Dave Roberts seems to be interviewing annually for the job he has held for nine years, such is the tenuity of being manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers when they don’t win the World Series. The man has the greatest record in baseball history of any manager with at least 1,000 games and yet he has no contract beyond next year and his job was imperiled if he did not win two elimination games against San Diego in the National League Division Series.
The National League Championship Series loomed as another interview to keep his job. It smacked of a common test puzzle employers use when hiring software developers:
Four people need to cross a bridge in the dark of night. Some are slow and some are fast. The trick is that there is only one flashlight, and the bridge can support only two people at a time. What’s the fastest way to get all four across?
The answer involves sending the two slowest across after the two fastest cross, with one of the fast ones returning with the flashlight in between. It’s a puzzle designed to test problem solving efficiency.
The Dodgers’ NLCS version of the puzzle test for Roberts went like this:
Find a way to get the Dodgers across the bridge to the World Series. The trick is your starting pitchers will give you only 20 1/3 innings, or an average of 3 1/3 innings per start. You will use 28 pitchers in six games. And you are not permitted to lose a lead.
Ready, set, go!
Done.
Tommy Edman may have been the NLCS MVP. Shohei Ohtani may have reached base a record 17 times in the series. But nobody had a better series than Roberts.
All series he talked about “threading the needle” with his pitcher usage. He twice let games get away by not using his best relievers in a deficit, even with such a loaded offense that scored 46 runs in the NLCS, a record for any series. And there he was at the end with his best pitcher, Blake Treinen, on the mound rested enough for the six outs to salt away a 10–5 victory in Game 5 and win a 22nd pennant for the Dodgers.
“You have to do that,” Roberts said about threading the needle. “I did for six games. I sat there looking at Game 2, and I sat there looking at Game 5 saying, ‘I don't like this.’ ”
It took discipline for Roberts to stick to the plan, especially as criticism mounted that the Dodgers were letting playoff games get away.
“It did,” Roberts said, “because even after the game the other night, I was taking s--- because people were like, ‘If you'd gone the other way …’ But if I would've done it and lost it, we wouldn't have had tonight.”
It would be just if Roberts felt redemption, winning the NLCS with a pitching plan that was novel and worked to perfection. Until the Dodgers did it, nobody thought about not chasing a four-run deficit with plenty of at-bats left in a playoff game.
“You know what? I try not to go there,” Roberts said. “Because I'll tell you right now, there's a little bit of you that goes, for all those people that got on me, ‘f--- you,’ but I just check my humility because I go, ‘Stay humble. Just stay humble.’ Because that's who I am. So, it's like, I don't ever want to be that guy.
“People, they get an opportunity to yell at me. I get it. But that's just not who I am. I'm not going to do that. I’m going to stay humble.”
The Dodgers are in the World Series both despite and because they used bullpen games in three of their past eight games. They went 2–1 in those games of designed chaos.
Now Roberts will have to do it again with another one of these interview test puzzles in the World Series against the New York Yankees. His rotation consists of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who hasn’t pitched more than five innings since June 7; Walker Buehler, who was gassed after four innings in NLCS Game 3; and Jack Flaherty, who has logged his most innings in five years and looked cooked in NLCS Game 5.
Roberts leaned on his relievers to pick up 62% of the outs in the NLCS, a staggeringly high rate for the winning side, and he may have to do it again in the World Series. That’s why he is hoping injured relievers Alex Vesia and Brusdar Graterol heal in time to be on the World Series roster. Graterol is especially important. His power sinker matches up better against Juan Soto and Aaron Judge than Vesia’s high four-seamer.
“This series was tough in that some of our bullpen depth got depleted,” said Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, “especially with Vesia and Graterol out. And so, it always felt like we were kind of one guy short going through it, which definitely made it more challenging. But guys like Ben Casparius stepped up.
“It was easier to be aggressive with [relievers] if we're in a big group. And if we're chasing something, it's harder to be as aggressive if the odds are you're playing in a Game 7.
“So, obviously it's art. It's not science, as the game unfolds in ways that you can't anticipate. And Doc, [pitching coach] Mark Prior, [bench coach] Danny Lehmann, [assistant pitching coach] Connor McGuiness … did an unbelievable job of navigating it and having the feel for when to pivot. I can't recall a series quite like this.”
Even Roberts’s decisions to bench the hobbled Freddie Freeman and to bat Edman cleanup turned up aces. Edman broke the game open with a two-run homer off Sean Manaea in the third to put Los Angeles ahead, 4–1. It was the highest fastball Manaea allowed for a home run in his career. Edman somehow got on top of a pitch well above the top rail of the strike zone.
“Yeah, that was kind of our strategy against a guy like that who's got a great fastball,” Edman said. “You’ve got to stay really short. Our goal today was to hit low line drives through the middle, and if you try to hit a low line drive, obviously you can see what can happen. So, I’m definitely not trying to hit a homer by any means, but just staying short and taking a good swing to it.”
Edman, a switch hitter, and especially the right-handed-hitting Dodgers were flummoxed by Manaea’s slingshot delivery in Game 2, especially as his sidewinding release point appeared to right-handed batters to be coming out of the sun-splashed shirts of people sitting next to the batter’s eye in right-center at Dodger Stadium, which has one of MLB’s more narrow batter’s eyes so as to cram more seats into the park. A 5:08 p.m. local start would provide flatter, more even light than the high-contrast background. Righthanded hitters went 1-for-10 against Manaea in Game 2.
Edman prepared for Game 2 by hitting off the Trajekt pitching machine, in which hitters can dial up video of a virtual Manaea throwing his outlier of a high sinker from a low release point.
“Today I basically hit [off pitches thrown] crossfire, because you know how he releases it from way over the first base side, with like extra spin,” Edman said. “Basically, it’s the ball that's rising from a crossfire angle. I kind of tried to simulate that, so I could really over-exaggerate what the angles are.”
It worked so well, even Edman was amazed when he saw the location of the pitch on video.
“It's one of those swings where I look back and I'm like, ‘Wow, I don't really know how I did that,’” Edman says. “But it's cool. Obviously, that swing's in there.”
Given a second look in six days at Manaea, and in better lighting conditions to boot, the right-handed Dodgers went 5-for-9 against the lefty.
If you are under 43 years old you have no idea how big a Dodgers-Yankees World Series can be. The first and third biggest World Series TV audiences occurred for Dodgers-Yankees (in 1978 and 1981). This one will feature:
- The first World Series with a 50-home run slugger on each side. That would happen to be Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the two most popular players in the game and the presumptive MVPs. It could be the biggest matchup of the biggest stars of each league in their prime since Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle met in 1962, though you could also make a case for George Brett and Mike Schmidt in 1980.
- As much top-tier talent on the field (Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, Gerrit Cole, Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freeman) since perhaps Red Sox-Reds in 1975.
- An old-school vibe, and not only because it is the most frequent World Series rivalry ever. It’s also because it’s only the third time in the Wild Card Era that the teams with the outright best record in each league made it to the World Series (1999 and 2013). The expanded postseason is such a minefield that means only 10% of the time the outright best teams in each league make it through to the World Series.
“Honestly, it’s like I’m a baseball fan,” Roberts said. “I work for the Dodgers. But I've always been a baseball fan. And this is the best thing for our game. To have all these people show interest in this amazing, potentially great series, with two iconic franchises, and there's not going to be more talent on the field in one series than most people have ever seen … it’s great.
“And for Shohei, this is what he signed on for. And so, for it to kind of play out as such, I'm really excited for him.
“And for sports fans around the world.”
When the World Series is over, the Dodgers front office is going to have to give Roberts a contract extension greater than what the Chicago Cubs gave Craig Counsell ($40 million over five years). Anything less would be an insult. Both Counsell and Roberts have managed for 10 seasons. Counsell has never won a pennant. Roberts has won four of them.
Make no mistake, though, Roberts will be back in the crosshairs again in the World Series. This comes with the job description of being Dodgers manager. This comes with having no length from your starting rotation. He will have to thread the needle all over again.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dave Roberts Further Vindicated by Dodgers’ Latest National League Pennant.
