LOS ANGELES — Well, Dodger fans, you might as well set aside a few bucks for Wild Card Series tickets.
(OK, more than a few bucks. It is part of the postseason, after all.)
In the previous three seasons of the best-of-three first-round series, coinciding with the increase in the playoff field to six teams per league, the Dodgers had always avoided it by being among the top two division champions.
But that almost certainly won’t be the case this year. The Philadelphia Phillies – right now the No. 2 NL division leader behind Milwaukee – might have made sure of that Monday night with their 6-5, 10-inning victory at Dodger Stadium.
That puts the Phils 5½ games ahead of the Dodgers in the chase for a first-round bye, with 12 games left going into Tuesday. A sweep this week might have given the Dodgers realistic hope, but the chances instead are better that they’ll be playing in that best-of-three for the first time since 2020, when every playoff entrant started with the wild-card round at the end of the pandemic-shortened 60-game season.
Is the past necessarily a precedent? The Dodgers swept Milwaukee in that best-of-three first-round series in 2020 and went on to win the whole thing, albeit in abnormal conditions. They also played in the last single-game elimination between wild card teams the following October, when Chris Taylor’s walk-off home run started a postseason run that ended in the NL Championship Series.
As for those byes the last three seasons? In 2022 against San Diego and 2023 against Arizona, they coasted into the postseason and were eliminated in the division series. Last season they had to fight until the final week to win the division and navigated the bye more successfully, though they were still within one game of elimination against the Padres in the NLDS.
The potential fatal flaw this time, as anyone who has followed the Dodgers this year is well aware, is the bullpen. Monday night, for once, it wasn’t Tanner Scott who spit up a lead; he had a clean ninth inning against the Phillies and has had two straight scoreless appearances.
(And for what it’s worth, the overamplified music that serenaded Scott as he warmed up for the ninth drowned out any boos that might have greeted him.)
His “last two outings have been very good,” Manager Dave Roberts said, maybe embellishing just a tad. “And it’s really good to see.”
Monday night other relievers were the culprits. Anthony Banda was employed as the opener and given only three hitters to face, two of them lefties, before Emmett Sheehan would take over. Unfortunately for Banda, one of those lefties was Kyle Schwarber, the second batter of the game, who hit a 390-foot bomb on a 1-and-2 pitch for his 53rd homer of the year.
Jack Dreyer, a 26-year-old rookie who had become one of the Dodgers’ more trustworthy relievers in recent weeks, gave up a two-run homer to No. 9 hitter Weston Wilson in the seventh to put Philadelphia up 4-3. Alex Vesia gave up a leadoff homer to Bryce Harper in the eighth after the Dodgers had tied the score at 3-3 in the bottom of the seventh on Mookie Betts’ 19th homer.
And Blake Treinen presided over the 10th, when J.T. Realmuto’s scoring fly ball delivered Harrison Bader, the extra innings free runner, with what turned out to be the winning run. Treinen didn’t give up a home run, but he didn’t get the job done, either.
But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know if you’ve been following the Dodgers all season. This has been a very shaky bullpen for a while, and expecting these relievers to suddenly become rock solid as the postseason approaches seems like an exercise in wishful thinking.
But what else can Roberts do? He talked Monday night of seeing “who’s going to seize the opportunity.” Again, wishful thinking, but he has no choice. These are the guys that President of Baseball Ops Andrew Friedman and General Manager Brandon Gomes have given him. Fans can, and do, criticize Roberts’ pitching decisions with impunity, but there are no future Hall of Famers walking through that bullpen gate.
Maybe Sheehan, an excess starter in a six-man rotation that will be pared to four for the playoffs, will be that X-factor. He had been alerted Monday night that he would be coming into the game after Banda had faced his mandated three batters, so it wasn’t a total simulation of the relief role he might wind up with.
But he’s pitched well: A 6-3 record, 3.16 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 65⅓ innings over 13 outings (11 starts), and a 2.07 ERA and 39 strikeouts in 30⅓ innings over his last six starts. And he has pitched out of the bullpen in the past, so it won’t be totally foreign to him. But how will he respond in the postseason crucible?
Again, the relief pitching choices are daunting considering (a) the stakes and (b) the regular-season production. And with the possibility – and what seems more like a probability with each passing day – of facing that extra series and having to win 13 games, not 11, to win another championship … well, the Dodgers are doing themselves no favors.
Especially if they get caught by the Padres, who gained a half-game on their off day and entered Tuesday two games behind the Dodgers in the NL West.
What’s the old line? Past results are no guarantee of future performance. At this point, maybe that’s the best Dodger fans can hope for.
jalexander@scng.com