by Megan Garcia
With one win separating the Dodgers from a World Series title, they hand the ball the bullpen to finish the job on Tuesday.
The layout of Tuesday’s bullpen game was heavily reliant on Walker Buehler in his Game 3 start. He silenced the Yankees in five innings — paving the way for the 3–0 series lead. But six of the Dodgers’ 10 relievers were deployed to cover the last 12 outs.
The Dodgers are going with a bullpen game for the fourth time this postseason, but the degree of difficulty has risen.
The following pitchers threw at least 20 pitches in Monday’s 4–2, Game 3 victory:
- Michael Kopech (24)
- Ryan Brasier (22)
- Daniel Hudson (22)
Brusdar Graterol threw 18 pitches.
Kopech and Anthony Banda have appeared in every game in this series.
Blake Treinen, though, is on two days’ rest. Alex Vesia has thrown five pitches over the last three days. And pitchers Brent Honeywell Jr., Ben Casparius and Landon Knack have yet to pitch in the World Series.
One key part of the Dodgers’ bullpen success in the National League Division Series was Los Angeles keeping its relievers from getting seen too many times by each Mets hitter. But the Dodgers needed to squeeze every out from Monday’s Game 3 by any means necessary.
“If nothing else, I think we extended their guys quite a bit. Like most of their bullpen guys came in and threw a lot of pitches,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “Hopefully that little bit of familiarity serves us well going into (Game 4), but it’s going to be a challenge with all their arms. Again, we’ve got to get after it.”
Like when the Dodgers won Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Mets, it appears likely that someone outside of the high-leverage group or the overall group Roberts describes as “pitchers under his trust tree” will have to give critical innings. That was Casparius in Game 6 of the NLCS when he earned four outs.
Honeywell, who gave the Dodgers length in Games 2 and 5 in the NLCS, said everyone is ready.
“It’s all about doing your job,” Honeywell said. “You go out, you get the outs that you’re asked to get. And once that happens, you’ve got to watch the guy coming behind you and do the same thing. It’s all about kind of giving a different look. I’d put our bullpen up with any bullpen that I’ve ever been on and any bullpen I’ve ever seen. I want to win, and if that’s how we’ve got to do it, that’s how we’ve got to do it.”
World Series: The Dodgers hand the ball to the bullpen to help win them a championship was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.