NEW YORK—For the second time in the postseason, a bullpen game broke against the Los Angeles Dodgers as the New York Yankees avoided elimination from the World Series Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.
The 11-4 victory in Game 4 gave the Yankees a fighting chance another day.
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The Dodgers, hit by a series of injuries to starters this season, periodically used their bullpen all game throughout the postseason and finished 2-2 in those games, beating the San Diego Padres and Mets of New York in their first two playoff series. turns. The deciding play of Game 6 at Dodger Stadium in the National League Championship Series against the Mets was a bullpen game, although the Mets cut them when they used one in Game 2 of that series.
But if this is any salve for the Dodgers, they won’t need to resort to this tactic again in the best-of-seven series.
The Yankees are still down 3-1, with another elimination Wednesday night. The fifth game at the Stadium features a repeat of the starters from the first game: Gerrit Cole for the Yankees and Jack Flaherty for the Dodgers.
If the series returns to Los Angeles for Games 6 and 7, the Dodgers will have Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler available to start those games.
The Dodgers reached this point because they have nine pitchers on the injured list, while Joe Kelly and Evan Phillips were left off the 26-man World Series roster. Missing pitchers account for $40.5 million of Los Angeles’ $339.8 million payroll, the second-highest in MLB. The bullpen they are counting on to fill the starting gap is worth a total of $12.1 million.
And yet, they are on the verge of winning the World Series for the eighth time in their history in Brooklyn/LA.
“It’s sometimes a war of attrition. That’s the way to do it,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Several of their guys were injured. We must give them credit, they were creative. There are many ways to skin a cat. You don’t always have to be conventional.
The biggest problem with the bullpen approach is that the more pitchers a team uses in a game, the chances multiply that at least one of them will have an off night.
The Dodgers have used eight different relievers over the last two games, and only one of them, Daniel Hudson, on successive nights.
Hudson was one of the relievers the Yankees attacked Tuesday night. The other was Brent Honeywell in the latter stages of the match. The Yankees combined to score nine runs on six hits over the two innings, including a grand slam by Anthony Volpe in the third inning against Hudson and a three-run shot by Gleyber Torres in the eighth inning against Honeywell.
The bottom of the order did most of the damage. Volpe, Austin Wells and Alex Verdugo were 5 for 10 with six runs scored and seven RBIs. Even Aaron Judge finally got in on the action, driving in his first World Series run with an eighth-inning single against Honeywell. He’s still 2 for 15 without a homer or extra base hit.
The Yankees came in having scored just seven runs in the first three games of the series. This was a pent-up group of frustrated hitters, much like the 49,354-strong Yankees fans, just waiting for some sort of production. When Volpe, the Yankees’ Gold Glove shortstop and a New York product, hit Hudson’s first pitch into the left field bleachers, giving them a 5-2 lead, the crowd exploded.
“I felt like the fans were ready to explode (Monday) night, but we couldn’t fit anything in,” Boone said. “So you finally got to see the Yankee Stadium explosion during a World Series game.”
The Yankees are still facing it. No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a World Series. No team down 3-0 has ever forced a Game 6. The only team to go back in MLB playoff history was the 2004 Boston Red Sox against the Yankees in the NFL Championship Series. American League. Dave Roberts, now manager of the Dodgers, stole a key base in the ninth inning of Game 4 at Fenway Park, then scored the tying run that sparked the Red Sox’ four-game comeback.
Boone won’t look beyond the next game. “Win one today, come back and do it again the next day,” Boone said. “That’s our mindset.”
Roberts, who is now on the other side of a 3-0 series lead, said he doesn’t even want to think about it at this point. He needs to put together enough pitchers to win the series.
Its starters are still 11th among the 12 teams entering this year’s playoffs with a 4.76 ERA. They averaged 3.9 innings per start.
This places a heavy burden on relievers, even beyond reliever-only games. To get through the first three games, Roberts averaged at least five pitchers per game. The bullpen finished eighth among playoff teams with a 4.12 ERA in the regular season.
Still, the Dodgers are 10-5 in the postseason so far, one win in the league.
“I feel good with the pitching and the bullpen, especially,” Roberts said. “Where we are (Game 5), no one gets a day off. We knew we had a game in the bullpen, but we came out of it with six guys rested. I feel good about it and I’m up 3-1.
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