pitching

TORONTO — There might be no greater reminder of how far the Dodgers have come than the opposing pitcher on Monday. When the World Series returns to Dodger Stadium for Game 3, the starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays is scheduled to be Max Scherzer.

You may remember his brief tenure with the Dodgers four years ago, which ended with an elimination game in which Scherzer said he could not pitch. The Dodgers lost, the last domino in a cascade triggered by a front office that miscast its humans as widgets in a search for even the tiniest of edges.

Don’t just take my word for it. This was the word from Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez at the time: “Dodgers analytics dept really misused probably the best rotation in all of baseball. …They need to figure out a way to let starters be who they really are and let them pitch how they are used to.”

In the 2021 postseason, by choice, the Dodgers used an opener three times, a 20-game winner as a middle reliever, and a Hall of Fame starter as a closer. There would be no parade.

In the 2024 postseason, and not by choice, the Dodgers ran four bullpen games. There would be a parade.

In 2025, the Dodgers are simply throwing out a top-flight starting pitcher in every game. Presumably, there is nothing for the front office to overthink here.

Just sit back and enjoy the show — on Saturday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s second straight complete game show. This must be less stressful, at least.

“I don’t think it’s less stressful,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said to an inquiring middle-aged reporter with gray hair getting a little too noticeable. “We’ve got matching hair.”

Still, there isn’t much mystery in the Dodgers’ 10-2 postseason record. In every game in which their starting pitcher has gotten an out in the sixth inning, they have won. In every game in which their starting pitcher has not gotten an out in the sixth inning, they have lost.

To the rotation of Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani, take a bow.

To Andrew Friedman and his front office, take a bow too. Just because your ownership provided you with a $1.35-billion rotation does not guarantee that you will leave well enough alone.

In the final month of the season, remember, the Dodgers entertained a flurry of ideas about how to best combine a talented rotation and an iffy bullpen into an effective October staff.

Would they deploy Ohtani in relief? Would they use their best arms as often as possible, as the Washington Nationals did in 2019, when they used their top three starters — Scherzer, Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg — as starters and relievers?

The Dodgers let their starters be starters. The conventional wisdom does not always need to be challenged.

“Clearly, Blake Snell, Yama, Glasnow, Shohei, all really good pitchers,” Prior said. “I think we can all agree that they’re all really good pitchers, and any team would probably roll them out in a playoff game.

“So I don’t think this is any master plan.”

Said catcher Will Smith: “I think that’s just this team. We have four starters now that are pitching their best. … We’re just riding those guys.”

Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow is set to start Game 3 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times )

That brings us back to 2021, when the front office decided the best way to approach the winner-take-all finale of the division series against the San Francisco Giants was to use reliever Corey Knebel as an opener, 20-game winner Julio Urías from the third through the sixth innings, closer Kenley Jansen in the eighth inning and Scherzer as the closer.

That is the kind of all-hands-on-deck approach better suited to the end of a World Series. The Dodgers won that game against the Giants, but Scherzer could not complete five innings in his first championship series start and said he could not take the ball for his next start, an elimination game.

“My arm’s been locked up the past couple of days,” Scherzer said then.

He said that he would be the one at risk if he were not honest with the Dodgers about his condition, rather than trying to push through.

“Guys, when they lie, they go out there and they take on too much, then they blow out,’’ he said. “That’s the ultimate risk here.”

That line of thought did not go over too well in some corners of the clubhouse. Urías was miffed because he believed the Dodgers did not believe in him. Walker Buehler, who started on short rest as a late replacement for Scherzer, gave up four runs in four innings. The Dodgers were eliminated.

Scherzer’s last World Series start, for the Texas Rangers in 2023, lasted three innings. He isn’t thinking about the Rangers, or for that matter the Dodgers.

“I wouldn’t be looking backwards at all for any motivation,’’ he said here Saturday. “I have plenty of motivation. I’m here to win and I’ve got a clubhouse full of guys who want to win too. So we’re a great team and that’s the only thing I need to think about.”

The only thing the Dodgers need to worry about on Monday, at least based on their postseason run: Can they get six or seven innings from Glasnow? If they can, they should be halfway to the World Series championship.

Highlights from the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 2 of the World Series.

MILWAUKEE — Technically, Roki Sasaki was available to pitch in relief for the Dodgers on Tuesday night.

Realistically, he wasn’t.

“I wouldn’t say unavailable,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “But it is unlikely that we will use him.”

Without the most electric arm in their unreliable bullpen, how could the Dodgers record the final outs required to win Game 2 of the National League Championship Series?

Here’s how: By making their bullpen a non-factor.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto tossed a complete game, becoming the first Japanese pitcher to do so in a postseason game. The offense spared Roberts another late-inning scare by tacking on insurance runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.

The result was a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field that extended the Dodgers’ lead in the NLCS to two games to none.

Two more wins and the Dodgers will advance to the World Series for the third time in six seasons. Two more wins and they will be positioned to become baseball’s first repeat champions in 25 years.

Ninety-three teams have taken a two-games-to-none lead in a best-of-seven postseason series. Seventy-nine of them have advanced.

In other words, this series is over.

If the Philadelphia Phillies couldn’t overturn a 2-0 deficit against the Dodgers, these overmatched tryhards in Milwaukee certainly won’t.

With the next three games at Dodger Stadium and Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell scheduled to start those games, the most pressing question about this NLCS is whether it will return to baseball’s smallest market for Game 6.

Don’t count on it.

The Brewers’ bullpen was supposed to be superior to the Dodgers’, but that advantage has been negated by the Dodgers’ superior starting pitching.

Reaching this stage of October has forced the Brewers to exhaust their relievers, so much so that by the time closer Abner Uribe entered Game 2 in a sixth-inning emergency, he might as well have been Tanner Scott.

“We’re more depleted than the Dodgers are,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.

The workload made the Brewers’ bullpen as rickety as the Dodgers’, and that was with Sasaki just spectating.

What decided the game was that Murphy had to rely on his bullpen and Roberts didn’t.

Brewers starter Freddy Peralta pitched 5 ⅔ innings. A day after Snell faced the minimum number of batters over eight innings, Yamamoto registered every one of the 27 outs required to win a game.

Roberts said he didn’t hesitate to send back Yamamoto to the mound for the ninth inning. The night before, he called on Sasaki to close, and the decision to remove Snell nearly cost the Dodgers the game.

“Obviously,” Roberts said as diplomatically as he could, “there’s been things with the bullpen.”

Things now include Sasaki, whose ability to shoulder an October workload has come into question after he failed to complete the ninth inning in Game 1. In the game in question, Sasaki gave up a run and had to be replaced by Blake Treinen.

Sasaki’s form in Game 1 sounded alarm bells, and rightfully so. The converted starter still looked exhausted from his three-inning relief appearance against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the NL Division Series. His fastball velocity has gradually declined over the postseason, and he’s not the type of pitcher who can be as effective throwing 96 mph as he is when he’s throwing 100 mph.

Sasaki has never pitched as a reliever in the United States or Japan. He spent 4 ½ months on the injured list this year with a shoulder impingement. Just as the Dodgers didn’t know what they could expect from him when they first deployed him out of the bullpen, they don’t know what they can expect from him now moving forward.

“It’s one of those things that we’re still in sort of uncharted territory with him,” Roberts said.

At various stages of the season, the Dodgers have asked themselves the same questions about their downtrodden bullpen: How could they survive when their firemen on their roster were also arsonists? How could they win a World Series with such an untrustworthy group of late-inning options?

In this NLCS, the Dodgers have shown how. They will use them as infrequently as possible.

MILWAUKEE — Entering this week’s National League Championship Series, the Dodgers’ pitching plan seemed simple.

After Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow started the final two games of the team’s NL Division Series victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell were next in line for Games 1 and 2 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers.

All the Dodgers needed to do was slot Snell in for Game 1 on Monday, making him an option to pitch again on four days’ rest in Game 5. Then, they could have Ohtani go in Game 2 on Tuesday, allowing him to pitch before Wednesday’s scheduled off-day (which has been the team’s preference for the two-way star) and be available for another start if the series returns to Milwaukee for Games 6 and 7.

On Sunday, however, manager Dave Roberts announced a different plan.

Snell will indeed go in Game 1, trying to build upon the 1.38 ERA he posted in his first two outings this postseason.

But instead of Ohtani in Game 2, it will be Yamamoto who gets the ball — pushing Ohtani’s next pitching appearance to sometime later this series, Roberts said.

“We just don’t know which day,” Roberts said of when Ohtani will get the ball. “But he’ll pitch at some point.”

That alignment came as a surprise, but also had benefits from the Dodgers’ perspective.

Unlike Ohtani, who has gotten at least six days off between every one of his pitching outings since the start of July, Yamamoto has routinely pitched on five days’ rest this season. By starting him in Game 2, he can stay on that same schedule to pitch a potential Game 6 — something the Dodgers would have been less comfortable having Ohtani do.

By pushing Ohtani back to at least Game 3, of course, the Dodgers will sacrifice their ability to get him two starts in this series. However, even if he pitches in one of the Dodgers’ home games later this week, Ohtani could come out of the bullpen in a potential Game 7 — the kind of relief opportunity the team had hinted at for weeks down the stretch this season.

Because Ohtani will make just one pitching start in the NLCS, Roberts said it’s not as imperative that it come before an off-day, either.

“You have two other guys that potentially can pitch on regular rest,” Roberts said. “So [it’s about] how do you get your best pitchers the most innings in a potential seven-game series?”

Outside of pitching considerations, however, there’s another reason delaying Ohtani’s next pitching outing could also make sense.

In the NLDS, Ohtani went one for 18 at the plate with nine strikeouts. He looked particularly out of sorts in Game 1, when he struck out four times in what was his first career playoff game both hitting and pitching.

Coming out of the series, Roberts emphasized the need for Ohtani to “recalibrate” at the plate, noting that the team was “not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance” from its biggest star.

And while Roberts insisted on Sunday that Ohtani’s offensive slump had “no bearing” on the team shuffling its rotation, giving Ohtani two games at the start of the NLCS to focus soley on hitting certainly won’t hurt his efforts to straighten out his swing.

“I expect a different output from Shohei on the offensive side this series,” Roberts said.

For at the least the next couple days, that will be his only objective.