dodgers’ chances of winning by 55.3 percentage points) by far the best relief appearance in franchise history in the postseason. Roki Sasaki’s three scoreless innings into extras to help close out the Phillies in Game 4 of the NLDS is fourth at .384.
Klein never pitched more than three innings professionally, and his 72 pitches in Game 3 were 16 more than his previous professional high, in High-A in 2021. It was the most he’d thrown in a game since he was a starting pitcher at Eastern Illinois before getting drafted.
“I started to feel it. There were times when, like, you’re starting to feel down and, like, you feel your legs aren’t there or your arm’s not there, and you just got to be like, well, who else is going to come save me, you know? So I had to dig deep, do it myself,” Klein explained. “And hearing our guys in the dugout and the fans kind of come behind, especially with Will calling that last curveball, I was like, all right, cool, let’s do it. And just having those guys kind of takes it all away from — takes all the fatigue out of you and stuff.”
In all, nine Dodgers relievers combined for 13 1/3 innings in Game 3 with just one run allowed (by Blake Treinen in the seventh inning), with 11 strieouts and six walks.
Freeman has 11 batted balls in this series, six of them with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher, and five over 100 mph. The first five of those hard-hit balls were just long outs between 358-380 feet, before his walk-off home run off Brendon Little got over the center field wall to win Game 3.
“The one in Toronto I thought I hit way better than the one to center field where it still was like 20 feet short. It’s not — I’m not getting frustrated. It’s because the ball’s on the barrel, so I know if I keep staying with that — if I try and switch it up, then I’m going to most likely not be on the barrel, Freeman said. ”So if you just keep putting good swings on it, sooner rather than later it’s going to be what you want.
“I finally felt that I would stay behind the ball and drive it, and it just made my confidence soar and thankfully Will Klein, the MVP of this game, was able to throw more zeroes up, and I was able to get up again.”
You might remember that Brad Paisley performed the national anthem before Game 3. This was his fourth time performing the anthem at Dodger Stadium for a World Series game, and they’ve all been doozies in extra innings:
- 2017 Game 2: 11-inning, 8-homer loss to the Astros
- 2018 Game 3: Max Muncy’s walk-off home run in 18 innings
- 2024 Game 1: Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the 10th, the first in World Series history
- 2025 Game 3: Freeman’s walk-off home run, tying the 2018 game as the longest in Fall Classic history
Not too long after Game 3 ended, Roberts — at about 12:14 a.m. PT — in the interview room said, “We’ve got a ballgame later tonight, which is crazy.”
