Editor's note: This story was originally published on Oct. 8. After Max Scherzer will skip his scheduled start, Buehler is now starting the Dodgers' must-win Game 6 against the Atlanta Braves on short rest.
On the car ride to Dodger Stadium, when it's just him and the road and his thoughts, Walker Buehler fiddles with the music on his stereo until he finds the perfect song, one that sends his stomach into loop-de-loops and ignites the fear inside of him. Buehler chases this feeling as a matter of habit, of professional purpose. To be comfortable -- to perform on a stage such that he does, to the level that he does it -- Buehler believes he must understand, and even embrace, discomfort.
Buehler won't make the drive to Dodger Stadium on Saturday -- but he won't necessarily have to manufacture any nerves, either. He will attempt to save his Dodgers' 106-win season -- on short rest -- and he will do so saddled with the reputation that has defined his young career: big-game performer. It's a designation he earned, of course, with 61⅓ innings of 2.35 ERA baseball in the playoffs. It's also an eminence that can vanish with one bad series, bad game, bad inning.
"I don't believe any of this is in stone," Buehler told ESPN last week, before his Game 1 NLDS start against the Giants. "There is a luck element -- an it-could-go-poorly-at-any-moment element -- that I think is important. I've had articles written about my arrogance and all this stuff. And I just don't like it. I think ... what makes you successful in it is the realization that it can go away."
Buehler's understanding, at its essence, is that for all he does well -- and on the mound he does almost everything well -- the craft of pitching, the game of baseball, the vagaries of fortune all can conspire against him. It's a mature perspective, not particularly surprising for the 27-year-old right-hander whose four major league seasons have been sodden with success, none more than this year. Buehler waltzes into the postseason with a 16-4 record, a 2.47 ERA and 212 strikeouts over 207⅔ innings. He will get rightful Cy Young votes. Yet it would be facile to believe Buehler is here simply because of his fastball that kisses 100 mph or his five-pitch array that's as diverse and strong as any mix in the game.
This is the product of more than a decade of work -- of failures, of iterating, of self-reflection, of perfectionism, of a steadfast refusal to accept good, even great, as enough. It started in Kentucky, grew at Vanderbilt, weathered a torn elbow ligament, broke out in the minor leagues and blossomed in the big leagues, helping the Dodgers win the World Series in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and imbuing them with faith that they can repeat this year.
Buehler grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, the heart of basketball country, and found himself marveling at other pitchers during the showcase events that brought together the country's best prep baseball players. Lance McCullers Jr., it seemed, threw so much harder than the rest of their class. (He pitched 6⅔ shutout innings for Houston in Game 1 of its division series Thursday.) Lucas Giolito's breaking ball was far filthier than Buehler's. It wasn't that Buehler was less than they were; he just wasn't on their levels yet.
He went to the pitching factory that is Vanderbilt and for all his excellence never earned the marquee job on a college staff of Friday starter. The Dodgers chose him with the 24th pick in the 2015 draft, helped him rehab from Tommy John surgery and watched him blitz through the minor leagues in just over a year. That's where his truest education began.
The Dodgers lavished plenty of early postseason experience on Buehler. His first start in 2018 was going brilliantly until a Ronald Acuña Jr. grand slam changed that. His next start, a Game 3 loss to Milwaukee in the NLCS, was good -- but not good enough. Feet wet, Buehler carried the memory of substandard performances into his next two outings in 2018, an NLCS Game 7 and a World Series Game 3, which set up the run where he currently stands: nine consecutive playoff starts allowing two or fewer runs, a 1.28 ERA in 49⅓ innings during which he has struck out 68 and allowed opponents a .178/.259/.264 line.
Over time, through plenty of trial and occasional error, Buehler started to wring the best out of himself in postseason games. He threw low-and-away fastballs early in counts, worked breaking balls when ahead and used his high-spin fastball at the top of the strike zone to put hitters away. Nothing fancy or complicated. No mind games, no subterfuge. Here's his best stuff. Try to hit it.
There was a fearlessness, too, one Buehler cultivated through his discomfort. He is an inveterate tinkerer -- with grips, with mechanics, with all of the elements that make a pitch a pitch. The assumption long has been that Buehler is twitchy, fidgety, impatient. Even if there might be elements of that, the reasons, he said, go much deeper.
"A lot of it is creating a softer foundation that I'm standing on so I can create some nerves for myself," he said. "Like, you're not that nervous to throw the one thing you've done your whole life. But the new grip to a big hitter in the big spot? You've got to be pretty convicted to do it. And so for me, that nervousness, plus having to create conviction, is kind of what makes me tick and, for better or for worse, that's kind of what I've done."
There might be no better example of this than Buehler's approach to pitching in the postseason. It takes pitching dogma and turns it on its head.
"I think the walk is a tool in the playoffs, much more so than it is in the regular season," he said. "You're trying to be efficient and get through games and get deep into games in the regular season. In the playoffs you're trying not to lose, right? So a single to me in the playoffs is like a double, a double is like a homer and so on and so forth. I think a walk really creates so much less momentum than a hit. And I think that's a huge part of, you know, whatever success I've had. I think convincing yourself of that allows you to try and make the risky pitch on 3-2 and you get the strikeout over the walk -- instead of the homer."
The numbers do mirror the mindset. During the 573⅓ regular-season innings in Buehler's career, he has allowed 6.8 hits, 2.3 walks and 0.93 home runs per nine innings while striking out 9.9 hitters. His postseason numbers, albeit in a smaller sample: 5.7 hits, 3.2 walks, 0.73 home runs and 12.2 strikeouts per nine. His ERA is more than a half-run better in October.
"There's something with the playoffs where I've struck out a lot more guys than I typically do," Buehler said. "And I think what you learn from that is the playoffs are about dominating in some way. Every team you're playing is good. You're not just going to go and out-stuff a team. Everyone's locked in. Everyone's game-speed-ready from the first pitch. So there's all these little acute differences that have led to: I have to pitch a little riskier in certain positions, certain spots. And if you make enough of those pitches, you're going to strike out more guys, walk more guys and give up less hits. That's just simply the equation that whatever mentality that I've gotten into has led to, and that has led to success."
Runners on base ... the prospect of a multirun homer ... the understanding that one big inning can torpedo a game -- it's enough to spook even a cocksure pitcher when all it takes is four losses to end a season. In the first two weeks of this year's postseason, Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer, two of the finest pitchers in the world, delivered middling postseason performances. Buehler is not immune. Since starting Game 4 of the NLDS on short rest (for the first time in his career), he's gone 1-1 and not pitched more than 4.2 innings. The craft, the game, the fortune -- something else -- forever looms.
It's what makes the time before he gets to the stadium, whether in his car or on a team bus, so important. Buehler sees it as an interval not just to rid himself of the nerves but to remind himself of the experience of standing on the mound, in the middle of a baseball diamond, all eyes on him. And to remember that everything that brought him here prepared him for the moment.
"A big thing, for me, is about not embarrassing yourself in front of 40,000, 50,000 people," Buehler said. "And that kind of flip in your stomach is -- we all talk ourselves into getting to where we need to go to perform. And I think a big thing for me is like when I feel the flip of my stomach, I just tell myself that that's like my body letting me know that there will be adrenaline there in a few hours."
Adrenaline won't be an issue today, not with a crowd of fans primed to shower Buehler with its finest cocktail of boos, insults and unprintables. He recognizes that this start could decide his team's season. He knows that it could be the one that changes everything -- that none of this is in stone, that it all can go away at any moment. And none of that, for Buehler, changes how comforting it is to feel discomfort.