State of the art these days could mean AI. It could mean an electric motor that doesn’t cause range anxiety. It could mean a toaster with a “touch screen interface.” Yeah, that’s actually a thing. In baseball, it means how the Los Angeles Dodgers sent their bitter rivals, the San Diego Padres, home for the winter.
State of the art means a pitching performance that was both historic and, if you happen to work in MLB headquarters, scary.
In the third inning of Game 3 of the NLDS, the Dodgers trailed 6-1 and were on their way to the brink of elimination. They would not allow another run the rest of the series. Los Angeles closed out the NLDS by using 17 pitchers to throw 24 consecutive shutout innings, capped by a 2-0 win in Game 5 on Friday that never seemed that close. They’ll be talking about this for years to come—well, at least next week or next year when somebody else bullpens the opponent into submission.
Dodgers fans, this will give you chills 🥶 pic.twitter.com/SIwCspwUza
— MLB (@MLB) October 12, 2024
The Padres finished the game 0-for-19 against five pitchers. Only four balls in that 19-batter stretch even left the infield. It was not that they failed or did not execute. It was that the Dodgers overwhelmed them with stuff.
It was a new way to excise excitement from a game. Never did so many pitchers (five) allow so few baserunners (three) while posting a shutout among the 132 winner-take-call games in the sport’s history.
Power on parade. One after another, usually holding the platoon advantage, Dodger pitchers blew elite velocity and spin with jaw-dropping precision.
“I'm … I'm really speechless,” said an emotional Mike Prior, the Dodgers pitching coach, “because I don't think anybody, specifically me … I never saw that coming.”
So deep and so great was the Los Angeles staff that it obliterated three tenets of postseason that should never be cited again as infallible:
1. “Get into the other team’s middle relief.”
2 .“The more relievers get exposed in a series the more hitters solve them.”
3. “The more pitching changes you make, the more you are bound to pick one guy who just doesn’t have it that day.”
The game has changed. Power arms are everywhere in this generation, not just in the top of the draft or the back end of a bullpen. Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million free agent) ran the first leg of the great Los Angeles relay race, passed the baton to Evan Phillips (picked up on waivers three years ago after Baltimore released him); who gave it to Alex Vesia (a 17th round pick acquired by trade from the Marlins); who gave it to Michael Kopech (a trade deadline pickup who arrived from the White Sox with a 4.74 ERA); who gave it to Blake Treinen, who ran the anchor leg (who was non-tendered by the A’s five years ago) and who at age 36 became the third oldest reliever to save a winner-take-all game, behind only Max Scherzer (37) and Grover Alexander (39).
“They executed,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said. “They got good arms back there and they know how to execute their pitches. They didn't throw many balls. We couldn't work up their count. And they threw strikes. They found the zone and they pitched really well.”
Man, it was like winter ball out there—one guy after another coming in.San Diego outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr.
Poor Tatis. He was the hottest hitter on the planet until the Dodgers’ modern-day bucket brigade doused him with cold water. In the 24-inning drought, Tatis came to the plate 10 times against seven different pitchers (all right-handed power pitchers) and went 0-for-10. The only time in that sequence he saw the same pitcher for two plate consecutive plate appearances, he grounded into a huge double play in the third inning of Game 5 against Yamamoto.
It was 114 years ago that Franklin Pierce Adams, a future member of the Algonquin Round Table, wrote the poem, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” famed for lauding the double play combination of the Chicago Cubs.
“These are the saddest of possible words:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
The Dodgers modernized the verse for Tatis:
“These are the saddest of possible words: Buehler to Hudson to Brasier to Kopech to Phillips to Treinen to Yamamoto to Phillips to Treinen.”
Every one of them hit at least 96 mph on the radar gun. In Game 5, Dodgers pitchers hit at least 95 mph 52 times on 112 pitches. For the series, they threw 34% of their pitchers at 95 or better, the highest rate of elite velocity by any team this postseason except the New York Yankees (40.6%).
The @Dodgers bullpen was a key factor in Games 4 and 5:
— MLB (@MLB) October 12, 2024
Game 4: 7.2 IP, 0 R, 7 K
Game 5: 4 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 5 K pic.twitter.com/O3MInXiruM
“You know, you never know when one guy might stub his toe,” Prior said. “But to a man, these guys came out with their backs to the wall and just dealt.”
Yamamoto set the Game 5 game plan into motion. He came out pumping fastballs on seven of his first 10 pitches. He finished with 50.8% four-seamers, his third-highest percentage of the year. His velocity was up 1.2 mph on his fastball from his season average and a whopping 1.7 mph on his splitter.
Said Prior, “We talked about it before the game: ‘Hey, be aggressive. We’ve got to be aggressive. We’ve got to attack the zone.’ Because I think he felt he was tentative in Game 1.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled a dominant Yamamoto after five innings and only 63 pitches in part because Yamamoto had not endured past five innings for the past six weeks but also because he knew after an off day—and the day following an 8-0 bullpen game victory—he was loaded with options. He was never going to run out of relievers. Roberts is now 6-2 in these sudden death games and has used at least five pitchers in every one of them.
“Their bullpen is definitely one of their strengths,” said Padres catcher Kyle Higashioka. “You know, we were having a good time against their starters in the three games prior to this. So, their bullpen came up clutch and we couldn't figure them out.
“If you have a deep bullpen like that, that's always an option. And like I said, I think they were a little reluctant to use some of their starting pitching because we had gotten them in the past.
“So, well played by them. It ended up being a strategy that worked against us.”
So brutally efficient and clinical was the Los Angeles staff that the game did not live up to its advance billing.
Said Higashioka, a former Yankee, “This is some of the most fun I've ever had in the baseball field, playing with these guys. Yeah, this group that we have here is super special. So, you know, it just hurts that much more to lose. Especially because of who you’re losing to. That could be the most intense rivalry that I've ever been a part of. Ever.
“We definitely wanted to take those guys. We definitely don't like those guys. They don't like us. Their fans definitely hate us. I mean, it's super intense. But that's what we're here for. I appreciate it. It’s just difficult to face their pitching.”
Your NLDS Game 5 winning pitcher. ✌️ pic.twitter.com/hmmFSf6eNj
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 12, 2024
Having cleaned up the pace-of-game problem with the pitch clock, baseball is now trying to save the starting pitcher and the ball in play. High-performance pitching development—how to add velocity and how to shape spin—leaves organizations with such an abundance of swing-and-miss power arms that even the epidemic of blown elbow ligaments is being shrugged aside.
The future is here. The Dodgers are the state of the art, not an anomaly. Twenty years ago, there were only five regular season shutouts in which a team used five pitchers or more. This year there were 56. Baseball on many nights is a game of Johnny Wholestaff, and every Johnny throws 98 with high spin and a nasty vert.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Future Is Now: Dodgers' Power Pitchers Putting on Postseason Clinic.
