Once considered the natural successor to Clayton Kershaw as The Man in the Dodgers’ rotation, Walker Buehler’s career hit a rocky stretch in 2022. Coming off arguably his best season in the majors, Buehler was pulled from a June start with elbow pain, starting a journey that ended with a Tommy John surgery, the second of his career, two months later. After some unrelated injury setbacks this spring, Buehler returned to the Dodgers, but as a shadow of his former self. He finished 2024 with a 5.38 ERA and a 5.54 FIP, and might not have even made the postseason roster if not for the fact that most of the organization’s other plausible starters don’t currently have working throwing arms. His no-strikeout, six-run outing against the Padres in Game 3 of the NLDS wasn’t an inspiring sign that he’d turn things around in the playoffs.

And yet, in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Mets at Citi Field, Buehler had opposing batters flailing at his shockingly nasty repertoire in a short but effective four-inning start. He left with a two-run lead, but after the Los Angeles offense kept tacking on and the bullpen threw five scoreless innings, the Dodgers left the ballpark Wednesday night with an 8-0 win and a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-seven series.

One of the problems with Buehler in his return this year was that he was just so darn hittable at times. Before 2022, his four-seamer was the foundation that his out-pitches were built around, but even before his elbow surgery, the effectiveness of the pitch had practically disappeared. From 2021 to 2022, he bled about 200 rpm off his fastball’s average spin rate. Batters apparently took notice, suddenly slugging .618 as his heater lost some of its rise. Buehler returned from surgery, but the four-seamer’s effectiveness did not, and the pitch became a smaller part of his toolset. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Saturday, the Arizona Fall League played host to a tripleheader, with start times staggered enough to see at least most of all three contests at the various ballparks in the eastern part of the Phoenix metro area. My notes and thoughts on the standouts from that day, as well as Monday’s solo game in Peoria, are below. You can find the end-of-year reports and grades on the 2024 Fall Leaguers on the Fall League tab of The Board. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — In early May, Ben Casparius struck out seven Springfield Cardinals over 5.1 scoreless innings, leading the Double-A Tulsa Drillers to a dominant 11-0 victory. Five months later, he was ripping filthy sliders to close out Game 1 of the NLCS for one of the richest teams in the sport.

This is life in the Dodgers bullpen at the moment. After a cursed season for injuries, one where they’ve deployed Plans A, B, C, and D, their Plan E involves a trio of talented-but-unproven arms picking up more innings than Dodgers manager Dave Roberts would like. At points, it has worked out incredibly well — the Dodgers ripped off 33 consecutive scoreless innings between the end of the NLDS and the start of the NLCS, tying a postseason record. But yesterday’s Game 2 revealed the downside of relying on Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, and a bevy of backup options. The designed bullpen game went off the rails early, as the Mets put up six runs in the first two innings and cruised for the remainder of the contest.

Out of necessity, the Dodgers have thrust pitchers like Casparius into the spotlight. According to RosterResource, the Dodgers currently have seven starting pitchers on the injured list, including Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, and Dustin May. That list does not include Bobby Miller, who was slated to be a big part of the rotation in April but was demoted to Oklahoma City in September after struggling with various maladies all year. It doesn’t include Shohei Ohtani, who is still rehabbing from elbow surgery. And it doesn’t include Alex Vesia, Michael Grove, Joe Kelly, or Brusdar Graterol, all off the postseason roster due to injuries suffered in the last few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

The magic of baseball is that every pitch counts and no game is ever truly over. There’s no victory formation, no garbage time with two minutes left in a 30-point blowout. If you have outs left, you can string together hits ad nauseam and win the game. But while that’s technically true, the game doesn’t really work that way in practice. Most games boil down to a few key moments, where the stakes are heightened and the outcome is truly uncertain. Win those moments, and you generally win the game.

In Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday, there were three such moments. You could use leverage index to tell you that. You could also just watch the game and count when there were a lot of runners on. The Mets won 7-3 to even the series at one game each, but if those three moments had broken differently, the game could have too.

The first inflection point in the game came early. The Dodgers went with a modified version of their plan from last Wednesday: a Ryan Brasier-fronted bullpen game. Landon Knack came in for the second inning this time, which makes sense to me as an armchair manager. The Dodgers were going to need at least one less-trusted reliever to throw, because Alex Vesia got hurt in Game 5 of the NLDS and was left off the roster for this series, and Daniel Hudson apparently wasn’t even available on Monday. Why not get Knack in early, against the bottom half of the Mets lineup, and see whether he had it or not? A scoreless outing would set the Dodgers up to aim high-leverage options at the top of the New York order the rest of the day. A bad outing? They could pull the ripcord and keep everyone fresh. Better to find that out in the second inning than the seventh.
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LOS ANGELES — There was a glint in the eye of Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. Asked in the pregame press conference if his Game 1 starter, Jack Flaherty, would be making any adjustments after an unsteady start against the Padres in the NLDS, Roberts vamped for a bit before a grin broke across his face.

“I just feel he’s built for moments like this,” Roberts said. “I think the pulse, the stuff. I really feel a good one out of Jack tonight.”

Whether it was a premonition, insider knowledge, or — in the style of his fellow Angelenos — belief in his power to manifest reality, Roberts got exactly what he expected. Flaherty carried the Dodgers in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday night, shutting out the Mets for seven innings en route to a casual 9-0 victory and an early series lead.

The right-hander, acquired from Detroit in a trade deadline deal, was in control all night. He allowed two walks and two singles but otherwise held the Mets at bay, striking out six and holding New York to an .233 expected batting average. It felt like the Mets couldn’t figure out whether to sit on Flaherty’s loopy knuckle curve or his firmer gyro slider. Stuck between these two distinct breaking balls, the Mets flailed around, swinging through his breakers, lifting them for harmless fly balls, or — on the rare occasions when they squared him up — sending them straight into the gloves of the Dodgers defense. To right-handed hitters, Flaherty threw a near-identical number of curves and sliders, making it difficult to key in on a specific pitch type. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: Jose Iglesias has issued an appeal to the gods. Iglesias, a pop singer who performs as Candelita and sometime infielder for the New York Mets, has seen his song, “OMG,” become something of a victory anthem. It’s been on signs and shirts and — above all — on repeat, as Iglesias’ club charged from fourth place in June all the way to the NLCS in October.

Now, “OMG” has been given the remix treatment by the Florida-based musician Armando Christian Pérez, aka Mr. 305, aka Mr. Worldwide, aka Pitbull. In his pre-NLCS media availability on Saturday morning, Iglesias said he put Pitbull in contact with the Mets, with an eye toward a potential ceremonial first pitch. For one day only, Mr. 305 would become Mr. 718.

Pitbull is a karmic force of unfathomable strength, and his intercession in this series would be decisive. It should be treated like the Greek and Trojan heroes’ prayers to Zeus or Apollo in The Iliad. So in the interest of filing a series preview of more than 200 words, let’s operate under the assumption that Pitbull will not place his finger on the scale here. (He might have more important things to do, or other places to be. He is, after all, Mr. Worldwide.) What if this contest is decided by mortals? Read the rest of this entry »

Zyhir Hope is one of the youngest and least experienced players participating in the Arizona Fall League. Acquired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the January deal that sent Michael Busch to the Chicago Cubs, the 19-year-old outfielder has just 315 professional plate appearances, in part because he missed three months this season with a shoulder injury. The raw tools are impressive. Since being selected in the 11th round of last year’s draft out of Stafford, Virginia’s Colonial Forge High School, Hope has slashed .289/.419/.492 with a dozen home runs and a 143 wRC+.

How he would define himself as a hitter is a question he wasn’t quite sure how to answer when I posed it to him on Wednesday.

“I try my best,” responded Hope, who is suiting up for the Glendale Desert Dogs. “I have amazing coaches and a lot of resources to kind of help me find myself, find my swing. I’m working every day, trying to stay consistent, trusting the process.”

Asked if his setup and swing are essentially the same as when he signed, he said that they are. As for how much he studies the intricacies of his craft, let’s just say that Hope is a believer — at least to this point of his young career — in keeping things as simple as possible.

“I don’t really think about that stuff, about mechanics,” explained Hope, who takes his cuts from the left side. “I just go out there and swing, to be honest. I love to just go out there and swing. It’s just feels, man. Just feels. I’ve been that way my whole life. See ball, hit ball.” Read the rest of this entry »

Forget second-guessing — I first-guessed Dave Roberts as the fifth inning of Game 5 ended. It was partially his hugging form – a little too hands-off-y for my tastes – but mostly, it was who he gave the hug to. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history. Eleven months ago, he pitched the game of his life in the biggest spot of his career. His complete game, 14-strikeout masterpiece in Game 6 of the Japan Series was one of the great playoff performances of the 21st century. Against the Padres, he looked nearly untouchable. He rolled through five innings on just 63 pitches, and he seemed to be picking up steam as the game wore on.

Roberts didn’t agree. The top of San Diego’s order was due up for a third time the following inning, and Yamamoto has exclusively turned in short outings since returning from injury in September. He simply hasn’t had a ton in the tank, and the Padres had roughed him up in Game 1 of the series. The Dodgers bullpen has been dominant, and had just turned in nine shutout innings to force this deciding game.

Maybe Roberts felt like he had no choice. Yamamoto’s counterpart, Yu Darvish, was no slouch himself. He’d allowed a second-inning home run to Enrique Hernández, but other than that, he’d given up pretty much nothing. He did it with smoke and mirrors – or, to be more specific, a curveball that vanished like smoke into the night every time the Dodgers took a swing. He threw that hook a whopping 19 times, more than any other pitch, and the Dodgers managed to put exactly one into play, a harmless groundout off the bat of Mookie Betts. Read the rest of this entry »

Who would you pitch in a pivotal Game 4? Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that your best starter is available on three days’ rest, and he didn’t throw a full complement of pitches in his last start. He could pitch tonight’s game – or he could pitch a potential fifth and deciding game on full rest. But if resting him and letting him go in the next one seems like the obvious answer, let’s add another wrinkle: There’s no one else available to start. If your ace doesn’t go, it’s all bullpen, all the way.

The Padres and Dodgers both faced that decision Wednesday. They chose differently – the Padres sent Dylan Cease to the mound, while the Dodgers countered with reliever Ryan Brasier. The decision wasn’t exactly identical, but it was nearly so. The Dodgers used three relievers in Game 3, while the Padres used four. The relievers San Diego used were better – but then, their bullpen is better overall. Both teams had good full-rest options for Game 5 even if they opted to use their aces on Wednesday, with Yu Darvish set to take the ball for the Padres and Jack Flaherty available to do so for the Dodgers if Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched Game 4 on short rest. (Dave Roberts said after the game that he has not yet settled on a Game 5 starter, with everything from Yamamoto, Flaherty and another bullpen game on the table depending on how everyone is feeling after Thursday’s workout.)

Cease came out with what seemed like the kind of adrenaline you’d expect from a guy trying to knock the Dodgers out of the playoffs. His first fastball to Shohei Ohtani was 99.6 mph. The slowest fastball he threw in the first inning was 97.5 mph, half a tick faster than his average fastball this year. His slider had more hop. His sweeper had more sweep. Oh yeah – he also hung a fastball middle-middle that Mookie Betts launched for a solo home run.
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Do you have a favorite flavor of baseball? Maybe you enjoy a crisp, clean pitching duel, or maybe you prefer the luxurious mouthfeel of a decadent slugfest. But if what your tastebuds really crave is yelling – the sharp, mouth-puckering tartness of unbridled emotion and constant, heartfelt screaming audible through the on-field microphones – then Game 3 of the National League Divisional Series between the Dodgers and Padres was the contest for you. The San Diego fans screamed pretty much all game long and the players screamed whenever anything big happened, which is to say often.

With the series tied at one coming into the game, drama was the watchword of the day. The Padres had roasted the Dodgers, 10-2, in Game 2 on Sunday. The fans threw things at the San Diego players. Manny Machado threw a ball into the Los Angeles dugout. Dave Roberts asked the league office to investigate the throw, which, he said, was directed at him with “something behind it.” When Zapruder-esque video of the toss surfaced online, that something was revealed to be petulant but ultimately harmless. Tensions were high enough that before the game, the Padres released a statement reminding their fans that throwing things at the Dodgers is frowned upon. So rather than throw, the fans just screamed. For hours.

The game featured plenty of action, all of it stuffed into the span of one inning. The teams combined for 10 runs in the bottom of the second and the top of the third, and then, when it looked like the onslaught might never stop, the bats went cold and the game turned into a one-run nailbiter headlined by unhittable bullpens. If you had Walker Buehler surrendering six runs on your bingo card, congratulations on having a bingo card full of extremely probable outcomes. If you had him getting through five innings, then you lucked out. But if you somehow had both of those outcomes, you should probably upgrade from bingo to the Mega Millions, because fortune is smiling upon you. Meanwhile, the Padres started Michael King, who ran a 2.95 ERA this season and threw seven scoreless innings in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. What looked for all the world like the world’s most lopsided pitching matchup ended up as very nearly a draw.

In the end, the Padres pulled out a 6-5 victory, and they now have a chance to end the Dodgers’ season on Wednesday night. If they do, it will mark the third straight time that the Dodgers have won the division but failed to make it to the League Championship Series. Read the rest of this entry »