by Rowan Kavner
At just 27 years old, there’s not much left for Walker Buehler to prove on a baseball field.
He made it a goal to pitch deeper into games this year, and he tackled that challenge by crossing the 200-inning mark for the first time in his career. No pitcher made more starts than his 33. He could focus his effort on the regular season because he’d already cemented his October reputation.
The two-time All-Star with a championship to his name earned the moniker “big-game pitcher” for his steady work in each of his previous three postseasons. But Tuesday’s Game 4 of the National League Division Series presented a new challenge.
For the first time in his career, Buehler was asked — or, rather, he asked — to start on three days of rest. The Dodgers, facing elimination, obliged. By the time he walked off the field to a standing ovation in the fifth inning, he’d already built a four-run lead on the Giants en route to a 7–2 win that sent the series back to San Francisco.
“Now you’ve checked a box,” manager Dave Roberts told Buehler after he departed. “You’ve pitched in big games, elimination games, (a Game) 163, but never pitched on short rest. A box was checked, and you came out ahead.”
The Dodgers waited to see how Buehler felt Tuesday morning before officially naming him the starter for that night. He had thrown 99 pitches just three nights prior in Game 1.
“As long as I could walk into the clubhouse, I think I was going to pitch,” Buehler said.
But how long he could go in Game 4 was anyone’s guess. This was unchartered territory. The length of his start would depend on his execution.
Buehler finished a perfect 11-pitch first inning with a 97-mph fastball. As the innings wore on, he kept the Giants off balance by working a changeup into his mix more than Giants manager Gabe Kapler had expected. Buehler was only at 43 pitches through three scoreless innings, holding a two-run lead at the time. In the fourth inning, Buehler singled and scored on a Mookie Betts homer.
“I would feel really weird not pitching a game that we could lose a series, and very happy that it worked out and kind of fortunate in a lot of ways,” Buehler said.
Roberts planned to keep an eye on Buehler’s legs and delivery during the start. If anything looked off, he’d pull him knowing Tony Gonsolin was available to pitch multiple innings if needed. By the end of the night, Roberts thought Buehler looked sharper than he did in Game 1. He joked that maybe the solution is to have him pitch on short rest more often.
While Buehler only got seven swings and misses, he worked around the little traffic that did arise through his 71 pitches. The only run charged to him scored after his departure with one out in the fifth inning. He provided everything the Dodgers needed on the brink of elimination.
“When our back’s against the wall, we’ve got a guy named Walker Buehler getting us out of it,” Betts said. “So, he did it again today.”
That process began at the end of the 2018 season, at a time Buehler just started to establish himself as one of the budding stars in the game. His work once the calendar flipped to October placed him on a different pedestal. On Oct. 1 that year, he delivered 6 2/3 scoreless innings against the Rockies in a tiebreaker to keep the Dodgers’ streak of division titles alive.
His penchant for delivering in must-win moments built from there.
Buehler surrendered one run to the Brewers in Game 7 of the 2018 National League Championship Series to help the Dodgers book a World Series ticket. A year later, despite the Dodgers ultimately losing the game, Buehler allowed one run in 6 2/3 innings of a win-or-go-home NLDS Game 5 against the Nationals.
He continued to pitch his best when the Dodgers needed him most. Facing elimination in Game 6 of last year’s NLCS against the Braves, Buehler tossed six scoreless innings to keep the Dodgers alive. He followed that up with 10 strikeouts in six innings of a Game 3 World Series victory.
Buehler entered Tuesday with a 1.62 ERA across his last 10 playoff starts. None of those previous 10 resembled Game 4 against the Giants. After starting a Game 1 shutout defeat and watching Julio Urías cruise to a Game 2 win, he told the Dodgers he wanted the ball in Game 4. Buehler consulted with Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw and other veteran aces who’ve pitched on short rest in high-pressure spots after making his declaration to see if he should do anything different.
He didn’t divulge any of those secrets, but the advice Buehler received clearly didn’t hurt.
“He just seemed relax, and sometimes when you might be a little bit more fatigued and not too amped up or too strong you sort of try not to do too much,” Roberts said. “All night long, he stayed in his delivery.”
Buehler strutted victoriously off the field with two on and one out in the fifth inning, as his unflinching effort helped the Dodgers stave off elimination and force a winner-take-all Game 5 in San Francisco. The bullpen took it from there.
“Elimination game, and having been here a little bit, I wanted the ball,” Buehler said. “And I feel good about what I did.”
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Walker Buehler delivers again in a must-win spot unlike the others was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.