If you had come from three days in the future and told me that the Dodgers would be on the cusp of sweeping the vaunted and favored Philadelphia Phillies out of the Division Series, I would not have believed
you. I would ask glibly: this year?
Yet, the events and aftermath of Game 2 almost feel like a pyrrhic victory. It’s like coming back tired from a baseball vacation. It took a day, an impromptu sushi fest, and a copious amount of sleep for me to discuss the matter calmly. While everyone has focused on Dave Roberts’ use of Blake Treinen, my ire has settled on different targets. If you are happy right now, good for you — this essay is not for you.
Why can’t the Los Angeles Times count to 3?
I do my level best to ignore the Times these days for personal reasons that fall outside the general scope of this website. Bill Plaschke is an easy person to ignore, going from saying that this Dodger team will do nothing in the playoffs to boasting that this team will go undefeated in the playoffs literally in the span of a month.
But Dylan Hernandez’s column easily takes the cake for someone who clearly has forgotten how to count:
This is over.
Or, from the perspective of the Dodgers, this is just starting.
Because the Dodgers are returning to the World Series….
…They will because they won’t blow the two-games-to-none lead they have after their 4-3 victory over the Phillies on Monday in Game 2 of their best-of-five series.
They will because the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs don’t have the firepower necessary to take down these Dodgers in the next round.
First, three is a majority of five, and by my math, the Dodgers have only won twice in this series so far.
Second, I may have slept quite a bit in the last day or so. Still, I did not realize that I had altogether skipped the National League Championship Series and that the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs had apparently forfeited in the name of expediency.
Never mind that the Cubs won the season series 4-3, which spanned six weeks and two continents. Never mind that the Brewers swept the season series for the first time ever and that the Brew Crew was absolutely manhandling the Cubs in Milwaukee. Apparently, Mr. Hernandez knows best…
I usually refrain from using sarcasm.
While the Dodgers have the Phillies on the edge of the cliff, where a trip to Cancun and a roster overhaul likely await them, the Dodgers have not finished the job in this series until they secure three wins. The Dodgers will not complete the task of returning to the World Series in back-to-back years without securing an additional five wins.
The Dodgers may very well get there, but please do not tempt fate and do not pop the champagne lest one has to deal with an unexpected Game 4, a la the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays.
What part of “Oops, All Starters!” did Dave Roberts not get?
Admittedly, I missed the bottom of the eighth inning in Game 2 because I was actually doing work in my day job. Imagine my shock in the ninth inning to see someone other than Roki Sasaki pitching.
I was more confused about the decision to summon Blake Treinen over Sasaki than upset. Had there not been an off day between Games 1 and 2, I would have expected Treinen or Tanner Scott in the ninth inning.
Roberts’ decision would generally be defensible under normal circumstances, as he explained his rationale after the Game 2 nail-biter. Even knowing what I know now, I can see the logic of trying to squeeze the last iota of competent baseball out of Treinen in 2025.
But there was an off day — in more ways than one.
While it is easy to pick on Roberts when a reliever melts down, at some point, the reliever needs to do his job.
Where I got angry at Roberts in the past was when he would ignore the data in front of him and rely on trust, much like with Ryan Madson in 2018. If you have mercifully forgotten, during the 2018 World Series, Madson set a record for allowing every inherited runner he had (seven) to score in four games of a five-game series.
I remember when Roberts summoned Madson in Game 4 of the 2018 World Series, which turned out to be the last game that Madson ever pitched in. I lost my temper, to the confusion of everyone around me at the time. After all, Madson had just gotten Jackie Bradley, Jr. to pop out in short order.
What would or could light-hitting Mitch Moreland do?
In a bit of fun trivia, the last batter that Madson would ever face in an MLB game was Mookie Betts. What probably could have been an unlikely best-of-three World Series faded away, as the Dodgers meekly went out in five games.
I did not realize I had such unprocessed feelings about this game until two nights ago.
For what it is worth, I had a similar reaction when Tanner Scott was summoned on September 6 in Baltimore, again confusing those sitting around me. Knowing the why defused my anger.
Roberts, to his credit, eventually summoned Sasaki to save the Dodgers from grabbing unexpected and soul-crushing defeat from the confused jaws of victory. Before this series started, I previously noted that Treinen did look better in the Wild Card round than at just about any point in September.
Treinen needs to miss bats to be effective. He did not, and prompted some ugly “death by BABIP” swings, melting down with almost Soviet-like precision. Treinen will likely be relegated to mop duty barring some divine intervention.
What trust that Treinen had accumulated in the Wild Card round is clearly spent, and he is in figurative arrears. It is also worth remembering that Treinen is under contract through 2026.
On Monday, Roberts finally said what every Dodgers fan in their hearts knows: the most leverage spots belong to Sasaki for the immediate future. Had Sasaki imploded, I would have been shocked, considering how he is finally looking like the player that I had been following for two years, before anyone in the mainstream knew his name.
Don’t make me tap the sign, Dave; this meme is my masterpiece, using photos I have taken this season.
Kidding aside, Tanner Scott, Jack Dreyer, Alex Vesia, Anthony Banda, Clayton Kershaw, Emmet Sheehan, Will Klein (possibly), Justin Wrobleski (eventually), Ben Casparius (maybe) cannot just be passengers on this ride.
The entire bullpen cannot be made out of Brent Honeywell or Landon Knack or their closest approximations — folks destined to soak up non-leverage innings. Now, to get to the person who likely owes everybody dinner for the next month.
Why, Tommy Edman, why?!?
The person who should be buying Treinen all of the steak for shielding against all of the scorn of the fanbase is Tommy Edman, who had an almost comedically terrible Game 2.
Going 0 for 4 with two strikeouts is generally not that big of a deal — ask Shohei Ohtani. Failing to cash in three runners in scoring position is not ideal and often barely worth a footnote, except when things go sideways.
Edman had one of the most bizarre misses on a tag on a dead-to-rights runner that I have ever seen while watching or attending baseball.
Nick Castellanos was apparently playing cricket. The bloop hit is not the concern — death by BABIP.
What shocked and angered me at the time was how Edman could miss a swipe tag on a target that was both that slow and that big. Granted, had Edman made the tag, there would be no “wheel play.” As an aside, this play caused a peculiar sense of déjà vu from my childhood, which took more hours and more sushi than I care to admit to pinpoint.
The only person who somehow made a worse decision out of this half-inning was Castellanos himself, later, when criticizing the fans of Citizens Bank Park to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“I think that the stadium is alive on both sides, right?. When the game is going good, it’s wind at our back, but when the game is not going good, it’s wind in our face. The environment can be with us, and the environment can be against us.
“When everything’s going good and you’re rolling it’s a [pain] to play here when you’re an opposing team because the environment is amazing. But if we run into adversity and the tide shifts and now we’re playing more tight because we don’t want to be reprimanded for something bad.”
[emphasis added.]
Why would any player ever say that sentence out loud, much less to a reporter?
Edman was not done. Edman clearly has talent for a curveball, which would serve him better on the mound. Said talent is less than ideal for a second baseman trying to secure the game-winning out when all hell was breaking loose.
On reflection, I thought maybe Sasaki had thrown Trea Turner his super forkball, which has a unique flight path and could be compared to a knuckleball. Sasaki threw a fastball, which Edman nearly threw away, and required Freddie Freeman to make a scoop save that figuratively aged a lot of us by quite a bit.
Stephen Nelson had the most succinct response to this game, which I now share as a conclusion:
The Angriest and Unlikeliest 2-0 Lead
The Dodgers would be well-served to put a bow on this series as soon as humanly possible.
Declarations from the Los Angeles Times aside, the Brewers are taking the Cubs to the woodshed and holding serve with their top seed in their half of the bracket. American Family Field has been rocking. Here’s hoping the Cubs actually put up some fight in Chicago.
Citizens Bank Park seems like a fun venue, but I hope that the Dodgers do not return until July 20, 2026.
