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By Rowan Kavner
At the end of another season-saving October performance Tuesday night, Walker Buehler retreated to the dugout and into the arms of the other emerging young ace the Dodgers are counting on to keep their season alive Thursday in San Francisco.
This year was the culmination of what the Dodgers always envisioned from Buehler and Julio Urías. The former, now six years removed from Tommy John surgery, surpassed 200 innings for the first time in his five-year career while pacing the Majors with 33 starts. The latter, now four years removed from the shoulder surgery that sidelined him for nearly two full Major League seasons, was baseball’s only 20-game winner.
The Cy Young contenders, who’ve already established their mighty postseason pedigrees, became the rocks of a tremendously gifted Dodger rotation that suddenly found itself shorthanded. They were the stabilizing forces of a pitching staff that required a litany of bullpen games and openers en route to tying a franchise record with 106 wins.
Now, the 27-year-old from Lexington, Kentucky, and the 25-year-old from Culiacán, Mexico, continue forging their striking October legacies against the division rival that ended the Dodgers’ eight-year National League West reign.
“We’ve always had a really good friendship, even through the minor leagues,” Urías said through a translator. “And I think I just watch him. I watch him compete. I watch how he goes about the game. I watch what he does to prepare for the game. We talk about how he goes about his business, and it’s just something that, for me, it kind of pushes me as well. And I think even last night, it kind of sets the stage for me to do what I need to do for us tomorrow.”
Four days after tossing 99 pitches in Game 1 of the National League Division Series, Buehler responded with another elimination-game triumph to send the series back to San Francisco, where the Dodgers will hand the ball to Urías for a winner-take-all Game 5.
“I don’t think we could have any more confidence in someone going than we do in Julio — on whatever day it is,” Buehler said.
As dominant a season as the duo enjoyed, the postseason is where Buehler and Urías built their reputations.
Buehler entered this year’s playoffs with a 1.28 ERA and 68 strikeouts in 49 1/3 innings in his previous nine postseason starts, dating back to Game 7 of the 2018 National League Championship Series. He fortified his “big-game pitcher” status on the Dodgers’ 2020 championship run, allowing two runs or fewer in all five playoff starts, including six scoreless innings in an NLCS elimination game.
But a championship trophy wouldn’t have been possible without the work of Urías, who entered in relief in Game 7 of the NLCS to finish off the final nine Braves batters before saving Game 6 of the World Series by recording the last seven outs.
“The past year or two, I think he and I have gotten really close,” Buehler said. “It’s been fun to watch him go from last year, ‘Hey, we’re going to use you all the time and throw two or three innings,’ to this year getting a full year of, ‘You’re going to make 30 starts and see what you can do,’ and wins 20 games for the first time in a long time here. So, it’s been cool to watch him kind of grow and evolve into that role.”
Roberts has always believed this was inside Urías, who became the youngest starting pitcher in Major League postseason history when he took the ball in Game 4 of the 2016 NLCS. But injuries delayed his promising career. Healthy again in 2019, the Dodgers took the left-hander’s progress slowly, holding off on pushing him too far too fast.
“He’s always been the player that’s wanted more, where I think that we have been very — for his benefit, short- and long-term — probably been conservative, and I don’t think that we regret that at all,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers didn’t have that luxury this year. A deep rotation that started with eight potential options for five spots at one point dwindled down to three healthy arms. They Dodgers removed the reins on Urías, who embraced the challenge. The left-hander, who’d never thrown even 80 innings in a season, finished the year 20–3 with a 2.96 ERA in 185 2/3 innings. The Dodgers won 26 of his 32 starts.
“It just seems like Julio has this weird but, like, old soul about him,” said Mookie Betts. “He just gets on the mound like he’s been there, he’s done it, and he’s got so much confidence in himself that it just kind of oozes out on everyone else.”
The statistics suggest as much. A Dodger team that averaged 5.12 runs per game scored at least six runs in 16 of his 32 starts. Urías played a role in that, tying for the lead among all National League pitchers with nine RBI.
His offensive production carried to Game 2 of the NLDS, where he recorded his first playoff RBI in the Dodgers’ 9–2 win. Another performance like that Thursday would send the Dodgers to the NLCS and add another chapter to his budding postseason resume.
“He just wants to be the guy,” Roberts said.
‘He just wants to be the guy’: Dodgers confidently turn to Julio Urías was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.