LOS ANGELES — Reaching the NLCS was the main victory of the day for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but they exited the stadium with one more reason for jubilance.
This pitching staff might actually work.
If you are a baseball fan, you’ve probably heard no shortage of comments about how compromised the Los Angeles unit of pitchers was as the postseason began. The rotation was one of the best in baseball, sure, but the bullpen … oh, the bullpen.
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Fans, teams and the Dodgers themselves knew that at some point, their elite collection of starting pitchers would have to exit the game, at which point the club would have to choose among a uniformly inauspicious selection of options. Tanner Scott, who carried a 6.92 ERA in the second half? Blake Treinen, who had a 9.64 mark in September? Emmet Sheehan, the starting pitcher turned reliever with no postseason experience? Clayton Kershaw, who is, you know, Clayton Kershaw? Even the Dodgers’ more dependable relievers such as Alex Vesia had their missteps in the past few weeks.
Yet here the Dodgers now stand. It’s not exactly that the bullpen exonerated itself in this series, especially considering Kershaw’s meltdown in Game 3. (And it took an even bigger bullpen mistake to win them Game 4.) However, given how Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki pitched over a combined full game of baseball on Thursday, it might not matter.
Both Glasnow and Sasaki have ace-level talent, but their Dodgers careers thus far have seen them more defined by their drawbacks. In Glasnow, L.A. had a pitcher with one of the spottiest health track records in the sport and a postseason record that wasn’t much better. In Sasaki, they had a pitcher who struggled to throw strikes and get batters out as a starter, then spent more than four months on the IL due to a shoulder impingement.
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But on Thursday, both pitchers rewrote those stories in real time.
Glasnow, who has seen plenty of speculation about his ability to handle the big game, went up against likely NL Cy Young finalist Cristopher Sánchez and was the better pitcher. His four-pitch mix overwhelmed a Phillies lineup that had broken through Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Kershaw 24 hours prior.
The only question left after Glasnow’s start was why Dodgers manager Dave Roberts took him out of the game after six innings and just 83 pitches.
The answer turned out to be cramps, which Glasnow said he started feeling around the end of the third inning.
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In the Dodgers’ rotation of high-price aces, Glasnow was the biggest question going into this postseason, especially after he missed the team’s 2024 World Series run due to an elbow strain. He got his first taste of Dodger Stadium postseason baseball on Thursday, and he couldn’t have stood taller.
“I couldn’t be more excited for Tyler,” Roberts said afterward. “A little bit on the outside looking in last year and wanting to be a part of things. And all offseason, this season, he couldn’t wait for this moment, for the postseason, and to contribute.
“And so he’s prepared physically, mentally. And what he did, it was his time today. Today was his moment. And I was just very happy to see that he rose to that occasion and gave us a huge boost. This is something that I know is going to propel him going forward.”
The Dodgers have a new late-inning weapon in Roki Sasaki. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
(MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Glasnow’s start kept the Dodgers in a scoreless tie into the seventh inning, when the two teams exchanged a single run. The Phillies’ sole run came when converted starting pitcher Emmet Sheehan committed an error and allowed a Nick Castellanos double. The Dodgers got that run back with a Mookie Betts bases-loaded walk against Jhoan Duran, and then they turned to another converted starting pitcher, Sasaki, in the eighth inning. And the ninth inning. And the 10th inning.
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“I was thinking — at that point in time when we went to him, I was thinking two [innings],” Robert said. “And then I just felt that the stuff, where the game was at, I felt he could handle us pushing him. And he didn’t bat an eye. He was ready, and he didn’t run from it.”
Sasaki began his MLB career as a massively hyped rookie, but the hype came crashing down over the course of April and May. He couldn’t fool hitters with his limited pitch mix. He couldn’t keep the ball in the strike zone enough. He couldn’t reach the triple-digit heat that made him a phenom in the first place.
Hitting the IL seemed almost like a mercy, and Roberts said at one point in the season that he wasn’t sure if Sasaki would even return. It was only later in the year that Sasaki was announced to be coming back as a reliever. That return was off to a strong start going into Thursday, with Sasaki having made five scoreless appearances, including three in the postseason, but this was a different challenge.
The Dodgers asked Sasaki to get through an entire turn of the Phillies’ veteran, thumping lineup. It turned out to not be a fair fight.
Sitting at 99.5 mph with his fastball and throwing one of the nastiest splitters in the world, Sasaki dug in and carried the Dodgers into extra innings. He didn’t look like a new pitcher, just his old self.
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“Just felt like my fastball velo was back to where it used to be, and the command of the fastball was where I wanted it to be as well,” Sasaki said postgame through interpreter Will Ireton. “So I think that really helps with the off-speed. And because of that, I do really feel confident to be able to attack in zone.”
Even before he signed with the Dodgers, Sasaki had been battling velocity issues, to the point that he reportedly asked MLB suitors to try to explain what they thought happened over the course of his disappointing 2024 season in NPB. He indicated that the Dodgers finally found the answer as he rehabbed.
“I like to give credit to the pitching coach in Arizona, when I was rehabbing, being able to identify clearly what the issue was and come to some kind of agreement on what the actual root of the problem is,” Sasaki said. “And in terms of how to get to that point, now that was a different process. But in terms of, like, it really just helped me, as I gained my velo back, that I was able to really identify and have a clear path forward.”
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At the end of Sasaki’s three innings Thursday, Roberts made the rare step of leaving the dugout to shake the right-hander’s hand.
“You’re talking about one of the great all-time appearances out of the ‘pen that I can remember,” Roberts said. “I can’t speak enough to his growth and his contribution to this club. We’re starting to see something really special in him, and that’s why he was courted so hard in the offseason.
“But what he’s done now, on the biggest of stages, he’s just scratching the surface.”
And so, as they move on to the NLCS, it appears that the Dodgers can be confident in their four starters — Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto — and in Sasaki as well. Maybe Alex Vesia is back in the circle of trust, too, after he followed Sasaki with a scoreless 11th inning.
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Four good starting pitchers and two good relievers doesn’t sound like enough to win a World Series, but it has been done before by teams such as the 2019 Washington Nationals, who got creative in a campaign that featured an upset of a 106-win Dodgers team. Starters appeared out of relief, all the way up to Patrick Corbin throwing three scoreless innings in Game 7 of the Fall Classic.
This year’s Dodgers almost certainly have more scrambling ahead of them, but Glasnow could help with that, too, given that he pitched 1 2/3 innings out of the bullpen in Game 1. It won’t be easy from here, but the Dodgers have already fielded tougher questions.
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