Winning Ugly: A Look at This Year’s Postseason Starting Pitching

John Jones-Imagn Images

Sunday night’s NLCS Game 6 offered quite a contrast in its starting pitcher matchup. With a chance to push the series to a decisive Game 7, the Mets started Sean Manaea, a 32-year-old lefty who made a full complement of 32 starts during the regular season, set a career high for innings pitched (181 2/3), and had already made three strong postseason starts, allowing five runs across 17 innings. On the other side, with an opportunity to close out the series and claim their fourth pennant in eight seasons, the Dodgers tabbed Michael Kopech, a 28-year-old righty who started 27 games last year but hadn’t done so once this year, instead pitching out of the bullpen 67 times in the regular season and four more in the playoffs. The unorthodox choice owed to the Dodgers’ injury-wracked rotation. Los Angeles has barely been able to muster three workable starters for October, let alone four, and so manager Dave Roberts has resorted to sprinkling in bullpen games, with mixed results.

The ballgame turned out to be a mismatch, but not in the way you might have imagined. Kopech struggled with his control, throwing just 12 strikes out of his 25 pitches, walking two, and allowing one hit and one run. If he set a tone for the rest of the Dodgers staff, it was that this was going to be a grind, the outcome hinging on their ability to navigate out of traffic — which they did, stranding 13 runners while yielding “only” five runs. Meanwhile Manaea, who had limited the Dodgers to two hits and two earned runs over five innings in NLCS Game 2, lasted just two-plus innings and was battered for six hits while walking two. He was charged with five runs, four of which came off the bat of Tommy Edman in the form of a two-run double in the first inning and a two-run homer in the third.

The Dodgers weren’t expecting Kopech to go any deeper, leaving Roberts to follow a script that allowed him to utilize his remaining relievers to best effect (such as it was). The Mets harbored hopes that Manaea could at least pitch into the middle innings so that manager Carlos Mendoza could avoid deploying some of their lesser relievers, but the starter faltered so early that they didn’t have that luxury. As it was, the fifth run charged to Manaea scored when Phil Maton, already carrying an 8.44 ERA this October, was summoned with no outs in the third and didn’t escape before serving up a two-run homer to Will Smith. Faced with a 6-1 deficit, the Mets refused to go quietly, but went down just the same in a 10-5 loss that included 14 pitchers combining to allow 22 hits and 12 walks. It was excruciating viewing, and with a pennant on the line, one couldn’t help but wish instead for starters battling deep into the game. Alas, this was hardly atypical October baseball.

Indeed, the collective work of starting pitchers during this postseason should come as no surprise to anyone who’s tuned in over the past decade. With regular season starting pitcher usage already on the wane due to workload concerns and an understanding of the three-times-through-the-order penalty, the average postseason start slipped below five innings in 2017, and while it has poked its head back above that line a couple of times since, those seasons have been the exceptions. This year’s postseason starters are averaging fewer innings per turn than in any season but 2021, and the drop-off from their regular season average — which was actually the highest it’s been since 2018 — to their postseason average is the second largest in that span:

Regular vs. Postseason Start Length 2015-24
Season Reg IP/GS Post IP/GS Change from Reg
2015 5.81 5.51 -5.2%
2016 5.65 5.11 -9.5%
2017 5.51 4.73 -14.1%
2018 5.36 4.68 -12.7%
2019 5.18 5.14 -0.8%
2020 4.78 4.40 -8.0%
2021 5.02 3.96 -21.2%
2022 5.21 5.10 -0.4%
2023 5.14 4.55 -11.5%
2024 5.22 4.25 -18.6%

Despite that postseason average of 4.25 innings per start, the starters have performed respectably, at least relative to recent standards:

Postseason Starting Pitcher Performance 2015–24
Season GS IP IP/GS Pit/GS BF/GS 6 or more IP% 3 or fewer IP% ERA FIP R/GS
2015 72 396.7 5.51 88.4 22.8 50.0% 12.5% 4.33 4.17 2.85
2016 70 357.7 5.11 82.6 21.1 34.3% 10.0% 3.88 3.86 2.29
2017 76 359.7 4.73 79.6 19.9 32.9% 19.7% 4.08 4.32 2.33
2018 66 309.0 4.68 75.2 19.5 28.8% 22.7% 3.90 3.96 2.08
2019 74 380.0 5.14 84.9 21.4 44.6% 13.5% 3.36 3.91 2.09
2020 106 466.3 4.40 75.6 18.8 26.4% 23.6% 4.25 4.55 2.20
2021 74 293.0 3.96 67.1 17.1 17.6% 35.1% 4.61 4.01 2.11
2022 80 400.7 5.10 82.5 20.4 33.8% 13.8% 3.62 3.74 2.21
2023 82 377.1 4.55 74.9 19.6 28.0% 24.4% 4.39 4.63 2.39
2024 76 323.0 4.25 70.4 18.2 21.1% 22.4% 4.12 4.10 2.07

This year’s starters have thrown fewer pitches than ever, and lasted at least six innings less often than in any of these seasons save for 2021. Nonetheless, their collective ERA is still the second-lowest mark of the past half-decade, and as you can see, they’ve allowed fewer runs per start — not per nine innings — than at any other point in that span. Managers are using their hooks sooner, for reasons both general and specific to their particular situations.

The Dodgers were well below that average of 4.25 innings, but their starters did tend to work deeper than another LCS participant:

2024 Postseason Starting Pitching
Team GS IP IP/GS 6 or more IP% 3 or fewer IP% ERA FIP
Orioles 2 12.0 6.00 50.0% 0.0% 1.50 2.92
Phillies 4 21.1 5.28 25.0% 0.0% 2.53 3.87
Astros 2 10.0 5.00 0.0% 0.0% 3.60 3.27
Yankees 9 44.0 4.89 22.2% 0.0% 3.89 3.35
Padres 7 34.1 4.87 42.9% 14.3% 4.46 4.19
Royals 6 28.0 4.67 16.7% 0.0% 2.89 3.74
Mets 13 57.0 4.38 30.8% 23.1% 4.26 4.99
Brewers 3 12.2 4.07 0.0% 0.0% 2.84 1.82
Dodgers 11 40.0 3.64 9.1% 45.5% 6.08 5.59
Tigers 7 25.0 3.57 42.9% 42.9% 3.60 2.41
Guardians 10 35.1 3.51 0.0% 50.0% 3.82 4.33
Braves 2 3.1 1.55 0.0% 100.0% 21.60 10.07

The Guardians got even fewer innings per turn out of their starters than the Dodgers. All season long, manager Stephen Vogt and company struggled to find effective starters, having lost Shane Bieber to Tommy John surgery early in the season. Their rotation’s 4.40 ERA and 4.51 FIP both ranked 24th in the majors; they had the highest ERA among the postseason teams, while in FIP they were just one point better than the Brewers, who nonetheless had the better park-adjusted FIP- (110 to 112). Of the six Guardians who started at least 16 times, four had ERAs of 4.86 or higher. Gavin Williams, he of that 4.86 mark (and also a more respectable 3.67 FIP), made one postseason start, but lasted just 2 1/3 innings against the Yankees in ALCS Game 4, allowing three runs. Tanner Bibee, Cleveland’s best starter during the regular season, reached the five-inning mark only in ALCS Game 5, when he went 5 2/3 innings and allowed just two runs; in his previous turn in Game 2, Vogt pulled him in the second inning after a 27-pitch first.

The two other starters the Guardians used, Alex Cobb and Matthew Boyd, were late additions who respectively made just three and eight starts during the regular season after returning from surgeries (left hip labrum for Cobb, Tommy John for Boyd). With the majors’ most effective bullpen at his disposal, Vogt used a quick hook, with Boyd’s five-inning start in ALCS Game 3 the only other time the team reached that threshold; not once did a Cleveland starter last six innings. Within their limited footprint, Guardians starters pitched well enough to keep the team in games, but their key relievers got lit up in critical spots. Closer Emmanuel Clase blew a save in ALCS Game 3 by allowing back-to-back homers to Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and then took the loss in Game 4 when the Yankees scratched out two ninth-inning runs. Setup man Hunter Gaddis served up what proved to be the decisive homer in Game 5, a three-run 10th-inning shot by Juan Soto.

The ongoing struggles of Clase, who turned in a 0.61 ERA and 2.23 FIP during the regular season but was torched for a 9.00 ERA and 6.42 FIP in eight postseason innings, serves as a reminder that a manager can only go to the well so often when it comes to his top relievers. Research by old friend Travis Sawchik shows that by the time a reliever faces a hitter for the third time in the same postseason, his performance has more or less degraded to the point of a third-time-through starter.

Gaddis, who faced the Yankees four times, produced an 8.10 ERA. The Yankees’ Luke Weaver, who began the postseason with six scoreless innings and four saves, three of them lasting four outs or more, was touched up by the Guardians in his second and third appearances. Clay Holmes, the pitcher whom Weaver replaced as the Yankees closer in September, reeled off 6 2/3 scoreless innings in four ALDS appearances against the Royals and two more against the Guardians before allowing runs in his third and fourth appearances of the ALCS.

Cleveland’s ALDS opponent entered the postseason with an even thinner rotation. Before their furious late dash to the playoffs, the Tigers traded the resurgent Jack Flaherty to the Dodgers, leaving manager A.J. Hinch to get through the postseason with one true starter, likely AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, and a bunch of openers and bulk guys. In fact, Detroit led the majors with 41 starts of three innings or fewer, 15 more than the second-ranked Giants and 16 more than the third-ranked Dodgers. That count does lump together openers, bullpen games, and starts where rotation regulars were pulled due to ineffectiveness, but it’s good enough to capture the prevailing trend: Such starts have decreased from a high of 12.9% in 2021 to 8.9% this year, the lowest mark since the tactic gained traction in 2018. With Skubal able to take three postseason turns, all lasting at least six innings, Tigers starters somehow averaged more innings than their Guardians counterparts did. Even so, in the Division Series matchup between the two teams, Cleveland got to opener Tyler Holton for four runs in Game 1 and touched up Skubal for five runs in the decisive Game 5.

As for the Dodgers, they were third in short starts during the regular season because they wanted to give Yoshinobu Yamamoto five days of rest, in line with his schedule in Japan. It still wasn’t enough to keep him fully healthy, as he missed nearly three months due to a rotator cuff strain (that after a brilliant June 15 start against the Yankees in the Bronx). The Dodgers have kept him on a short leash since his September 10 return. He completed five innings in just one of his four regular-season starts since then, and once in his three starts this postseason; he’s maxed out at 79 pitches across that seven-start stretch. After yielding five runs in three innings against the Padres in the Division Series opener (which the Dodgers nonetheless won), he turned in a brilliant five shutout innings in Game 5, then followed up with a 4 1/3-inning, eight-strikeout showing against the Mets in NLCS Game 4, another win.

Navigating Yamamoto’s limitations is just one of Roberts’ headaches. Prior to Kopech’s wobbly effort, the team used righty reliever Ryan Brasier to start twice, first in NLDS Game 4, when the Dodgers themselves were facing elimination, and again in NLCS Game 2, when rookie bulk man Landon Knack followed by allowing five second-inning runs en route to a 7-3 loss. The team is in this predicament because it lost three potential postseason starters to season-ending injuries during August, namely Gavin Stone and Tyler Glasnow, its only two starters to reach 100 innings this season, and Clayton Kershaw, its most decorated starter.

Flaherty, the most impactful starter dealt at the trade deadline, turned in the Dodgers’ only postseason start longer than five innings; he threw seven shutout frames against the Mets in the NLCS opener. However, he’s allowed 12 runs over a combined 8 1/3 innings in his other two turns; his three-inning, eight-run dud in NLCS Game 5 produced a game score of seven, the lowest of this postseason. Walker Buehler, their third starter, earned a reputation as a great big-game pitcher with his work in the 2018–21 postseasons, but hasn’t fully recovered his form since returning from late 2022 Tommy John surgery. He pitched to a 5.38 ERA and 5.54 FIP in 16 regular season starts while averaging just over 4 2/3 innings per turn. He was charged with six runs in five innings in NLDS Game 3, but all of those runs came in the second inning, when the Dodgers defense went to hell in a handbasket; though he didn’t strike out a single hitter, he needed just 44 pitches to cover his other four innings, and allowed the Dodgers to make a game of it (they lost 6-5). Buehler returned to flash his old, fiery self while delivering four shutout innings against the Mets in NLCS Game 3, striking out six and generating a season-high 18 swings and misses.

It hasn’t always been pretty for the Dodgers — sometimes it’s been downright ugly — but an offense that has cranked out 6.36 runs per game in October has papered over some of their issues, and a bullpen that’s produced a 3.16 ERA has covered most of the rest. This may not be the most aesthetically pleasing brand of baseball, but their plan, and the larger trend, can’t be divorced from the particularities of the participants or the quirks of the postseason schedule with its frequent off days. You may not like it, but at least in 2024, this is what pennant-winning performance looks like.





Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jay_jaffe... and BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.

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puddleMember since 2017
1 month ago

Great stuff. It seems that these drastic splits with each progressive viewing of a bullpen arm is why we saw such lopsided scores in the Mets/Dodgers series. If a starter gets lit up early, you basically have to punt the game and let your starter wear it or bring in your mop-up long reliever. You increase the likelihood of getting blown out, but if you’re gonna lose anyway, it makes sense to save your best arms for games that matter so that you don’t give the other team a free look.

jtricheyMember since 2021
1 month ago
Reply to  puddle

Agree, and it puts team into impossible situations if the games are close. Like Cleveland running out every bullpen arm every day is not a strategy that will get you a championship more then likely.

Teams have to figure out a way to get back to a starter staying healthy and giving 5-6 innings to get away from this trend. (If they even want to get away from this trend, which is not a given)

adrock75Member since 2018
1 month ago
Reply to  jtrichey

I find even reading the box scores excruciating. I understand why the teams do it, but I watch so much less than I used to…

mikejuntMember
1 month ago
Reply to  jtrichey

(they don’t, because as you can see the reliever results on the 3rd time against a guy is *still better than the starter*, just marginally so)

And of course teams can always strategize to show their relievers to *different parts* of a lineup even while using them a lot. You saw this happen a couple times last night, when the Dodgers lined things up so that relievers who had, for the first five games, been protected from seeing the best bats in the Mets lineup were allowed to face some of them – they had successfully avoided letting Casparius or Banda pitch to the Lindor/Nimmo/Vientos/Alonso section for 5 games, and then last night it was, at least, the first time those guys had seen those two pitchers, and they got acceptable results. I doubt they Dodgers wanted any of those guys to get seen a 2nd or 3rd time, but they were able to line them both up to get one good chance each. With those two collectively accounting for one time through the heart of the Mets lineup, the other 4 were taken by the Dodgers’ 4 best relievers (Kopech, Phillips, Hudson, Treinen), and they got through a bullpen game where those guys batted 5 times without letting any of them see the same pitcher twice.

Also, while its very hard to get data to validate it due to scarcity, I suspect that it’s also true that this ‘repeated views of a reliever’ penalty has fast decay: Seeing the same guy in games 3-4-5 with no days off between is probably quite a bit different than seeing a guy in games 1 and 2 and then not again until game 7. But we barely have the data to validate the ‘repeated exposure’ hypothesis to begin with, much less get this granular about it.

This whole process also produces some side-effects that I think can be net beneficial:

Teams that are trailing in series (or facing elimination) tend to be forced to utilize their relievers in situations they might avoid if they weren’t behind. This contributes to them having further disadvantage. The Guardians had to put their best guys in front of the Yankees best guys every game because they were behind 2-0, 2-1, 3-1. Similarly, the Mets had to burn Diaz in situations where they definitely would not have wanted to use him from both game-maximization and exposure-maximization purposes, such as his appearance in the *4th inning* of last night’s game, or in locking down a *6* run lead in game 5. Even if the Mets had closed last night’s game up or taken a small lead, they would not only have burnt their best reliever early, they would have given the Dodgers repeated looks at him in games 5 and 6 leading into the decisive game 7 – something they’d surely avoid if they could have.

Both of these things provide an advantage to the team that gets ahead in the series first, and since that team is more often the home team, it indirectly contributes a bit to home field advantage.

Having home field advantage has not been much of an edge in the playoffs in recent years (heck, people are having debates about *byes* being advantageous because higher seeds are losing so frequently), and in general I think anything that contributes to a little bit more HFA and therefore a little bit more relevance to regular season performance is a net good.

Overall, all these benefits are quite minor, and its much moreso the case that teams like the Dodgers are doing what they do because they have to – the Dodgers barely have a 3rd starter, much less a 4th. If they had a viable option as a 4th starter, they’d be using him if for no other reason than that all these advantages pale in comparison to the enormous disadvantage of running out of pitchers in a single extra inning game. The Dodgers were fortunate that all their playoff bullpen games were close: both their wins *and* their loss were blowouts. The more bullpen games one plays, the more likely it is for a team to encounter that tied late scenario that leads them to face extra innings with no pitching remaining.

Even short, relatively effective 3-4 inning starts largely mitigate this problem unless a team has a particularly thin bullpen. When you’re using 7-8 pitchers to get the first 9 innings, you have a huge disadvantage starting in the 10th.

Teams may be intentionally limiting their starters to 18 TBF in most cases. They’re not foregoing them entirely voluntarily – they do so because their other options are terrible or nonexistent.

frankenspock
1 month ago
Reply to  mikejunt

 But we barely have the data to validate the ‘repeated exposure’ hypothesis to begin with, much less get this granular about it.

Especially since some of the data includes Clase, who had one of the all-time implosions of reliever implosions. And not just in the ALCS, he also gave up four runs to the Tigers, which I believe was one more than he surrendered all season. And that was only the second time the Tigers had seen him in that series; the fourth time they saw him he shut them down for two innings to close out the series.

So yeah, the science is less than exact but everyone’s still just trying to feel themselves around an era where starting pitchers implode far, far more frequently than ever before.

Dave T
1 month ago
Reply to  frankenspock

I feel confident that in this post-season Clase bucked the overall trend and simply allowed really high wOBA on the *first* time that batters faced him during a series. Which, to be clear, I don’t expect to be anything more than statistical noise. But the point is that Clase clearly is *not* driving any repeat exposure effect seen this postseason.

Most of the hits/runs that Clase allowed this post-season were to hitters who were facing him the first time in a series, including all 3 HR’s that he allowed.

ALCS

Game 3 of the ALCS was the first time Clase pitched in the series. That’s the game where Judge and Stanton hit back-to-back HR’s. Chisholm also singled.

Game 4 of the ALCS, Clase gave up 2 runs (1 earned) and 3 singles. None of the hits were to batters who had faced him previously in the series. Lone hitter who had seen him (Chisholm) made an out.

Game 6 Clase struck out both Judge and Stanton, who had faced him earlier in the ALCS. Chisholm (repeat) had a single. Cabrera (1st time) made an out.

ALDS

Clase pitched in both Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS. Game 1 was a clean inning.

Carpenter (3-run HR in Game 2) hadn’t faced Clase in Game 1. First 5 batters faced by Clase in Game 2 (strikeout, popout, single, single, HR) hadn’t faced him in Game 1. 6th hitter (infield single) and 7th hitter (out) had.

Clase faced 6 batters in 1.2 innings in Game 4 of the ALDS. Gave up double to Malloy, on Malloy’s first time facing Clase before in ALDS. No other hits, but that run eventually scored. Three of the five Tigers’ hitters who made outs had seen Clase before in the ALDS. (Clase got save despite the run, as Guardians won 5-4.)

In Game 5 of ALDS, Clase retired all 6 batters he faced. At least 4 of them had faced him earlier in the series.

cowdiscipleMember since 2016
1 month ago
Reply to  jtrichey

Cleveland lost because they didn’t score much (2 runs, 2 runs, 3 runs, 7 runs (5 in regulation), 6 runs. Their run prevention was pretty good.

xero
1 month ago
Reply to  cowdisciple

Claiming Cleveland only lost because they didn’t score much as their bullpen gave up 17 runs in the last 6 innings of each game feels disingenuous at best. They literally gave up a run per inning beyond the 5th.

cowdiscipleMember since 2016
1 month ago
Reply to  xero

Well they lost in 5, so they had more than one problem. Obviously their bullpen gave up too many dingers. You can’t expect to win games where you score less than 4, though.

frankenspock
1 month ago
Reply to  puddle

Dave Roberts got criticized heavily by both Dodger beat writers and a lot of Dodger fans for not pulling Flaherty immediately in Game 5 and then “conceding” the game by bringing in Honeywell for almost five pedestrian innings (four more ER). But he was kind of hamstrung by his plan for Game 6 and the utter lack of better alternatives there. If he pulls in all his high leverage guys in an attempt to keep the game close and give the offense a chance to come back, but falls short, then the plan for Sunday basically becomes “give the ball to Buehler on short rest and hope he can go six.” And then there’s no plan beyond that for a theoretical Game 7. He made the right choice because it was the only thing left in his toolbox.

Dave T
1 month ago
Reply to  frankenspock

I agree with you.

It’s a classic case where beat writers and fans who aren’t statistically-minded don’t understand the low leverage of trailing by many runs, both for winning the game and for winning the series as a whole. Many people overestimate the probability of a big comeback to win the game. Lots of people make the false assumption that the high leverage relievers are guaranteed not to give up any runs themselves, which isn’t true.

Even before recent years’ analysis on repeat exposure effects, there were concerns about fatigue, including cumulative impact of a lot of use of high leverage relievers.

It’s understandable to use high leverage relievers chasing after small win probability in a game where a team might be eliminated, but that’s of course not what the Dodgers faced in NLCS Game 2 or Game 5.

Last edited 1 month ago by Dave T
mikejuntMember
1 month ago
Reply to  Dave T

I think Roberts frequently gets a bad rap, and that in this postseason he made very similar decisions (philosophically and in regards to how trusted given relievers were this season) to ones he has made in the past. However, this time the players he called on performed. In the past, they frequently have not done so.

Yes, there have been some notable situations where the Dodgers as an organization made some wierd relief decisions (like the multiple attempts to use Bullpen Kershaw circa 2019 etc), but much more frequently, Roberts has called on relievers who performed really well for the team in the regular season to do the same kinds of things he asked them to do this postseason, and they dropped the ball.

In general I think that Roberts is a lot less personally responsible for both the failures and consequently the successes than he’s credited. Its clear the Dodgers do a lot of this planning in advance (see: McCullough’s article about how they planned the Padres bullpen game), with a lot of front office involvement. I think this often applies to some of the weirder (starters in relief) decisions, too. Yes, there’s a certain amount of judgment getting utilized, but the Dodgers are frequently executing a plan that was outlined in advance by a lot of people in addition to Dave Roberts. Consequently I think most of the criticism for the particularly weird decisions (Kershaw/Scherzer in relief, etc) should fall on the entire front office because I very much doubt he decided to do it on his own, and consequently they had many opportunities to shut it down.

As far as relievers more generally, Treinen this year has been one of the best-performing relievers the Dodgers have ever had under Roberts, but Kopech/Phillips/Hudson/etc are similar (or in Phillips and Hudson’s case, the same guys as) relievers Roberts has relied on in the past and been let down, but this time they got the job done. In this, I don’t really think that the evaluation or the players or the trust or anything else has changed – guys just did what they had to do this time.

The Dodgers this year remind me somewhat of the Dodgers in 2020. I have become increasingly sure that there’s actually something to the notion that the Dodgers’ continual regular season dominance has hurt them in the postseason. They have often cruised so dominantly and then seemed to have a hard time finding another gear or level of intensity in the postseason when their opponents are doing so, and try to just execute as usual and find that it is no longer sufficient. There’s a variety of reasons this could play out this way (being such a playoff lock that other good teams just save their scouting finds for playoff series, lack of close games or high stakes, etc), and I could not make any definitive statements about how or why this happens (though my pet theory is on the scouting, and that the Dodgers have tended to be so far ahead of other teams in regular season record that potential playoff opponents all save their scouting discoveries and plans of attack for potential playoff series, leading to it being fairly easy for their first playoff opponent to build strong gameplans against their established tendencies)

But as a whole the Dodgers often feel like they crumble when they get behind – for a historically great (by regular season record) team, their playoff series losses often haven’t been close (the 2017 World Series is the only time they’ve played a game 7 and lost in the Roberts era), and once they’re behind 2-1 or 2-0 they’re often toast.

In the Padres series, and in 2020 against the Braves, I frankly expected the same thing – this team usually looks dominant when they’re ahead and flailing and helpless when they’re behind. But in those two situations, they got a different outcome and felt like a different team afterwards.

xero
1 month ago
Reply to  Dave T

To be fair, I think part of what drove the narrative that he wasn’t managing well was how well the Dodgers’ offense was performing in the playoffs to the point of them being in any game. Which you could easily argue they were if they had the bullpen rested enough even when they were down 4+ runs in some games.