Dave Roberts loitered on the top step of the dugout, his best-laid plans once again not sticking to the script.
In the eighth inning of Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night, a season-defining moment had found the Dodgers’ long-time, and often-ridiculed, manager.
Having just told reliever Blake Treinen he had only one more at-bat, Roberts changed course in the moment, letting instinct and intrinsic trust in his team guide a critical October decision.
On the night the Dodgers won the World Series against the New York Yankees, little went as Roberts and the club expected.
Starting pitching Jack Flaherty was knocked out of the game early. An aggressive decision to chase a comeback win by using high-leverage relievers had paid off in a stunning fifth-inning turnaround.
Now, the Dodgers were ahead, on the cusp of a legacy-cementing title. Four more outs, and all those years of postseason heartbreak suddenly would be overcome.
Roberts had two pitchers throwing in the bullpen, veteran right-hander Daniel Hudson and Game 3 starter Walker Buehler. Roberts knew that Treinen, by then in his third inning of work and one pitch shy of matching his season high, already had surpassed most reasonable workload limits.
Sticking to the plan, though, would have meant taking the ball away from his best reliever in the World Series’ biggest moment. It would have been playing things by the book, in a year the Dodgers successfully improvised at every other step.
“We did go through a lot,” Roberts said of this season. “It wasn’t easy, but our guys fought and played every day the right way.”
So, Roberts banked on the character of his team to prevail once again, staying in the dugout as the club completed its championship ascent.
After a 7-6 defeat of the Yankees on Wednesday, in a victory that clinched the World Series four games to one, the Dodgers struck one common theme in their celebratory postgame comments, comparing the back-and-forth, come-from-behind triumph to the bouts of adversity they’d overcome the previous six months.
“Tonight was basically the epitome of our season,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “We got dealt a couple blows, came back. Got dealt another blow, came back. It’s just guy after guy coming out, doing the job, grinding away.”
“That’s who we are,” catcher Will Smith added. “We’re a bunch of fighters.”
Echoed utility man Chris Taylor: “It’s what we did all playoffs. We fought every pitch.”
In many ways, it made Wednesday a fitting culmination. The Dodgers erased an early five-run deficit. They turned a one-run hole into a one-run lead in the eighth. And they relied on almost every name on the roster to do it, burning through their whole bullpen in a game that ended with Buehler collecting the save.
“This is what we [set] out to do every single spring training, is to win a championship,” World Series most valuable player Freddie Freeman said afterward. “I think it’s the hardest thing to do in sports, because you just never know what’s going to happen.”
A little less than two months before — in one of several pivotal late-season wins that guided the Dodgers to a National League West title and springboarded them into the playoffs as the NL’s top seed — Roberts and his staff encountered a similarly fraught situation.
On Aug. 30, in the first of a four-game series against the second-place Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers suffered an early, unexpected plot twist.
In what proved to be his final start of the season, Clayton Kershaw had to leave the game after recording just three outs, compromised by a toe injury that forced him off the mound at the start of the second inning.
The Dodgers won the game but needed the bullpen to cover eight innings.
“The way that these guys banded together, came together and persevered was huge,” Roberts said that night.
However, when asked the next day if it felt like a trial run for a potential postseason pitching plan, Roberts emphatically shook his head, calling it a “catastrophic scenario.”
“That is something,” he said, “I hope we don’t have to revisit again.”
Nearly two months later, Roberts was forced to revisit it.
Ready to be aggressive with his bullpen in Game 5 on Wednesday, after saving his top relief arms in a Game 4 loss the night before, Roberts knew Flaherty would be on a short leash. But what he couldn’t have anticipated was how quickly the Yankees would ambush his de facto No. 1 starter.
Four batters into the game, the Yankees had two home runs and a 3-0 lead. After Flaherty yielded another run with one out in the second, Roberts went to the mound to take the ball from him. Then, he huddled with pitching coach Mark Prior and bench coach Danny Lehmann, brainstorming how to cover the remaining eight innings.
“You just start counting [outs],” Prior said. “You were gonna have to use everybody, we knew that. So we just started trotting guys out there.”
The Dodgers began the night with some contingency plans. As Lehmann noted, the staff tries “to cover as many scenarios as we can, good and bad,” in its pregame prep.
But, Roberts later acknowledged, there was no game plan that included only four outs from Flaherty. No predetermined script to follow for what came next.
“Obviously if I have to use the potential Game 7 starter in the ninth inning,” Roberts said of a plan that culminated with Buehler, “that just speaks to, we didn’t have enough pitching.”
The hope was to hold the deficit as long as they could, and wait for the offense to manufacture a rally. In similar situations this postseason, including Game 4 of the World Series, they might have just punted. But on this night, they clung tightly to the hope of a comeback.
“I would say like the last month or so of the season, we started playing with a different kind of hunger,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said, noting how despite the early deficit, his lineup’s belief never dissipated. “We were just kind of waiting out opportunities. And when they present themselves, you’re ready.”
At some point between his second-inning exit, and the Dodgers’ historic rally in the top of the fifth, a dispirited Flaherty decided against any further self-pity.
Yes, the L.A. native and childhood Dodgers fan had squandered a dream opportunity to pitch the club to a championship. But, after briefly retreating to the clubhouse in the wake of his four-run clunker, Flaherty trekked back to the dugout.
“I got over me sucking and decided to come outside and watch the boys,” Flaherty said. “I didn’t throw the ball particularly well tonight. But everybody else picked me up.”
Such had been a defining characteristic of these Dodgers all season. They compensated when key players — and members of the starting rotation, in particular — got hurt. They filled in the cracks when veteran players slumped, or when the bullpen wore thin.
In Buehler’s Game 3 start, for example, he ran into trouble in the fourth inning, giving up a leadoff double to Giancarlo Stanton. His outfield, however, bailed him out, with Mookie Betts making a diving catch in right, and Teoscar Hernández throwing out Stanton at the plate to end the inning.
“There’s this bond that’s kind of different,” Buehler said that night. “We play for each other. Like, OK, I slipped a little. I gave up a couple hits. And we cover it. I haven’t been on that many teams that we cover each other the way this team does.”
To cover for Flaherty, however, the Dodgers needed help. After four innings against Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, they not only were trailing 5-0, but still looking for their first hit.
Then a turning point finally arrived in the fifth.
Kiké Hernández provided the initial spark, going the other way on a 97-mph sinker for a leadoff single. From there, the Yankees handed the Dodgers a golden chance, erring defensively all around the diamond.
Aaron Judge dropped a line drive from Tommy Edman in center field, seemingly peeking at Hernández before the ball was in his mitt. Smith sent a chopper to shortstop Anthony Volpe in the next at-bat, then watched as Volpe spiked a throw to third base.
“I know they gave Volpe an error on that play, but if you slow it down and you see how Kiké ran to third base, that’s what set up that play,” Freeman said, noting that Hernández — who already made one heads-up play on Judge’s dropped ball by racing to second ahead of his throw — veered his path to third ever so slightly, giving Jazz Chisholm Jr. no chance to make a one-hop pick.
“That’s him having an unbelievable baserunning IQ there,” Freeman said.
Three batters later, the Yankees failed to match such bang-bang decision-making.
With two outs, Betts hit a soft ground ball up the first base line. The inning appeared over.
But as Betts ran up the baseline, there was no one covering first. Anthony Rizzo, the Yankees’ first baseman, had stayed back on Betts’ awkwardly spinning ball. On the mound, Cole began to break to the bag. But then, he suddenly stopped, committing what became a game-changing mental blunder.
Cole later explained he initially was planning to try to field the ball himself. But once it got past him, he failed to keep running to cover first. Even the man closest to the play, first base coach Clayton McCullough, hardly could believe it.
“I saw it hit and I’m looking at Rizzo go to field it,” McCullough said. “And then I look back up, and Mookie is already past Cole, and Anthony is not going to get there in time. I’m like, ‘Holy cow. That’s kind of a gift.’”
Indeed, the Yankees’ third defensive mistake of the inning proved fatal. Hernández scored from third. Everyone was safe to load the bases. And as Yankee Stadium fell quiet, the Dodgers seized the moment — with Freeman and Teoscar Hernández tying the score with consecutive two-RBI hits.
“That was really the thing that propelled guys,” Lehmann said of Betts’ infield single. “We were like, ‘All right, this is gonna happen.’”
All the Dodgers had to do now: Figure out how to cover the rest of the game with their quickly thinning pitching options.
Roughly six hours before Cole failed to cover first base, Buehler decided he was capable of helping the Dodgers cover an inning.
On the 3 p.m. bus from the team’s Manhattan hotel to Yankee Stadium, Buehler approached general manager Brandon Gomes with a not-so-subtle suggestion.
“Hey, I feel good today,” Buehler said, despite being just two days removed from a five-inning start in Game 3. “If you need me, I’ll be ready.”
While appreciative, Gomes initially laughed off the suggestion. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman did the same when Buehler broached the topic at the ballpark.
“Yeah, yeah, Walker, that’s awesome, but thanks,” Friedman told Buehler before the game.
Buehler didn’t give in.
“What if things get wonky?” the cocksure 30-year-old asked.
“If things get wonky,” Friedman relented, “sure.”
By the start of the sixth inning, the idea was inching toward reality.
Once the Dodgers tied the game, Buehler started to do the math in his head. Already, the team had burned high-leverage arms Anthony Banda (who limited the damage Flaherty left behind in the second), Ryan Brasier (who gave up a home run to Stanton in the third), Michael Kopech (who put the Dodgers’ first zero on the board in the fourth) and Alex Vesia (who escaped a jam to keep the score knotted in the fifth).
With Brusdar Graterol warming for the sixth, the only trusted arms left in the bullpen were Treinen and Hudson.
So, sensing the opportunity actually might arise, Buehler headed to the clubhouse to put on his cleats. When he walked in the room, he again bumped into Friedman — who had ventured to the clubhouse before the fifth-inning rally to work with the team’s travel staff to find an earlier flight back to Los Angeles for Game 6 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
“We were talking about how to get Yamamoto home,” Friedman said, “and what we were going to do to make sure he could lay flat and get sleep.”
Friedman remained in the clubhouse as the Dodgers mounted their comeback. And when Buehler popped in, he called over to the club’s top executive.
“Is this wonky?” Buehler asked Friedman, as he dug through his locker and quickly changed shoes.
“Yeah,” Friedman answered, suddenly taking Buehler’s pregame offer much more seriously. “This is the definition of wonky.”
Minutes later, Buehler was jogging out to the bullpen.
Closing a playoff game, let alone a World Series championship, always had been on Buehler’s bucket list. Simply running to the bullpen in such situations, he said, is “the coolest feeling, outside of starting games, that a starting pitcher will ever have.”
“I largely do it for the glory,” he jokingly added. “And then sometimes they say you got to go in the game. And then it’s kind of real.”
Still, there was a long way to go before the ninth, especially after Graterol gave up a go-ahead sacrifice fly to Stanton in the sixth and was replaced by Treinen with two outs.
At one point, Buehler stepped atop the bullpen mound, threw a couple of pitches then disappeared from sight, confirming with the coaching staff he still felt ready less than 48 hours after his Game 3 start.
“I had to throw a few to see kind of where I was at,” he said.
Then, Buehler watched and waited, hoping the Dodgers could jump in front — and that more October glory would find him.
“We were like, ‘If we tie it, we’re gonna have to push Blake [deeper into the game],” Lehmann said. “And then after that, it was like, ‘All right, if we get in position, [Walker] is our best bullet in the end.’”
Two innings later, the Dodgers were indeed in position.
In the eighth, they took the lead on sacrifice flies from Gavin Lux and Betts — the Dodgers unselfishly cashing in again after loading the bases against Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle.
Then, in the bottom of the eighth, they sent Treinen back to the mound to protect it.
That’s when Roberts faced his most critical decision.
By that point, Treinen had thrown 21 pitches in the sixth and seventh innings. He also was making his 11th appearance of the postseason, only days removed from a rocky Game 2 in which he looked gassed.
The Dodgers had Buehler and Hudson (who pitched in Games 3 and 4) warming at the start of the inning. But throughout the playoffs, Treinen had been the team’s best reliever. So, for the first time since 2018, he kept pitching into a third inning.
Trouble arose with one out, when a double from Judge was followed by a walk to Chisholm. Roberts emerged from the dugout. The infield gathered on the mound. But the bullpen door never swung open.
Instead, the manager placed his hands on Treinen’s chest as he posed a simple question.
“Do you have one more?” Roberts asked, as Stanton stepped to the plate.
“Absolutely,” Treinen answered.
“OK,” Roberts said. “This is your last guy.”
As the manager headed back to the dugout, Treinen turned to his teammates.
“This is my guy,” he said, before quickly upping the ante: “I got this inning,” he declared, as Muncy later recounted.
“What a guy,” Muncy said of Treinen. “What he did for us all postseason, man, special.”
Lo and behold, despite Roberts’ plan to give Treinen only one more batter, circumstances changed when Stanton popped up on the first pitch.
Treinen quickly received the ball and never even glanced toward the dugout. “If he wants to come get me, then come get me,” Treinen later explained. Despite standing near the dugout steps, Roberts never did.
It was the kind of decision built upon trust between a coaching staff and its roster; backed up by a season of the Dodgers defying expectations.
With all the starting pitchers they lost and all the hurdles in their path, they had gotten here by doing all they were asked to do, and then some.
And after Treinen struck out Rizzo to end the inning, there was one more player who needed to rise to the occasion.
“We needed somebody to step up,” Smith said. “We needed Walker to finish it out.”
When the Dodgers suffered their most debilitating pitching injury in mid-September, losing marquee offseason addition and regular-season ace Tyler Glasnow to a season-ending elbow injury, Roberts decided to call a team meeting during a trip in Atlanta.
As he went around the room challenging his players to maintain belief, he singled out Buehler in particular.
“I felt that for us to win 11 games in October, we needed him,” Roberts later recalled. “So I wanted to have that meeting, with him on the mound that night, and challenge him a little bit.”
In the six weeks that followed, Buehler responded time and again.
Despite a woeful season in his return from a second Tommy John surgery, Buehler showed signs of life at the end of the campaign. The night of Roberts’ meeting, Buehler yielded just two runs in six innings, helping the Dodgers secure another key late-season win. On the night they clinched the division, he held the San Diego Padres to one run in five innings.
In three postseason starts, the six runs he gave up came in a error-filled second inning in the division series.
“As kind of brutal as it is to say, it takes that adrenaline and stuff to kind of really get me going mentally,” Buehler said after his Game 3 World Series win. “I wish I would have felt that all year. I could tell you I’m excited to pitch every single game I’ve ever gone out there. But there is something different in the playoffs.”
Especially a ninth-inning, title-clinching save opportunity.
As Buehler warmed up in the top half of the ninth, Hudson was throwing alongside him.
“We weren’t talking at all,” Hudson said. “Walker was locked in.”
Hudson was no stranger to the moment, having closed out the 2019 World Series for the Washington Nationals in Game 7. But this night, he knew, belonged to Buehler.
“There’s certain people that, when they get that look in their eye, and they get that confidence in them, there’s nobody else I would bet against,” Hudson said. And as Buehler took the mound, Hudson thought only one thing:
“Walker’s gonna finish this f— game.”
Finish the game, Buehler did, needing just 16 pitches to retire the side, lock up a championship and confidently spread his arms wide in a triumphant pose as the rest of the team ran and mobbed him on the mound.
It was the fitting end to a fitting clincher, with a once-doubted piece of the roster sealing a once-unlikely World Series title.
“There were 30 other guys on this team that would have taken that inning,” Buehler said. “I was just in the right spot … It’s the best feeling in the world.”
