LOS ANGELES — How many times have we expressed the sentiment this year alone? At one time or another, every fan base in baseball hates its bullpen – and this year it’s Dodger fans’ turn. That development might be karmic payback for their team leaning so hard on relievers in winning the World Series last year.
That said, the antidote as this postseason continues seems obvious: Lean on the starters heavily in 2025. Get them through the sixth, and into and maybe through the seventh, to lessen the burden (and dependence) on a relief corps that has been largely untrustworthy in 2025.
But maybe the Dodgers have, indeed, found their closer, after two months or so of sheer terror every time the bullpen gate swung open.
Wednesday night, instead of apprehension in the ninth inning there was joy, for a change.
Roki Sasaki took the mound, after Emmet Sheehan and Anthony Vesia had made another lopsided game closer than it should have been. And to the chants of “Roki … Roki” originating in the upper deck, the rookie from Japan set down the Cincinnati Reds in order – with six of his 11 pitches triple-digit fastballs – to close out an 8-4 victory and a Dodgers two-game sweep of the Wild Card Series.
There were hints of this in the two scoreless relief appearances Sasaki made toward the end of the regular season, one in Arizona and the other in Seattle. After all this time as a starting pitcher (and, for much of this season and injured one), maybe Sasaki has found his niche, as the sort of flamethrowing reliever that populated bullpens in the good ol’ days.
Maybe we’re making too much of this. But, also, maybe Sasaki is the antidote for the sheer terror that this bullpen has otherwise produced.
The sheer terror this bullpen can produce was on display in Tuesday night’s series opener. Blake Snell had pitched seven brilliant innings, allowing four hits and striking out nine, and left with a 10-2 lead. But by the time Jack Dreyer got the third out in the eighth it was 10-5 and the Reds had the tying run in the on-deck circle.
Blip, or bad omen? It certainly wasn’t an isolated incident, because Wednesday night the Dodgers had an 8-2 lead going into the eighth and Emmet Sheehan going to the mound for his playoff relief debut, and by the time the inning ended it was 8-4 and the tying run was again on deck.
As for Dave Roberts’ trust tree? It keeps getting skinnier – but it is autumn, after all. But Roki Sasaki has already risen a place of prominence. Maybe he’s the star at the top of the tree, just like Christmas.
“You like them all, you trust them all, to various degrees,” Roberts had said before Wednesday night’s game. “And I think in the postseason, you have to go with ultimately who you feel best in that one spot. And so it’s ever-evolving. … It can’t be blind to performance and heartbeat and how guys respond to certain situations.”
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman made this observation before Game 1: “Relievers, kind of like placekickers, are tigthtrope walkers. It’s what they do for a living. They do well, people forget about them. They don’t do well and they’re in the ire of everything. So it’s tough.”
Ah, but Friedman forgot – or ignored – this distinction: When an NFL placekicker misses enough key kicks, he gets waived and his team holds auditions for a replacement. When a Dodger reliever spits up a lead … well, too often over the course of this season it’s been the guy Friedman gave a four-year contract, Tanner Scott.
Then again, the Dodgers won a bidding war for Sasaki – but with a $6 million bonus and a one-year, $760,000 contract, he was by comparison a bargain.
To be fair, Scott (23 saves, 10 blown saves) hasn’t been the target of thunderous boos from the Dodger Stadium faithful; the displeasure has been muted. So maybe Dodger fans don’t hate the bullpen as much as they fear it.
And in a season when all of the Dodgers’ regular relievers have had their shaky moments – as did Friedman and GM Brandon Gomes at the trading deadline – maybe they found their solution in experimentation. Sasaki, a starter for the season’s first two months before going on the injured list with a shoulder impingement, began working out of the bullpen during his minor league rehabilitation stint.
(I sure hope someone yelled “Eureka!” during this process.)
There are still these questions about whether Shohei Ohtani might be a bullpen resource, at least between starts, and it’s the memory of Ohtani coming out of the bullpen to strike out Mike Trout and lock down the World Baseball Classic title for Japan in 2023 that keeps that thought alive.
“I don’t see that happening,” Ohtani said before the game. Keep in mind that under MLB’s Ohtani rule, if he comes into the game as a relief pitcher but then is removed, he leaves the game as a hitter, too.
Roberts said before the game he would “put this game on Yoshinobu” Yamamoto, and the team’s other Japanese star did his part. He gave up two unearned runs in the first, retired the next 13 in a row, got into and out of trouble in the sixth by striking out Sal Stewart and Elly De La Cruz with the bases loaded, and almost made it through the seventh, exiting with two out and two on and a 7-2 lead.
The drama started then. It ended with the Dodgers’ new closer methodically putting down the Reds.
This could be a lot of fun. Anyone want to volunteer an entrance song?
jalexander@scng.com