NEW YORK — In the hours before Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night, Walker Buehler let Andrew Friedman and his staff know he wasn’t going to throw his usual between-starts bullpen session before the game in order to be available to pitch out of the bullpen if needed.
“‘Yeah, yeah, Walker. That’s great,’” Friedman recalled dismissing the idea. “‘But what if things get wonky,’ (Buehler said). ‘Yeah, yeah – if things get wonky no problem’ knowing that we had a fully rested bullpen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.’”
Things changed when the Dodgers fell behind 5-0 after three innings. The Dodgers’ staff was trying to figure out how get the team’s potential Game 6 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto on a plane to Los Angeles as soon as possible. Starting pitchers often fly ahead of the team when the team flight will be an overnight or early-morning return.
“We were coming down (to the clubhouse) to talk about flying Yamamoto if the game went bad, trying to find how we could get him a lay-down (seat) so he could get some sleep,” Friedman said. “As the (fifth) inning is unfolding, we go into the sixth. Walker comes in and says, ‘Is this the definition of wonky?’ ‘Yes, it is.’”
Wonky was a way of life during the Dodgers’ winding path to a World Series title. The $1.2 billion commitments in adding of Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow and Yamamoto in December made the Dodgers favorites to win this World Series – and they did. But everything that happened in between was a veritable willy-nilly wonky factory.
“That’s fair. That’s the hallmark for the year,” Friedman said in the celebratory clubhouse Wednesday night.
“We didn’t have easy in our playbook all year.”
What they did have was a gambling scandal involving their new star and his interpreter that could have knocked them off course before they ever played a game in the United States. There were injuries to 12 starting pitchers, enough surgeries to keep Dr. Neal ElAttrache busy all summer. Mookie Betts missed two months with a broken bone in his hand. Max Muncy missed three months with a mysterious rib injury. Freddie Freeman had a litany of challenges – his son’s illness off the field and on the field a broken finger, a severely sprained ankle that hampered him throughout the postseason and an intercostal injury that wasn’t revealed (by his father) until after Freeman had accepted the World Series MVP trophy.
“We’ve dealt with a lot from the moment we were in Korea,” Freeman acknowledged.
It almost got to be too much in mid-September, after back-to-back losses in Atlanta when the team learned that Glasnow would not be returning in 2024.
Friedman said he never doubted the Dodgers could reach their goals. But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts sensed the danger of a “woe is me” attitude infiltrating the clubhouse and held a team meeting before the third game against the Braves.
“(It was) just the fact of how much talent we still had. And that was basically Doc’s message,” Friedman said. “‘Hey, look we can focus on who’s gotten hurt. But take a moment and look around at the talent in this room. Let’s focus on that.’”
They won that night and 11 of their last 14 regular-season games. But their resolve was tested in the first round of the postseason – their kryptonite the past two Octobers – when they fell behind the San Diego Padres, two games to one, in the best-of-five National League Division Series.
They bounced back behind a bullpen game. Roberts made all the right calls in a seven-hit shutout. The Dodgers didn’t give up another run until the second game of their NL Championship Series.
By the time, starter Walker Buehler came out of the bullpen to get the final three outs of the World Series, the Dodgers had gotten 54⅔ innings from their three starting pitchers (Buehler, Yamamoto and Jack Flaherty) – 97⅓ from their bucket-brigade bullpen.
“I don’t think baseball has ever seen a team that has bullpenned their way (to a title),” Blake Treinen said after the Game 5 victory (featuring 7⅔ innings out of the bullpen). “We’ve had great starts. But we’ve had more complete bullpen games than have ever happened in the playoffs. It’s a testament to the team that Friedman put together, the guys they brought in.
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“I would be one to tell you there would never be a bullpenning team that won the World Series. I’m eating crow. All glory to God. That was amazing.”
What’s more amazing – or just appropriate – they did it while Ohtani went 2 for 19 in his first World Series, hampered by a shoulder injury more serious than he let on, Muncy went hitless in the five games and Will Smith went 2 for 18.
“We’ve talked about this a lot – World Series champions come in all different shapes and sizes and forms,” Friedman said. “There are different strengths that help you win a World Series. Then the industry tries to copy it. And something else happens. It’s that outcome-based narrative.
“For us, we obviously had a lot of injuries and a lot of depth and a lot of guys that stepped up and did incredible jobs. The environment and culture that our veteran players establish for our young guys to come up is special and is something we had in earlier years but got a little off track but had again this year.”
Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler, who pitched the ninth inning for his first major-league save, celebrates on the field after they defeated the New York Yankees, 7-6, in Game 5 to win the World Series on Wednesday night in New York. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)