LOS ANGELES — If it all really was a grand master plan to have their four aces pitching at the top of their game in October, that was some real galaxy brain-level thinking.
The Dodgers made Blake Snell their No. 1 priority last offseason and signed him to a five-year, $182 million contract – then kept him on the injured list for four months, starting him just 11 times in the regular season.
They stashed Tyler Glasnow on the IL for 2½ months as well, getting just 90 innings from him in the regular season. And they took a drip-drip-drip approach to Shohei Ohtani’s return to the mound, limiting him to just 47 innings during the regular season even when they certainly could have used more.
And Yoshinobu Yamamoto – here’s a twist – didn’t miss a start. The Dodgers stayed committed to giving him extra rest between starts and he has rewarded them. He crossed the 200-inning mark with his second consecutive complete-game performance in Game 2 of the World Series on Saturday night.
All of that has led to the Dodgers having four aces pitching at their best when it matters most. As the World Series shifts to Dodger Stadium for the next three games in the best-of-seven series, the Dodgers have given up no more than one run in six of their past seven games with the starting quartet of Snell, Yamamoto, Ohtani and Glasnow carried the load.
“I think that was the goal of the organization, the coaches, front office, myself – how do we get these guys to be at optimal performance towards the end of the season? The question is how do you get there,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“Redlining those guys, pushing those guys, shortening their rehabs to try to win ‘X’ amount of games (during the regular season) wasn’t the answer, in our opinion. So we had other guys step up, younger players fill innings. But with that, we were able to kind of build guys up the right way to then have them ready to go.
“This wasn’t by chance. It was a calculated decision. But, yeah, the cost was in the regular season, we just weren’t optimal throughout the summer.”
The players who made the second- and third-most starts on the team (behind Yamamoto’s 30) are now filling a limited role in the postseason bullpen (Clayton Kershaw, 22 starts) and traded away in midseason (Dustin May, 18 starts).
“Our biggest thing is obviously looking back, we’ve had years where we’ve had a lot of injuries, and in some of those instances, it’s season-ending, it’s into the next season,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “The injuries, for the most part, that we faced this year were injuries that we could forecast that guys were coming back. So now it was okay. With each individual guy, it was, A), we have the depth to try to withstand this right now, but with each individual player returning was doing the best we could to lay out the most thoughtful progression, rehab plan, to get them back to stay back – but also to be hitting their stride and the stuff and execution in place going into October.”
Sitting on the sidelines for weeks at a time is nothing new for Glasnow. He acknowledged trying to find the silver lining in that – that he will be fresher come playoff time.
“I think it’s the thing you tell yourself to not be so pissed off that you’re hurt, I guess,” he said. “I think when it happened this year I definitely was frustrated. It wasn’t as crazy as it was previous years or I wasn’t as frustrated, just knowing it was like something minor, compared to like Tommy John and other stuff. So I knew it wasn’t a huge deal.
“At the moment it happened I was frustrated, but … I went and I talked with Gomer (Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes), Andrew and we were like, ‘Whatever. You’ll be out a little bit. The goal is to be (ready) for the postseason.’ That’s why I came here was to pitch postseason games. So it was kind of like, ‘Alright, this sucks, but it could be so much worse.’ So I think coming back from that injury the only thing I had in my mind was just to come out and be healthy for the postseason.”
Having the depth to absorb injuries to their starting pitchers is annually part of the plan, Friedman said. But delaying their returns in order to lessen the workloads of those pitchers is not.
“I mean, a lot’s been made about us slow playing (injured players),” he said. “I don’t know how much it was slow playing versus – there’s a lot of unknowns about injuries. Like, we’re not going to sit here and pretend we know what exactly causes them. And the build-up to get back, for us, it’s about getting back to stay back. So it’s imperfect and it’s much more art than science, and so we just erred a little bit more on the side of caution to give ourselves a better chance of when they come back to stay back.”
They came back strong – Yamamoto just stayed strong all year.
“I think it’s just the way he takes care of himself,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “You guys see him every single day. He spends a lot of time taking care of himself, preparing his body. It’s not probably the way most of our guys train. I think that’s well documented in how he trains. But he takes care of his body, makes sure he’s in good position. Last year obviously he had the shoulder issue. But this year it seems like he’s where he needs to be, and as fresh as he’s been all year. It’s a credit to him and his preparation on the physical front – because that’s not easy. We’re 34 starts into this thing now. It’s pretty impressive. And some of his best stuff has been of late.”
That has been true of all four starters. Through Yamamoto’s dominant performance in Game 2, the Dodgers’ starting pitchers have a 1.84 ERA while holding hitters to a .152 batting average over 78⅓ postseason innings (leaving just 30⅔ innings for their suspect bullpen to cover).
Prior joked that postseason games are stressful no matter who is pitching – “We’ve got matching (gray) hair” he said to one question. Riding their four aces has just been a matter of playing the cards they have, he said.
“I think you are who you are,” Prior said. “The plan is – obviously, our starters have been throwing the ball extremely well. Let’s see how far they can go, and then when it’s time to go to the bullpen, we’ll go to the bullpen.
“Clearly, Blake Snell, Yama, Glasnow, Shohei – all really good pitchers. I think we can all agree that they’re all really good pitchers, and any team would probably roll them out in a playoff game. So I don’t think this is any master plan. … I think we talk about a lot of things. But the plan is to start those guys and see how they do. And fortunately for the Dodgers, they’ve been pitching well.”