by Cary Osborne
For some teams or in some circumstances, going to the bullpen in the second inning could be a wave-the-white-flag signal.
But the Dodgers — in the fifth game of the 2025 season — made the move to the bullpen to win a game.
Even with the anticipation built for Roki Sasaki’s Dodger Stadium debut and with the talented right-hander one out away from getting out of the second inning, Dodger manager Dave Roberts made the trip to the mound with aces in the hole.
They were deployed one after another — six relievers in all — limiting the Detroit Tigers to three baserunners in the final 7 1/3 innings in the 5–0 Dodgers’ 7–3 win.
“We’ve had to do it a lot in my tenure as a Dodger for six years now,” said catcher Will Smith. “Those guys are ready for it whenever that happens to pick the starter up. Like they say, they’re dogs down there. So, we’re fortunate to have all of them. They went out tonight and put a bunch of zeroes.”
Sasaki wasn’t sharp.
The splitter that drew rave reviews in his four seasons pitching professionally in Japan wasn’t drawing swings and wasn’t landing for strikes. He threw 61 pitches and earned 32 strikes.
When he walked Spencer Torkelson in the second inning, it was his fourth free pass of the game and seventh Tiger baserunner.
“Roki, throughout his entire career, he’s been a command guy. He doesn’t walk guys. He’s filled the strike zone,” Roberts said. “So I think that right now where he’s at, there’s some new surroundings. He wants to impress. He wants to pitch well. He’s going up there, competing, and right now it’s just not syncing up. And so we’re going to keep working on it. But from the outset, I’ve always said we believe that this is a process.”
Sasaki threw 41 pitches in the first inning, which put him in a hole early. Roberts said if he had gotten out of the second inning, that was going to be it for him.
He made the choice to go to rookie Jack Dreyer after the Torkelson walk and the Dodgers trailing 2–1.
“I just felt right there in that spot, the game was in the balance,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers have a day off on Sunday, which gave them the flexibility to go back-to-back days with a small group of relievers whose workload had been light — Anthony Banda, Luis Garcia and Kirby Yates. They also had a short group of pitchers who didn’t pitch on Friday — Dreyer, Ben Casparius and Blake Treinen.
The Dodgers used all of them.
Dreyer, Casparius and Banda retired all 10 batters they faced. Yates struck out the side on 13 pitches.
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Meanwhile, the Dodger offense was on with home runs from Freddie Freeman, Smith and Tommy Edman. Freeman and Teoscar Hernández drove in two runs.
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Treinen took out the Tigers in the ninth.
The game reminded Freeman of what the bullpen did in the postseason.
“It’s like five months ago,” he said. “Especially early on in the season, that’s hard, too, because I know we’re not trying to do back-to-backs with guys, we’re trying to keep them fresh as much as we possibly can. But for them to want the ball and go out there and execute was unbelievable.”
Dodgers unleash the bullpen dawgs to finish sweep of the Tigers was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.