SAN FRANCISCO — It all started with a suggestion. The brain trust of the Dodgers was gathered inside manager Dave Roberts’ office and kicking around ideas in the hours following Game 4 of the National League Division Series. After seven months and 23 head-to-head contests, only one more game remained between the Dodgers and the Giants. Nothing yet this season had separated the two clubs. They were looking for a marginal edge.
Advertisement
That was when Alex Slater, the director of baseball operations, piped up.
How about an opener?
Inside the room, ears perked up. “Interesting …” Roberts thought.
The group decided to sleep on it. Over the subsequent 24 hours, they hammered out a plan that bucked baseball tradition, invited a winter’s worth of potential second-guessing, and ultimately cleared the runway for a 2-1 victory in the final night of this riveting series. The pitching maneuvering conducted by the Dodgers demonstrated the depths to which modern teams will mine in search of an advantage — and the vanishing gap between these two baseball teams.
“It’s a gamble,” pitching coach Mark Prior told The Athletic. “But you’ve got to do some unorthodox things sometimes in the playoffs.”
The execution of the plan, which called for relievers to open the proceedings rather than 20-game-winner Julio Urías, required an effort that spanned the organization. The front office of Andrew Friedman completed the research needed to sell Roberts’ staff. The coaches convinced the principals and rallied the clubhouse. The players performed at an elevated level against a high-quality opponent in a hostile environment.
For more than a century, baseball looked different than this. Starters began games. Relievers finished them. The Dodgers devised something different. The relief duo of Corey Knebel and Brusdar Graterol gobbled up the first six outs. Into the game came Urías, who logged four innings of one-run baseball. After scoreless frames by the back-end pair of Blake Treinen and Kenley Jansen, the final inning belonged to three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer. He buzzed through the ninth, aided by a questionable call, to bring the Dodgers back to the NL Championship Series for the fifth time in six years.
“Kudos to absolutely everybody,” Scherzer said. “That’s what it was going to take. It was going to take absolutely everybody.”
Advertisement
The victory also required forethought. The Dodgers had spent a season chasing and admiring the processes of the Giants. San Francisco squeezed 107 wins out of a roster stocked with aging veterans and once-anonymous role players. To get this far, of course, required plenty of talent. It also required the proper deployment of that talent.
The Giants were, in the words of a rival evaluator, “an incredible situational baseball team.” The Dodgers had grown to respect that over the course of this season. San Francisco positioned its defenders with precision. Manager Gabe Kapler used his relievers effectively. And the lineup featured a variety of trapdoors that allowed Kapler to gain an extra scintilla of advantage. “They do an extremely good job of maximizing their leverage points,” Prior said.
After evening the series in Game 4, and again before flying to San Francisco on Thursday afternoon, the Dodgers wondered how to minimize those moments. Slater brought up the idea of using relievers to begin the game. He had supporting evidence. Knebel had opened games before. He had not pitched in Game 4. He pitched without a notable platoon split, so the Giants could not make an easy counter. His presence also might entice San Francisco to stack right-handed hitters later in the lineup, allowing a right-handed pitcher like Graterol a path to a clean inning. They could also keep Urías away from Giants catcher Buster Posey, who tagged him for a double in Game 2.
It looked good on paper. But perhaps you have heard: These games are not played on a Strat-O-Matic board, and the players are human. When the Dodgers officials decided on this plan, they agreed to hit the kill switch if any player raised an objection.
Roberts trusted Urías with the assignment. The Dodgers rode Urías’ flexibility to a championship in 2020. Inside the Texas bubble, Urías was nominally a starting pitcher. Yet when Roberts needed someone to close the show in Game 7 of both the NLCS and the World Series, he turned to the lefty from Culiacán.
Advertisement
The on-field reputation of Urías had only swelled in the subsequent months. He became the only 20-game winner in the majors this season. On several occasions, he expressed gratitude about the Dodgers allowing him to flourish as a starter. Team officials needed his endorsement before moving forward.
“He earned the right to pitch in this game,” Prior said. “If he said, ‘No, I want it,’ he was going to get it.”
On the flight to the Bay Area, Roberts and Prior approached Urías. The 25-year-old listened to the strategy. He agreed to go along with it. He understood the value of stealing outs atop the game and forcing the Giants to empty the bench. Knebel and Graterol were also keen on it.
The coaches canvassed a variety of clubhouse leaders. They checked with Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler. They met with Treinen and Jansen. They asked Mookie Betts, Justin Turner and Corey Seager. There was no dissent. “When they were on board, it made sense,” Prior said. “Everyone is in it to win it. Let’s go.”
At that point, the Dodgers officials finalized their approach. The main drawback, they decided, was potential embarrassment. If Urías started the game and pitched poorly, no one would rip the front office. If the openers or Urías stumbled, though, Roberts and Friedman would get blamed for sabotaging a 106-win season by trying to get too cute.
“I think that what it does is it opens up for criticism,” Roberts said. “But I think that you can’t do a job for fear of failure or potential criticism. I think that you have to do your job given whatever you feel is the best way to win the game.”
Around 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Roberts contacted Kapler and told him Knebel would start. Kapler thanked him for the courtesy. Then the Giants pondered how to counter. The team elected to start second baseman Tommy La Stella and outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, left-handed hitters who sat against Urías in Game 2.
Advertisement
For the Dodgers, the gambit almost backfired immediately. Giants outfielder Darin Ruf scorched a 103.7-mph flyout off Knebel, and Posey doubled off the right-field bricks. Knebel bore down and struck out MVP candidate Brandon Crawford with a gnarly curveball. Urías watched the proceedings in the bullpen, tossing a weighted ball in his left hand. He was still there in the second, when Graterol pitched around a pair of singles.
San Francisco’s lineup turned over for Urías’s arrival in the third inning. The Dodgers had shortened the game. Urías pitched as if unperturbed by the disruption in his schedule. He finished his first inning in eight pitches. He stranded Crawford after a leadoff single in the fourth. He struck out the side in the fifth.
“He pitched his tail off,” Roberts said. “Certainly unconventional. But I give him so much credit for taking the baseball when asked it, and pitching really well.”
In the sixth, Ruf tied the game by walloping a solo shot. After the inning ended, Roberts took stock with Prior and game-planning coach Danny Lehmann. Kapler had already started using his bench bats. Donovan Solano replaced La Stella in the third inning. Austin Slater came in for Yastrzemski an inning later.
The end bosses of the Dodgers bullpen, however, were all ready. The team wanted to finish the game with a combination of Treinen and Jansen. And, if needed, Scherzer was willing. Scherzer had announced his readiness soon after taking a hard-luck loss in Game 3.
“Look, I’m good,” Scherzer told the coaches, “I can give you an inning in Game 5 if you need it.”
Roberts kept that in his back pocket. He went to Treinen for the seventh. With the pitcher’s spot due up in the top of the eighth, Roberts declined to double-switch a fielder out of the game, because he believed Jansen could last two innings.
Advertisement
Treinen cut down three batters in 12 pitches. Jansen followed with a dominant inning of his own, including a favorable matchup against Solano rather than La Stella. An RBI single by Cody Bellinger gave Los Angeles the lead in the ninth. The offense forced Jansen’s spot up to the plate. Roberts used a pinch hitter and called down to the bullpen. Scherzer was ready.
There were many elements that went into the Dodgers victory on Thursday. The most unique was the hellfire breathed by Scherzer as he entered the game. There was a play at first base to end the top of the ninth. Dodgers infielder Matt Beaty had only begun picking himself up out of the dirt when Scherzer burst through the bullpen door.
Scherzer, a midseason acquisition hunting a second title as a capstone for a Hall of Fame career, had never saved a playoff game before. He added that milestone to his resume without much difficulty. An error by Justin Turner did not faze him. Scherzer iced LaMonte Wade Jr. — the Giants’ pinch-hitting specialist, who Prior called San Francisco’s “silver bullet” — with a 2-2 cutter at the belt for the second out. The quick trigger call by first-base umpire Gabe Morales on an 0-2 check swing ended Wilmer Flores’ at-bat.
Scherzer stood at the center of the moshpit as the Dodgers converged on him. Urías was there. So were Knebel and Graterol. Treinen and Jansen joined the happy throng. Less than 48 hours after the scenario was merely a gleam in a front-office analyst’s eye, it came to fruition.
“Our openers worked,” Scherzer said. “Everything kind of doubted that at first. But it worked.”
To finally, at last, separate themselves from the Giants, the Dodgers felt compelled to search for the smallest possible edge. The script would not fly in a different era of baseball. But on Thursday evening, the Dodgers showed once more why they are the defining team of this one.
(Photo of Scherzer: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
