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.”
The Dodgers had only one potential silver bullet, and it wasn’t even loaded for Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.
They still won. They still took the best-of-seven series to a place where it’s out of the Brewers’ diminutive reach.
Read more: Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s stellar complete game helps lift Dodgers over Brewers in Game 2
How?
By making their bullpen a non-factor.
The possibility of one of their relievers blowing the game was eliminated by a complete game thrown by Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Another late-inning scare was avoided because of a persistent offense that tacked on insurance runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.
With a 5-1 victory at American Family Field, the Dodgers extended their lead in the best-of-seven series to two games to none.
Two more wins and the Dodgers will advance to the World Series for the third time in six seasons. Their dreams of becoming baseball’s first repeat champions in 25 years are starting to take realistic shape.
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, the tryhards from 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 setup man Abner Uribe entered Game 2 in the sixth inning, he might as well have been Tanner Scott.
The Brewers’ bullpen was suddenly as rickety as the Dodgers’, and that was with Sasaki just spectating.
The uncertainty over Sasaki’s ability to take on an October workload is suddenly in question, and that should make for some nervous moments between now and the conclusion of the postseason.
Sasaki’s failure to close out 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 postseason, and he’s the type of pitcher who isn’t nearly as effective when he’s throwing 96 mph instead of 100 mph.
“It’s one of those things that we’re still in sort of uncharted territory with him,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers provided an elegant solution for a frightening problem: Throwback starting pitching.
A day after Snell faced the minimum number of batters over eight scoreless innings, Yamamoto registered three more outs in a three-hit performance.
The only run charged to Yamamoto came on a homer hit by the first batter he faced, Jackson Chourio.
For Yamamoto, the start represented an opportunity for redemption.
Redemption for his loss to the Phillies in the NL Division Series and redemption for his start in this ballpark three months earlier, which marked the first time in either the majors or the Japanese league that he failed to pitch out of the first inning.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy didn’t place much stock in that early-July game in which Yamamoto registered only two outs and was charged with five runs.
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“He’s going to make the adjustment,” Murphy said. “He’s been really, really good. He’s been one of the five best pitchers in baseball.”
However, Murphy warned, “We’ve studied him, studied him, studied him.”
So when Dodgers catcher Will Smith called for a fastball on the first pitch of the game and Yamamoto delivered it, Chourio was ready to pounce. Chourio sent the ball over the right-field wall to move the Brewers in front 1-0.
The Brewers didn’t score again.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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