Yoshinobu Yamamoto was not at his most efficient Thursday night.
Which meant, even though he pitched 5⅓ scoreless innings against the San Francisco Giants, he left the fate of the game to the Dodgers’ shaky bullpen.
So often on nights like these recently, such a scenario would be a recipe for disaster. Given the way things have been going for the Dodgers’ unreliable relief corps — which entered the night with a 5.65 ERA in September — anything more than a few innings has felt like a big ask.
This time, however, the Dodgers’ relievers found a way to grind things out.
No, Michael Kopech still didn’t have his command. And no, Blake Treinen still didn’t look like himself.
But when they needed to most, the Dodgers’ relievers executed pitches. In a 2-1 win at Dodger Stadium, they did enough to stretch the team’s National League West division lead to three games.
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Yamamoto did not make their life easy.
Though he yielded only one hit, the recently streaking right-hander fell back into a bad habit with his command. He set a career-high with six walks. He found the zone on only 60 of 108 pitches. And though manager Dave Roberts tried to push him through the sixth inning, his pitch count got too high.
On a night the Dodgers managed only two runs off Giants ace Logan Webb — both of which came in a sixth-inning rally keyed by a Shohei Ohtani double and Freddie Freddie RBI single — the bullpen was forced to pick up the slack.
Things started well with Jack Dreyer, who inherited a runner from Yamamoto with one out in the sixth and stranded it in the span of 11 pitches.
The seventh inning, however, quickly became an adventure, with two of the Dodgers most veteran relief arms putting themselves in a world of danger.
It started with Kopech, and his continued struggles to locate the ball since returning from a midseason knee injury. The hard-throwing right-hander walked his first two batters, with a (very, very) wild pitch in between. He bounced back to strikeout Drew Gilbert for the inning’s first out. But by that point, he had issued eight total walks over his last four outings, recording only eight outs in that span while throwing 50 balls to 45 strikes.
Thus, Roberts went back to the mound, bringing Treinen in to try and put out the fire.
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Like Kopech, Treinen has battled uncharacteristic inconsistencies lately. He was the culprit when the Dodgers squandered Yamamoto’s near no-hitter in Baltimore earlier this month. He gave up a game-ending, three-run homer to the Philadelphia Phillies’ backup catcher two nights prior.
At first, the right-hander seemed poised to blow another lead.
He also walked his first two batters, loading the bases on the first and forcing home a run with the next (when home plate umpire Ryan Wills squeezed him on a full-count cutter at the top of the zone). The count went full against Willy Adames in the following at-bat, leaving Treinen one ball away from another disaster.
That, however, is when the script flipped.
Treinen dotted a sinker on the outside corner to Adames to strike him out looking. He snapped off his trademark sweeper to fan Matt Chapman and retire the side.
In recent days, Roberts has emphasized the need for his bullpen to cling to whatever moments of confidence they can find. Given that the team’s 2-1 lead was preserved in the seventh, the otherwise ugly inning still qualified.
After that, the Dodgers recorded the final six outs with ease.
Anthony Banda went 1-2-3 in the eighth inning. Alex Vesia picked up the save with a clean frame in the ninth.
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Meanwhile, more than 1,000 miles up the Pacific Coast, the team saw positive signs from another potential bullpen option, with Roki Sasaki pitching a scoreless inning of relief in triple-A Oklahoma City’s game in Tacoma, Wash., retiring three of the four batters he faced with two strikeouts, one walk and a fastball that topped out at 100.1 mph.
That was a reminder that, between now and the end of the regular season, the Dodgers could have relief reinforcements on the way. Sasaki, the rookie phenom who struggled in a starting role before going down with a shoulder injury at the start of the year, could be primed for a big-league call-up. Trade deadline acquisition Brock Stewart is also on his way back from a shoulder injury; although he followed Sasaki in OKC’s game on Thursday by giving up four unearned runs on a single, walk and hit-by-pitch in ⅔ of an inning.
At this stage, the relief unit remains the Dodgers’ biggest unanswered question. Their lineup is finally manufacturing runs. Their rotation has continued its late-season surge since getting healthy. And for one night at Chavez Ravine, the bullpen overcame some shaky moments to preserve a win that strengthened the team’s place in the standings.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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