One of the arguments against bullpen games is that if just one of those pitchers is off his game, the whole thing could unravel. Personally, this has always sounded like a constructed narrative to justify
a dislike of a recent trend by the old guard. The flip side is that if your starter is also not on his game, the struggles will prove costly just the same. For the Dodgers, that experience came into play in Game 3 of the NLDS, and for a team with one of the shakiest bullpens in the entire postseason, the damage of it is even larger than you’d expect.
Although each game has been unique, all four Los Angeles wins in the postseason had in common the lengthy outings from ultratalented starters, and even then, the bullpen tried to cough it up on more than one occasion. While everyone didn’t necessarily expect it to come in Game 3, it felt inevitable that the bullpen would get pushed into a corner at some point during the playoffs. After dominating the first time through the order, Yoshinobu Yamamoto ran into some major issues, and one of the things that might’ve hurt him was the absence of his usually reliable splitter. Yamamoto possesses a deep arsenal, and so, it’s not as if he can’t navigate a tricky lineup without a particular pitch working, but the lack of a single whiff on the splitter he ultimately underutilized certainly created some problems.
After cruising through the first three innings, Yamamoto completely unraveled from the fourth inning on. It got to the point Dave Roberts felt justifiably compelled to remove him from the game, only on 67 pitches, as Philly was knocking on the door of another big inning in what was a close 3-1 game.
The thing about a 3-1 deficit when you’re up 2-0 in a five-game series is that it’s right at the edge of urgent managing or not. It’s close enough that you are not cavalier about any decision, but at the same time, you aren’t exactly managing as you would if leading by a pair of runs.
The Dodgers went to Anthony Banda, Jack Dreyer, and Clayton Kershaw in that order, and each delivered one scoreless frame; it’s just that it didn’t come without a few hiccups. At no point did you feel totally comfortable, but they got through seven, managing to keep the game at 3-1, frankly, a massive win for a bullpen that hasn’t inspired that much trust.
Out of those three left-handers, Kershaw was by far the one who struggled the most in his first inning of work. Kershaw only left unscathed initially due to a Phillies baserunning blunder and some BABIP luck, giving up hard contact.
All of a sudden, it’s the eighth inning of a game you still trail 3-1. Let’s assume you justifiably wouldn’t touch Blake Treinen under any situation even remotely resembling high-leverage, while also not having Tanner Scott available, who was dealing with a personal situation, according to Dave Roberts. You still have Alex Vesia sitting there. However, is it wise to deploy Vesia when there is a very real chance he does his job and you still lose a low-scoring game? The same question could be asked regarding Roki Sasaki if he were to eventually handle the ninth.
Roberts stuck with Kershaw, and the wheels fell off to the point he was relegated to mop-up duty to eventually close what became a five-run eighth inning. It shouldn’t get lost in the sand that this appearance only became mop-up duty; it started as something else entirely, and given how his opening frame went, you could easily argue Kershaw shouldn’t have been out there in the first place.
If the blowout brought a silver lining for the Phillies of not having to use Jhoan Duran, the same applies to the Dodgers with Vesia and Sasaki. Now, beyond those two, it’s anybody’s guess who you trust in a big spot. Were the performances from Dreyer and Banda, in particular, enough to earn that, or do you go back to Emmet Sheehan, who had some success in Game 2? Is there an emergency scenario in which Shohei Ohtani goes out of the bullpen, with the knowledge that Blake Snell could start in Game 5 if it goes south?
Even with the group as a whole doing better than expected, it’s no surprise the Dodgers lost a game in which they trailed early and saw their starter removed from the game before completing an out in the fifth inning.
