Bullpen will be tasked with saving injured Dodgers in NLDS Game 4

Staff Writer

Oct. 9, 2024 3 AM PT

SAN DIEGO — Their starting shortstop, a defensive whiz who is having one of the best offensive seasons of his 11-year career, left Tuesday night’s game in the third inning after aggravating a left-adductor strain not once, not twice, but three times in the first three innings, and he appears doubtful for Wednesday night.

Their first baseman and No. 3 hitter, an eight-time All-Star and the 2020 National League most valuable player, was pulled for a pinch-runner in the eighth inning, his severely sprained right ankle hurting so much he could barely jog to first base after his two-out single, and he is questionable for Wednesday night.

Their rotation is so thin through just three playoff games that, faced with a win-or-go-home game in the National League Division Series on Wednesday night, they will employ a bullpen game.

Is this any way to win a World Series?

If you’re the Dodgers, you don’t have any choice.

“We can’t look at the mountain — we just have to look at the task at hand, and that’s one pitch at a time,” Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts said after Tuesday night’s 6-5 Game 3 loss to the San Diego Padres in Petco Park pushed them to the brink of elimination in the best-of-five series.

“Every time we get to bat, we have to make something happen. [Whether we’re] up, down, it doesn’t matter. It’s obviously going to be a lot more pressure. Each at-bat is going to matter exponentially more, so we have to figure out a way to get it done.”

That job starts on the mound, where a deep and versatile bullpen that has been the backbone of the pitching staff all season will look to quell an explosive Padres offense that pinned a six-spot on Dodgers starter Walker Buehler in the second inning of Game 3 after clubbing six homers in a 10-2 thrashing of the Dodgers in Game 2.

Manager Dave Roberts said a reliever will start Wednesday night. The team’s highest-leverage arms — Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips, Alex Vesia, Anthony Banda and Ryan Brasier — will be available, though Banda, who threw 1⅓ innings Tuesday night, and Kopech, who threw one inning, might be limited.

Padres manager Mike Schildt said Dylan Cease, who threw 82 pitches while allowing five runs and six hits in 3 ⅓ innings of Game 1 Saturday night, will start Game 4 on three days’ rest.

“It’s essentially all hands on deck, knowing we’ve got Jack [Flaherty] and [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto for a potential Game 5,” Roberts said. “Certainly, this situation isn’t ideal, but I feel that us being able to stay away from [most] of our leverage arms gives those guys three days off going into Game 4, and we can kind of push them a little bit more.”

Roberts might have to piece together a lineup as well, after Rojas tweaked his injured left leg twice in the second inning, first while trying — and failing — to turn a double play on Xander Bogaerts’ grounder, and then while ranging to his right to prevent Jake Cronenworth’s infield single from reaching the outfield two batters later.

Rojas remained in the game and singled to spark the Dodgers’ four-run rally in the top of the third. Rojas took second on Shohei Ohtani’s single, and when Betts followed with a single to center, Rojas steamed around third just as third-base coach Dino Ebel put up a stop sign. Rojas hobbled back to the bag and was replaced by Andy Pages.

“I don’t know,” Rojas said, when asked if he would be out for the rest of this series. “Let’s see how I wake up and come here [Wednesday]. I’ll do whatever I can to be available, but obviously, this is not an easy one to answer right now.”

Rojas, who fielded Bogaerts’ chopper up the middle but lunged too late to the second-base bag to force out Jackson Merrill, was kicking himself afterward, and not only because he didn’t flip the ball to second baseman Gavin Lux for a sure out.

“It was also the wrong decision for my body and for my health,” he said, “because that was the play I aggravated the injury on.”

Freeman, who injured his ankle in the last week of the regular season, has undergone hours of daily treatments and taken painkillers and injections in order to start the first three games, but he was pulled from Game 2 in the sixth inning and couldn’t finish Game 3 on Tuesday night.

“It’s pretty bad,” Freeman said after Tuesday night’s game.

How does Freeman feel about playing Wednesday night?

“Tomorrow is tomorrow,” he said. “A lot goes into it before these games, but I was able to get through today, and tomorrow we’ll reconvene and start [treatment] all over again.”

If Rojas can’t play Wednesday, Tommy Edman would move from center field to shortstop, and Pages would likely play center field. If Freeman can’t play, Max Muncy would move from third base to first base and Kiké Hernández would play third.

“Given that it’s an elimination game, I’m sure he’s going to want to be in there,” Roberts said of Rojas. “But we’ve got to evaluate at what cost, as far as how effective he can be, whether it be defensively with the range or at the plate. So I don’t know that right now.”

Does the same go for Freeman?

“Same thing with Freddie,” Roberts said. “That’s right.”

Roberts saw one silver lining Tuesday night — Betts, who was three for 44 (.068) in his previous 12 playoff games dating to Game 4 of the 2021 NL Championship Series, snapped an 0-for-23 playoff drought with a first-inning home run — a 342-foot drive that went off the glove of leaping left-fielder Jurickson Profar — and a third-inning single.

But after Teoscar Hernández’s third-inning grand slam, the Dodgers went one for 21 with seven strikeouts off Padres starter Michael King and relievers Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam, Tanner Scott and Robert Suarez over the final 6 ⅔ innings.

“We’ve just got to keep playing,” Betts said. “I don’t think there’s a magic potion or something. We’re all trying to do the same thing — win a World Series — and each game is one stepping stone toward that.”

Bullpen will be tasked with saving battered and bruised Dodgers in Game 4

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