The Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that vowed to ruin baseball, are on the brink of elimination. So how can they bounce back and turn the series around? Even for the Dodgers, a team as talented as any in baseball history, that will prove challenging.
After the 18 inning game, they simply appear exhausted. Mookie Betts, one of their stars, has struggled. Andy Pages has been unplayable in center field after a breakout regular season. The offense overall has struggled. The bullpen has had question marks with Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates sidelined and the other highly paid reliever, Blake Treinen, has not been the same player. It's led to a 4.56 bullpen ERA this postseason.
So yes, even with a payroll approaching $400 million, the Dodgers are not invincible. But a comeback is not out of the question. Hardly at all.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto can be the Dodgers' savior
The Dodgers’ Game 6 starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, has been as dominant as any pitcher this postseason. He has been everything the organization could have ever hoped for when it signed him to a $325 million contract. In the regular season, he posted a 2.49 ERA in 30 starts. This postseason, he has made four starts and allowed only five runs across 28.2 innings. His last two were complete games in which he allowed only two runs while striking out 15 hitters.
And when the team needed him most, in Game 3 of the World Series in the 18th inning, Yamamoto put himself in position to enter the game only two days after throwing a complete game. Manager Dave Roberts said that he would have instead gone with infielder Miguel Rojas. But the fact Yamamoto even was an option speaks to his competitive nature.
The Dodgers' star power can always wake up
Then there’s the Dodgers’ offense, a unit that is struggling far more than a lineup that deep should. Through five games, they have scored a combined 18 runs (3.6 runs per game). In the last two games, they have scored a combined three runs. For an offense that has Shohei Ohtani, Betts, Freddie Freeman and other star players, that’s unacceptable.
But the star talent gives reason to believe the offense can bounce back. It’s hard to keep a unit that deep and talented down for sustained periods of time. Ohtani is putting himself in the conversation as baseball's most feared hitter ever. The rest of the Dodgers' lineup needs to help him out.
A question that could persist in the offseason is how the Dodgers lineup will fare in future seasons with their position player group aging, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first mentioned. There are plenty of questions surrounding the organization right now. They’ll only grow louder if the Blue Jays win it all as the series goes back to Toronto.
But as the Dodgers proved last season in their Division Series comeback against the Padres, they’re never out of it. A lineup that is deep with starting pitching that good and a roster and coaching staff filled with playoff tested veterans should never be discounted. But yet the Blue Jays have them on the brink of elimination.