anthony banda

Bye-bye bye.

Hello, Dodger bullpen.

It was all so familiar. It was all so infuriating. It was the 2025 season boiled down into three hours of roars, then screams, then sighs.

The gasping, grappling Dodgers needed a three-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies this week to have any chance at a first-round bye in the upcoming playoffs.

Dodgers pitcher Anthony Banda (43) reacts during the first inning of a loss to Philadelphia Phillies at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

One game down, and their bullpen has already suffocated them.

They’re not going to get the bye. They couldn’t survive Philly’s first punch. It was the same old story. The Dodgers’ continually vexing relief pitchers gave back a two-run lead, ruined two ensuing comebacks and then were burned for a 10th inning double steal that led to the winning run in the Phillies’ 6-5 victory.

In a scene reminiscent of past October failures, a mournful Dodger Stadium crowd witnessed the Phillies dancing out of their dugout and squeezing into souvenir T-shirts and loudly celebrating on the field after clinching the National League East title.

In a scene also reminiscent of past October failures, just a few steps from the party, the Dodgers clubhouse was deathly quiet.

Max Muncy was asked about the bullpen, which allowed all six Phillies’ runs Monday, including three homers.

“That’s a tough question,” he said.

He attempted to answer it anyway, saying, “It’s frustrating from a team perspective, but they’ve done a great job for us all year and they’ll continue to do a great job.”

Sorry, but there is no spinning out of this mess. This is not a championship bullpen. This is not even a pennant-winning bullpen. This bullpen has been overworked and outmatched and simply outplayed all season, and when the Dodger front office had a chance to fix it at the trade deadline, they did virtually nothing.

It’s everyone’s fault. It’s an organizational failure. This bullpen is going to be the death of them. The slow expiration officially started Monday.

Fueled by fat pitches from Anthony Banda and Jack Dreyer and Alex Vesia and Blake Treinen, the Dodgers suffered a loss that may well have ended their hopes of defending their title.

Now trailing the Phillies by 5 ½ games with a dozen games to play, there’s virtually no way the Dodgers can pass them and finish with the National League’s second-best record, which means instead of getting a week off they are headed for a dangerous three-game wild card series.

If they win the West over the San Diego Padres — no guarantee — they will play those three games at home. If they finish second in the West, they will play those three games on the road.

Either way, a team with a cooked bullpen and a sore-handed star catcher and all kinds of uncertainty surrounding their rotation won’t get the advantage of a much-needed rest.

“We want the bye, obviously,” Freddie Freeman told reporters last weekend.

It’s strangely not so obvious to everyone. Throughout the next two weeks there will undoubtedly be experts who will make the argument that the Dodgers don’t really want or need a bye week because it robs the team of its routine and rhythm.

Don’t be a dummy.

Dodgers pitcher Anthony Banda throws from the mound during a loss to the Phillies at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers were desperate for that bye. The Dodgers knew they needed that bye. They knew they needed to rest the relievers, set up a Shohei Ohtani-led rotation, and give Will Smith’s right hand time to heal.

Yes, the bye week bewitched them in 2022 and 2023, when the offense lost its swagger and the Dodgers were beaten in two stunning division series upsets by the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks.

But, then again, they earned the bye last year and you know how that ended up.

They needed to pass the Phillies. And they needed to start that process this week, as the Phillies’ remaining schedule includes a closing six-game stretch against the Miami Marlins and Minnesota Twins.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is understandably steering clear of the bye-no bye debate, telling the media, “We’re gonna try to win as many games as we can. … Where it falls out is where is falls out. … I don’t think it matters for me to say how important it is. … I kind of just want to win games and see where it all plays out.”

Here’s how it — ugh — played out Monday:

Banda starts the game as an opener and allows a shot into the right-center field stands by Kyle Schwarber.

Dreyer enters the game with a two-run lead in the seventh and allows a two-run homer to somebody named Weston Wilson.

Vesia allows a go-ahead homer by Bryce Harper in the eighth.

Dodgers pitcher Alex Vesia tosses a rosin bag in frustration after Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper homered at the top of the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Treinen doesn’t hold the runners on base in the 10th, allows a double steal, and JT Realmuto hits the eventual game-winning fly ball.

“I had the guys that I wanted, and that doesn’t always work out,” said Roberts.

It feels like it’s too late to work out.

“Trying to see which guys step up,” said Roberts. “Just gonna try to figure out who’s going to seize the opportunity.”

On Monday night, the opportunity seized them, dragging them into a three-game series that could cost them everything.

Tough to beat a wild card opponent with a bullpen that folds.

Andrew Friedman gave a longer answer Sunday morning when asked about the Dodgers’ recent — and, by the feel of it, familiar — pitching woes so far this year, the club’s president of baseball operations bemoaning another wave of injuries that has left the pitching staff shorthanded.

But the gist of his answer was in the two words he uttered at the start of it.

“Not fun,” he said.

In the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Angels later in the day, it became even less so.

As things currently stand, Tony Gonsolin is effectively the No. 2 pitcher in the Dodgers’ rotation, thrust into such a prominent role with Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki injured. But in a four-run, four-inning start, Gonsolin was derailed by his own physical issue, battling a bloody hand in a three-run first inning that put the Dodgers behind the eight ball.

The Dodgers rallied, erasing what grew to a 4-0 deficit on Shohei Ohtani’s RBI single in the fifth and Will Smith’s tying three-run home run in the seventh. But then a banged-up bullpen gave the Angels the lead right back, with Travis d’Arnaud going deep in the eighth against Anthony Banda — himself forced into a high-leverage role lately, despite a disappointing start to the year, because of injuries to Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Kirby Yates (who became the latest pitcher to hit the injured list on Sunday with a hamstring strain he suffered the night before).

Angels center fielder Kyren Paris, right, narrowly avoids colliding with left fielder Taylor Ward after making a catch on a fly ball in the seventh inning Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Friedman argued the Dodgers’ injury problems this year don’t compare to the dire straits they navigated en route to last year’s World Series title. Unlike then, the team hasn’t suffered any season-ending losses. In the big picture, they remain confident they’ll have enough depth to mount a title defense.

And yet, the team hasn’t discovered the secret to better health. Their rotation problems are giving the bullpen an unsustainably grueling workload. And figuring out how to better protect the club’s expensive stable of arms is “by far the No. 1 thing that keeps me up at night,” Friedman said.

“I mean, everything from my brain is about what we can do, like, how we can solve this,” Friedman added, the self-described “deep dive” the organization took into pitching injuries this offseason having yet to yield better results. “It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole, and things keep popping up. … The definition of enough depth, I think is a fool’s errand. I don’t know what enough depth means. I think more is always better with pitching depth.”

But, with the team now ranking 21st in the majors with a 4.22 team ERA, what they have currently certainly isn’t enough.

Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin can’t field a ball hit by the Angels’ Luis Rengifo in the second inning Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

After Gonsolin gave up a leadoff home run to Zach Neto on a sunny afternoon at Dodger Stadium, trainers came to the mound to check on the right-hander. As they examined his throwing hand, the television broadcast zoomed in on streaks of blood covering the backside of his pants.

While Gonsolin’s exact problem wasn’t immediately clear, the right-hander’s struggle to command the baseball quickly became obvious. With one out, he walked Yoán Moncada, looking visibly uncomfortable as he sprayed the ball wide of the zone. In a 2-and-0 count to his next batter, Taylor Ward, Gonsolin threw a fastball over the heart of the plate. Ward crushed it for a two-run homer.

Gonsolin settled down from there, giving up just one more run the rest of the way. But his pitch count never got back under control, requiring 97 total throws to complete the fourth.

It was already the 14th time in 47 games this season that a Dodgers starter failed to work into the fifth.

All those short starts have had a cascading effect on the bullpen. And pitchers such as Banda have had to compensate as a result.

Sunday’s outing marked Banda’s 21st appearance this year, becoming the fifth Dodgers reliever to reach that mark. Entering the day, no other team had more than three.

After pitching a clean seventh inning, Banda returned for the eighth and was bitten again by a common problem. In a 3-and-1 count against d’Arnaud, he threw a center-cut sinker that d’Arnaud crushed to left. It was Banda’s fifth home run yielded this year, tying the total he gave up in 48 appearances over all of last year. And this time, the Dodgers couldn’t answer back, getting tripped up by pitching problems again en route to the Angels’ first three-game Freeway Series sweep since 2010.

Dodgers second baseman Miguel Rojas shouts in frustration after striking out against the Angels in the seventh inning Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)