As the World Series heads back to Rogers Centre with the Toronto Blue Jays in firm control, the eulogies are already being written for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The lineup, outside of Shohei Ohtani, has completely disappeared. The bullpen, outside of Roki Sasaki, is a total mess. Through five games, it's the Jays that have played like the deeper, more complete team, while L.A. feels perilously thin — a house of cards on the verge of caving in.
I'm not here to put lipstick on a pig. The situation for the Dodgers is indeed grim: Surviving Game 6, with Kevin Gausman on the mound for the Jays and a raucous crowd at his back, will be tough enough, and even if Los Angeles manages to pull that off, they'll still have to do it all over again in Game 7 on Saturday night. There's a reason that more than two-thirds of teams in MLB history that have found themselves in a 3-2 hole in a best-of-seven have gone on to lose that series.
But grim is not the same as impossible. These Dodgers are still plenty capable of winning two games in a row ... especially if Dave Roberts is willing to go bold, and turn arguably his team's biggest weakness into its biggest strength.
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Dodgers bullpen cannot be trusted with season on the line
It's hard to overstate just how flammable the Los Angeles bullpen has been, not just in the World Series but all season long. Tanner Scott, Evan Phillips, Brusdar Graterol, Michael Kopech, Blake Treinen and Kirby Yates have all been ineffective when they weren't injured, and Alex Vesia's difficult personal absence from the Fall Classic took things into Defcon 1 territory. Roki Sasaki's transformation into a late-inning flamethrower has been a godsend, but beyond him, there's not a single arm for Roberts to trust in a leverage situation — Jack Dreyer, Justin Wrobleski and Will Klein are the only other relivers with an ERA below 4.50 in these playoffs, and that's more due to a lack of exposure than anything else.
We saw this play out in each of L.A.'s three losses so far in this series. Time and again, Roberts has tried to squeeze a little more out of his starter in order to avoid exposing his bullpen, and time and again it's backfired: There was the nine-run avalanche in the sixth inning of Game 1, a four-run rally in the seventh inning of Game 4 and three runs across the seventh and eighth innings of Game 5. A complete lack of offense should bear its share of the blame as well, but it was the relievers who turned tight games into laughers and squashed any hope of a comeback.
An inability to call on pretty much your entire bullpen would not seem to bode well for your team's chances of a comeback. But with just two games at most left in the 2025 season, the Dodgers bullpen can look a whole lot different entering Game 6 than it has all year. And if Roberts is willing to use that to his advantage, Los Angeles might have a shot here.
Dave Roberts should only have his five best pitchers on the mound
Yoshinobu Yamamoto will get the ball on Friday night, hoping to match his complete-game mastery from Game 2 of this series. If all goes well, Roberts will be able to get through Game 6 without taking the ball out of the righty's hands. But even if Yamamoto can't go the distance for the third time in four starts, Dodgers fans don't need to worry about trusting Treinen or Anthony Banda — all Roberts has to do is turn to another one of his team's four aces.
Tyler Glasnow, slated to start Game 7, figures to be available in relief if needed; we've seen him warming in the bullpen already in this series with L.A. trying to nail down a win. We know that Shohei Ohtani is available in relief after starting Game 4. The only one of the Dodgers' five trustworthy pitchers — Yamamoto, Ohtani, Sasaki, Glasnow and Snell — who figures to be out of the question on Friday night is Snell, who just started Game 5. But that's more than enough firepower to get through nine innings and then some, and turns the Dodgers' pitching plan from a question mark past Yamamoto into an outright strength.
The script can be much the same in Game 7, too, if we get there. Glasnow would get the start, with Ohtani once again waiting in the wings and Snell likely available as well (Saturday would be his scheduled throw day between starts anyway, and hey, the season's over one way or another). Heck, we can't even rule out Yamamoto going on consecutive days, given his willingness to throw an inning during the Game 3 marathon at Dodger Stadium.
The offense is the single biggest reason Los Angeles finds itself in this situation, and if they can't hit more than they did in Games 4 and 5, this is all likely moot. But the bullpen is a close second, an Achilles heel that has unraveled the Dodgers time and time again. Now, though, with no runway left, Roberts has a whole new menu of options at his disposal. And it just might be good enough to pull off a comeback for the ages.