NEW YORK -- Back in spring training, the Los Angeles Dodgers' front office constructed the 2024 roster envisioning a playoff rotation that would look something like this:
Game 1: Tyler Glasnow, offseason trade acquisition and owner of some of the most wicked stuff in the game
Game 2: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, $325 million free agent who had been the best pitcher in Japan
Game 3: Bobby Miller, coming off a rookie season in which he was the hardest-throwing starter in the majors
Game 4: Walker Buehler, hopefully healthy and good again after sitting out 2023 after his second Tommy John surgery
Beyond that, the Dodgers still had Clayton Kershaw, who was earmarked for an August return after offseason shoulder surgery. They had Emmet Sheehan, who made 11 starts as a rookie in 2023. They hoped for a breakout season from Gavin Stone and had other top prospects ready for the majors: Kyle Hurt, Landon Knack, River Ryan. And just because you can never have too much depth, they signed veteran lefty James Paxton -- plus it was possible Dustin May would be ready to return from Tommy John surgery late in the season.
It was a remarkable collection of pitching talent. Los Angeles did not want a repeat of 2023, when it reached the playoffs scrambling to find healthy pitchers to start and was eliminated in a three-game sweep at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Yet, here we are, with the Dodgers once again scrambling to fill their rotation after their pitching plans fell apart. They're down to a three-man starting group -- and one of those, Buehler, won one game in 16 starts in the regular season. Manager Dave Roberts is deploying bullpen games and quick hooks. Somehow, it's working. Unbelievably, the Dodgers just pitched four shutouts in a five-game span, becoming the third team in postseason history to do that, matching the 1905 New York Giants and 2020 Atlanta Braves.
"I believe to get 27 outs, we're very, very equipped to do that in totality with our pitching staff," Roberts said before Los Angeles' Game 3 rout of the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series.
The Dodgers are five wins away from winning the World Series, a minimum of 135 outs needed -- or more depending on the number of games required in each series. How will they get there? Let's dive into their strategy and how each pitcher can help win them a title.
The Dodgers' pitching strategy so far
A pitching plan is no doubt a challenge for Roberts and pitching coach Mark Prior to piece together, especially as they have to be mindful of not running relievers into the ground. It doesn't help that Alex Vesia, the team's top left-hander in the bullpen, is out for the NLCS (although he could return for the World Series)
Roberts has certainly faced his share of difficult pitching decisions in the postseason throughout the years, but this year has presented its own unique test. To begin, the starters he does have -- Yamamoto, Buehler and in-season pickup Jack Flaherty -- aren't going deep into games, except for Flaherty's seven-inning outing in a 9-0 blowout over the Mets in Game 1 of the NLCS.
"With Yoshinobu's history recently, he hasn't pitched a whole lot," Roberts said. "With Flaherty, I feel like we can kind of extend him a little more, which we did. And with Walker, just kind of reading and reacting. I think this year, as far as on the starting pitching side, you just don't really have a guy that you're going to kind of sit back for seven innings. Not like anybody really does. There's probably a handful of those guys in baseball anyway."
Roberts had also talked about managing with a certain sense of urgency, and he did just that in Game 3, taking Buehler out after four scoreless innings. Buehler had escaped a couple of jams with strikeouts but had thrown 90 pitches, and with the top of the order coming up for the Mets in a 2-0 game, it was an easy call for Roberts to go to Michael Kopech, meaning he'd need five innings from the pen. It helped that the Dodgers ended up blowing that game open, allowing Roberts to use Ben Casparius, probably the 12th guy on the staff, for two innings and save a couple of his top relievers.
That's how the Dodgers have made it work this October: a deep bullpen.
"I think what's unique about this year is -- obviously losing Vesia for this series has certainly been a tax," Roberts said. "But the bullpen is very [platoon] neutral. I trust a lot of those guys in the pen. I feel like I can use them, deploy them at any point in time, different lanes, different innings."
Catcher Will Smith has been impressed with his pen, which has a 2.45 ERA this postseason compared to 3.49 in the regular season.
"I just go one pitch at a time with those guys," Smith said. "But they've been nails. They've been really good just going out and executing, putting guys away and putting up zeros. They're doing really well right now."
Certainly, the relievers are hot at the right time -- although it's a fine line between staying hot and being overextended. For example, after pitching in the first game of the NLCS, Daniel Hudson wasn't available for Game 2 because of a lower-body issue.
"There's the good and the bad with it," Kopech said. "Sometimes getting out there more often, you get in a rhythm, but it's obviously mid-October, guys need some rest. To get that rest and bounce back and come back and do the job is important."
Every out L.A. needs to win it all
So, let's count down those outs -- and look at how many we can expect from each pitcher. Here's one potential scenario of how the Dodgers' rotation could look the rest of the way -- assuming both the championship series and World Series go seven games -- and how many innings each starter might go.
NLCS
Friday, Oct. 18, Game 5: Flaherty (6 IP)
Sunday, Oct. 20, Game 6: Bullpen game (0 IP)
Monday, Oct. 21, Game 7: Buehler (4 IP)
World Series
Friday, Oct. 25, Game 1: Yamamoto (5 IP)
Saturday, Oct. 26, Game 2: Flaherty (6 IP)
Monday, Oct. 28, Game 3: Buehler (4 IP)
Tuesday, Oct. 29, Game 4: Bullpen game (0 IP)
Wednesday, Oct. 30, Game 5: Yamamoto (5 IP)
Friday, Nov. 1, Game 6: Flaherty (6 IP)
Saturday, Nov. 2, Game 7: Buehler (4 IP)
That's probably more of a rough best-case type of scenario, with Flaherty going six innings in his starts -- which might be unlikely, given both his inconsistency and Roberts' likely aggressiveness in going to the pen in a close game. Maybe Buehler or Yamamoto pitch a little more -- or a little less. In this 10-game outline, Dodgers starters pitch 40 innings out of a potential 90 (assuming no extra-inning games). That would mean 50 innings from the bullpen.
"The bullpen is ready to go from pitch one," said Evan Phillips, who came out of the pen in the fifth inning of Game 4 to notch the win for the Dodgers. "We're just chomping at the bit to get out there and contribute and be a part of this. Whatever the length or whatever the outing we get out of the starter that day is plenty for us."
The pen trust tree is probably Kopech, Blake Treinen, Phillips, Ryan Brasier, Hudson, Anthony Banda and Vesia (if he returns for the World Series). The second tier features Knack, who was supposed to be the long man in Game 2 but got knocked out after two innings and five runs, plus Casparius, Brent Honeywell and Edgardo Henriquez. The Dodgers have had to dig deep just to come up with 13 active pitchers: Casparius and Henriquez are rookies who entered the postseason with a combined 11⅔ innings in the major leagues.
Though Roberts would prefer to keep his relief appearances to one inning as much as possible, he did say before Game 4 that he's willing to use a reliever such as Kopech or Treinen three days in a row.
"Very comfortable [with that]. I think for me, today, we're going to do everything we can to win tonight," Roberts said. "I feel like we can go to any one of our guys. And we're going to pull whatever levers we can to prevent runs."
Let's now map out a potential allotment of relief innings, operating under the same seven-game assumption as above.
NLCS
• Friday, Oct. 18, Game 5 (3 IP): Hudson (1), Phillips (1), Treinen (1)
• Sunday, Oct. 20, Game 6 (9 IP): Brasier (1.1), Banda (1.2), Kopech (1.2), Hudson (1.1), Phillips (1.2), Treinen (1.1)
• Monday, Oct. 21, Game 7 (5 IP): Brasier (1), Hudson (1), Kopech (1), Phillips (1), Treinen (1)
World Series
• Friday, Oct. 25, Game 1 (4 IP): Brasier (1), Kopech (1), Phillips (1), Treinen (1)
• Saturday, Oct. 26, Game 2 (3 IP): Banda (1), Hudson (1), Vesia (1)
• Monday, Oct. 28, Game 3: Buehler (5 IP): Casparius (1), Banda (1), Kopech (1), Vesia (1), Treinen (1)
• Tuesday, Oct. 29, Game 4 (9 IP): Brasier (1.1), Honeywell (1.2), Hudson (1), Knack (1), Vesia (1), Kopech (1), Phillips (1), Treinen (1)
• Wednesday, Oct. 30, Game 5 (4 IP): Hudson (1), Brasier (1), Banda (1), Phillips (1)
• Friday, Nov. 1, Game 6 (3 IP): Brasier (1), Kopech (1), Treinen (1)
• Saturday, Nov. 2, Game 7 (5 IP): Vesia (1), Kopech (1), Hudson (1), Phillips (1), Treinen (1)
That's just an idea of how to spread things out. Getting Vesia back would be huge if the Dodgers do reach the World Series, as that would give Roberts an additional high-leverage arm he trusts. Certainly, the potential bullpen games in Game 6 of the NLCS and Game 4 of the World Series loom as key games. No matter how you plan it out, it seems likely the Dodgers will need some important innings from somebody such as Honeywell or Knack at some point.
There's also an alternate pitching scenario here: If both the Dodgers and Yankees win their series in five games, the World Series will start Tuesday, Oct. 22. That won't change much for the bullpen, since it would still have three days off between games, but the starting rotation might then line up this way:
Tuesday, Oct. 22, World Series Game 1: Buehler (five days of rest)
Wednesday, Oct. 23, World Series Game 2: Yamamoto (five days of rest)
Friday, Oct. 25, World Series Game 3: Flaherty (six days of rest)
Saturday, Oct. 26, World Series Game 4: Bullpen game
Sunday, Oct. 27, World Series Game 5: Buehler
Tuesday, Oct. 28, World Series Game 6: Yamamoto
Wednesday, Oct. 29, World Series Game 7: Flaherty
That doesn't change the overall innings split, just the order of the starters -- meaning Buehler would pitch earlier in the series and, depending on how long he lasts, tax the bullpen a little more in the first few games.
It's a lot of complex maneuvering and a far cry from, say, the way Joe Torre managed his bullpen when the New York Yankees won three straight World Series from 1998 to 2000. Over those three years, the Yankees' bullpen pitched 101 innings in 41 games, for an average of just 2.5 innings per game. Mariano Rivera accounted for 41% of those relief innings and the trio of Rivera, Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton accounted for 73% of the relief innings.
One break for the Dodgers is that, depending on how many games each league championship series goes, they could have those three days of rest before Game 1 of the World Series. That would allow the bullpen to rest so it could have everyone ready for the Fall Classic opener.
Indeed, you often hear the saying that when a team gets to an elimination game, it's all hands on deck. For the Dodgers, it's all hands on deck every playoff game.
"It's been a lot of guys," Smith said. "Pitchers, position players, everybody. Seems like everybody's been battling something. It's been a lot. ... But we've been able to get through it. Guys have had to step up. It's what we do. It's the Dodgers. Go out there and compete and try to win."