2024 review: Walker Buehler

Walker Buehler had a 2024 that both defied logic and embodied a literal Hollywood ending that was truly stranger than fiction, from bad to bad.

In some respects, Walker Buehler’s season is truly stranger than fiction. If you read it or saw it presented in a film, you would instantly dismiss it as too contrived, unbelievable, and rank hackery. Yet it happened — we all saw it.

Truthfully, Buehler’s season can be described in one word: bad. Though, as with all things, context is king.

From literal bad…

There are no mincing words about Buehler’s regular season: he was pretty awful.

After losing roughly two years due to a second Tommy John surgery after futile postseason efforts in the 2021 NLCS, the Dodgers activated Buheler on May 6 from the injured list in his first action since June 2022. There were encouraging signs from a four-inning, three-run performance against the Miami Marlins.

It turned out to be a mirage, sadly. What happened next was foreseeable but not great. There were many crooked numbers, laborious starts, and the occasional flash of that Big Game Buehler magic. Moreover, there was also a lot of Dave Roberts making a face, which is best seen rather than described.

It would have been unfair and ridiculous to expect Buehler to return right where he left off after such a long rehabilitation period. Where folks were expecting an ace, it would not be an understatement to call him one of the worst pitchers in the league.

He only won a single game all year in the regular season. The Dodgers went 9-7 in Buehler starts because the team generally had to out-slug other teams into submission to make up for Buehler’s consistently inconsistent and ineffective starts.

Looking at Buehler at Baseball Savant, Buehler’s problem was pretty obvious: He had lost the ability to bully hitters with his plus-fastball and locate his knuckle-curve and cutter effectively at the edge of the strike zone. Buehler’s starts quickly turned into unscheduled batting practice sessions during live games.

In 16 chances in the regular season, Buehler had one start all year where he gave up no runs — his only win against the Reds at home on May 18. More damning, he had just three quality starts all year.

Things reached a breaking point on June 18 against the Colorado Rockies. Buehler was slapped around for seven runs in four innings of dreadful-to-watch work. He did not take the loss that day because the Dodgers had a stupidly epic and comedic comeback for the ages to get their now-floundering former ace off the hook.

After the game, Buehler did not mince words about his performance, stating, “When [all of his pitches] suck, you try to figure out which ones suck the least.”

At this point in the year, Buehler had an atrocious 5.84 ERA and 6.06 FIP. Moreover, opposing batters had a slash line of .301/.357/.542 against him. That slash line is equivalent to turning every opposing batter into 2024 Marcell Ozuna (.302/.379/.546).

Buehler was put on the injured list with a hip injury and no timetable to return. The hope was to get him reset and refocused into any semblance of an effective major league pitcher for the postseason run.

Buehler was assigned to Triple-A Oklahoma City for his rehab. It was more of the same awfulness, with an exception in his final rehab start, where it looked like he had finally turned a corner, striking out five in 5 1⁄3 innings of solid work.

Buehler returned on August 14 against the Milwaukee Brewers out of necessity. While Buehler did make his eight on-schedule starts, it was more of the terrible, terrible same.

Buehler would have his strikeout mojo back in one start, but he would leak runs like a sieve. The next, he would have length, but the game would be a white-knuckle affair where he was clearly getting outs through guile and pluck rather than dominance.

In his return, he pitched 38⅓ innings to close out the year, which averages to just over 4⅔ innings a start. Opponents hit .277/.360/.471, which was an improvement. Now, every batter was a slightly-improved 2024 Manny Machado (.275/.325/.472).

In almost every metric, Buehler had the worst season, outside of his rookie campaign of eight games in 2017, of his illustrious career. His 18.6-percent strikeout rate and 8.1-percent walk rates were the worst of his career.

At this point, injury, attrition, and the ineffectiveness of others left Buehler as one of the de facto starters for the Dodgers postseason run. This fact justifiably made many people doubt the Dodgers going into the playoff run. I volunteered for this write-up because I wrote the following about Buehler before the NLDS against the Padres:

Last year, I was justifiably concerned about [Clayton] Kershaw’s 5.40 FIP in the last 54 games of the season. I should have also been apoplectic over then-Dodger Lance Lynn’s FIP over the last 54 games, which was somehow worse (6.03).

The only silver lining over last year is no one is that bad currently in comparison. What I see is one stud (Yamamoto), one slightly-better-than-average guy (Flaherty), one solidly below-average rookie (Knack), and one awful-guy-who-is-trying-to-figure-it-out (Buehler)….

Buehler got the ball for Game 3 against the Padres. It was a disaster. Buehler had a justifiable tantrum in the dugout after some rare defensive miscues by an injured Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas. These miscues allowed an inning to snowball into a six-run inning and a 2-1 series deficit.

There were two silver linings to Game 3 of the NLDS for the hopeful and the desperate to cling onto. First, Buehler did not give up another run after the disastrous second inning. Second, the defensive lapses would either correct themselves or become moot because the Dodgers would be sitting at home — again.

For an uncomfortable 72 hours, the above clip was the potential last moment that fans would see Buehler in a Dodger uniform. But as this story goes, there was a shift in the meaning of bad as the team rallied and advanced for the first time in four years.

…to Michael Jackson’s Bad

Like the 1987 classic album, which changed the meaning of bad from its definition to something good, Buehler had three more appearances to close out the year and went from awful to legend in 2024.

Arguably, Dave Roberts saved the season by holding a team meeting on the day it was announced that Tyler Glasnow was done for the year.

The meeting was not a dressing down but a reiteration that Roberts believed the team could win this year with the available personnel. Moreover, he called Buehler out after the team had been depending on Tyler Glasnow for the postseason.

Roberts told Buehler that he needed to rise to the occasion. After the Game 3 NLDS debacle, Buehler did not give another run for the rest of the postseason. Nothing could stop Buehler, even getting mugged.

Buehler would get another start against the Mets. Buehler responded epically, crediting the team for propping him up.

He only lasted four innings in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Mets. But where he failed to strike anyone out in five innings in the previous round, he was generating swings and misses. While he was on the tightrope again, he did not fall off this time.

Buehler struck out six over four innings in his only start of the NLCS. It was enough, and more importantly, it was the first sighting of Big F—-ing Game Buehler all year that Dodgers fans had come to expect.

In Game 3 of the World Series against the Yankees, Buehler was even better. He struck out five over five scoreless innings in the Bronx. He only allowed two hits, which turned into another highlight for a Dodger fan and lowlight for Yankees fans, thanks to Teoscar Hernandez. Buehler bullied the Yankees with his fastball and got the most swing-and-miss out of that pitch since 2021.

In his three career World Series starts, Eric Stephen noted that Buehler had allowed one total run on seven hits in 18 innings, with 22 strikeouts and three walks. Buehler’s teammates noticed: October Buehler is just a different pitcher.

The story of Buehler in Game 5 will be remembered and mythologized for generations by Dodger fans. From Buehler telling management he was available to pitch before the game, to channeling Kershaw in getting down to the bullpen (again) after victory became possible, to lying to pitching coach Mark Prior about being warm before getting to the bullpen, to pitching on one day’s rest to close out the World Series, and to wearing Orel Hershisher’s 1988 World Series jersey at the Dodgers’ rally and parade — it is all the stuff of legend and fiction. Yet, we all saw it happen in real-time.

In Game 5, Buehler earned the first save of his career by pitching a 1-2-3 ninth, striking out the last two hitters, Austin Wells and Alex Verdugo, to seal the Dodgers eighth championship.

Do two solid starts and a relief appearance for the ages make up for what was objectively Buehler’s worst season as a Dodger in the final year of his contract? Buehler will likely not get the mega contract on par with Gerrit Cole or Yamamoto this offseason, but one would be remiss for not noticing the wisdom that Buehler gained due to his 2024 season.

Buehler said it best to Mookie Betts on his podcast recorded after the Dodgers parade and rally:

“I felt like I weighed three pounds [heading out to pitch the ninth.]…There is no one in the world that is more okay with losing [Game 5] than me. I’ve been dogshit all year. I know that I can take the downside of it. So the upside, as weird as it sounds, I deserve the upside. I’m ready for the down. … I’m ready for all that.”

If this playoff run is the final act of Walker Buehler as a Dodger, it was a showstopping finale that no one will forget in a generation. But if Buehler has indeed figured it out going forward, I shall let Buehler have the last word in this essay, which the Dodgers might want to note: “I’m a problem right now.”

2024 particulars

Age: 29

Stats: 1-6, 75 ⅓ IP, 64 K, 28 BB, 5.38 ERA, 5.54 FIP, 1.553 WHIP; postseason: 15 IP, 13 K, 5 BB, 3.60 ERA, 3.50 FIP

Salary: $8.025 million

Game of the year

It would be trite to point to Buehler’s lone regular season win or even his Game 3 World Series win, as Buehler’s best game of the year. It would miss the moment, and if nothing else this year, when the stakes were highest, Buehler rose to the moment. Instead, we shall select Game 5 of the 2024 World Series for all the drama and pathos described above.

Roster status

Buehler is currently a free agent.