SAN DIEGO — Consider, for a moment, what the possibilities might have been.
Imagine that the Dodgers hadn’t lost what amounts to an additional starting rotation-plus worth of pitchers, in what has been a baseball-wide siege of arm/elbow/shoulder injuries but one that hit them particularly hard. What would their playoff rotation have looked like?
Maybe Tyler Glasnow as the ace, a fully functional Yoshinobu Yamamoto (rather than one still coming back from a triceps injury) as a solid Game 2 starter, followed by Jack Flaherty – sure, they’d still have traded for him – and a healthy Clayton Kershaw, or a fully rejuvenated Walker Buehler. You’d take your chances with that foursome any time, wouldn’t you?
Instead, the Dodgers have had 18 different pitchers on the injured lists at various times. The more than $1 billion they committed to new additions in the offseason didn’t buy good health. And just from that alone, this might have been the most improbable 98-win team in baseball.
So, again, consider: For the most important game of their season on Wednesday night, they gave the ball to Ryan Brasier to open a bullpen game. And they adjusted the lineup card shortly before game time because there would be no All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, after already ruling out shortstop Miguel Rojas.
Naturally, with their season on the line and most observers expecting an early exit from the postseason to match those of the last two years, these Dodgers pushed back. Their 8-0 victory assured a fifth and deciding game of the National League Division Series on Friday night at Dodger Stadium, where the noise and the energy will be on their side, the same way it was on the Padres’ side in Petco Park on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Bullpen games, as a rule, are not as much of a disadvantage as they might seem. The Dodgers have been over .500 in such games the last three regular seasons, and Brasier and Co. limited San Diego to seven hits, kept the explosive part of the Padres’ order relatively quiet, and reduced the decibel level of a crowd anxious to send the archenemy packing for the winter.
Instead, now the Dodgers have a chance to banish the ghosts of the last two Octobers.
Mookie Betts, with homers in the last two games (after being robbed by Jurickson Profar in Game 2 in L.A.) and two hits on Wednesday night, seems to be emerging from a three-year postseason slump. Will Smith and Gavin Lux also homered, but the lineup also manufactured runs, including (gasp!) a safety squeeze by Tommy Edman in the seventh.
Adversity? Bah.
“I mean, we were very injured all year and somehow we had the best record in the league,” utility man Kiké Hernández said. “I feel like tonight was just an example of what this team is capable of doing, and the fact that we did it without Freddie and Miggy was just a bonus.
“I feel like we have a great, deep team overall. And tonight it showed.”
So maybe, instead of bemoaning that the Dodgers are facing elimination games, we should be hailing them for getting to this point after their original blueprint was torn up so.
The pitching staff is the most glaring example. Glasnow and Kershaw, of course, were done for the year before the postseason began. Young prospects Emmet Sheehan and River Ryan were early season casualties, and former All-Star Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May were never available – though the prospect of Gonsolin as a late-season addition was tantalizing for a while. Bobby Miller basically pitched his way off the roster after his own IL stint, and Buehler has not consistently been the same big game pitcher we had become accustomed to.
Pitching matters. But there were position player injuries as well. Muncy was out for an extended period. Betts broke a bone in his hand when he was hit by a pitch in mid-June. Lux, who had missed the entire 2023 season with a knee injury, needed time to get his swing back.
And there were those ghosts. Losing to the Padres in four games in a 2022 NLDS. Being swept by Arizona in 2023. Both came after 100-victory seasons, and the fallout undoubtedly led to last winter’s spending spree, for a franchise for which winning the World Series is the only acceptable outcome.
It could still go blooey Friday night, and if not then somewhere down the line. But they’ve given themselves a chance.
“There’s stretches where we played up to expectations, but for the most part of the season we kind of underperformed as a group, and we were able to win the division,” Hernández said. “Got a little shaky there for a second, but here we are.”
And maybe the big guns are starting to break loose. Betts’ first-inning homer – a 403-foot shot to center field that provided the first hint that Padres starting pitcher Dylan Cease wasn’t on his game – started his second straight two-hit night, a sign that the 0-for-22 postseason slump he had carried into Game 3 might be a thing of the past.
“I just want to do my part,” Betts said in the interview room afterward. “I’m not trying to win the game for us. And we got plenty of guys that can win games for us. I just want to do my part in the team. And that’s all I’ve been focused on.”
Meanwhile, twenty-five other guys in that clubhouse have his back.
“I know he’s had his struggles in the postseason, but he’s still one of the best players in baseball,” infielder Max Muncy said. “He’s been an unbelievable player in the postseason in the past, and he had a rough stretch.
“I think the biggest thing for him was getting that out of his head, and now that he’s had a couple of hits he can get back to being Mookie Betts. … I tell him every single time when they walk (Shohei Ohtani) to pitch to him, ‘Hey, you’re getting $400 (million) too, bro. You’re still one of the best players.’ Sometimes you just gotta get reminded that you are who you are.”
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Betts wasn’t alone in maybe starting to break out of a slump. Ohtani was 3 for 14 in this series, and 1 for 11 with six strikeouts, after grounding out to lead off Wednesday’s game. But he singled sharply in his second at-bat to drive in a run, walked twice and was thrown out trying to score on a play where third base umpire Mark Ripperger got in the way of a Teoscar Hernández single, allowing Manny Machado to pick it up and make the play.
If Shohei is going to carry this team on his back, as many have suggested, now is a good time to start.
The Dodgers also took the crowd out of the game, which normally isn’t that much of a concern in baseball but has become a big thing in this series, and especially in this venue. When Lux drove reliever Wandy Peralta’s first pitch over the right field fence in the seventh to make it 8-0, Petco Park – such a cauldron of noise for most of the last two nights – was very, very quiet.
Sort of like Dodger Stadium was in the late stages of Game 2.
Given the residual effect of the last two Octobers, just coming out and putting their stamp on Game 4 was a massive improvement. The way this Dodgers season has gone, anything’s possible Friday.
And, maybe, beyond.
jalexander@scng.com
