Imagine if the Dodgers didn't score a billion-dollar run.
shudder.
Imagine how most viewers intensify when manager Dave Roberts treks to the mound to remove Alex Vesia.
boy.
Imagine the damage the Dodgers would have suffered if Jack Dreyer's base legally endangered their chances of winning.
bar.
The playoffs began Tuesday night with the Dodgers, whose bullpen pumpkin didn’t magically turn into an elegant carriage in Game 1 of the 10-5 win over the Cincinnati Reds.
On one night, the batsman beat five home runs, while starter Blake Snell completed seven innings, and the relief player was still as terrifying as the last three months of the regular season.
The Dodgers technically had the victory closer to defending their World Series title, but this ultimate goal was suddenly far out of reach due to the shocking 30-minute top of the eighth inning, during which their three arsonists had a savings situation in almost eight games.
Can a team win the World Series with such an unreliable bullpen?
Dodgers reliefist Alex Vesia responded in the eighth inning of the National League Universal Card Series 10-5 in the first game of the National League, Universal Card Series at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Before the game began, Baseball Operations president Andrew Friedman said he thought so.
“It's not a talent issue, but who knows it's an honest assessment or an unwise effort to convince the audience that he's not wasting tens of millions of dollars in supervisorlessness.
“We saw the guys in trouble again and again, suddenly they found it and they rolled off the heater.”
That wasn't what happened in Game 1.
If anything, the troubled eighth inning will eliminate certain relief considerations from consideration to the highest case.
When Henriquez walked through a batsman loading base, ran and gave up scoring singles, doubts about rookie fireman Edgardo Henriquez were doubtful.
Wishful thinking, when Dreyer enters the race and runs again, reaches the option that Dreyer may be late.
The most disturbing thing is the performance of Vesia, the team’s most trusted rescuer.
Vecia started the game with the Dodgers leading 10-2. In such an unbalanced game, Vesia's use illustrates the guy Roberts uses any other mitigators in such a huge game, but the fiery lefty looks like a rubber band that has stretched too many times. Vesia, who scored a career-high 68 games in the regular season, retired only one batsman. He gave up on blows and walking.
What about now?
Roberts sounds like the only relief he believes in is his starter. He said Tyler Glasnow and Emmet Sheehan will be in the bullpen for the second game.
Glasnow was last used as a reliefist for 2018. He never got out of the bullpen in the playoffs.
Sheehan has only five relief games in 28 professional games. He only had one career savings, and that was a quarter of an outbreak.
The Dodgers have considered deploying Shohei Ohtani in the bullpen. They could also have other starting pitchers like Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Snell Pitch instead of having a scheduled bullpen meeting between matches.
The team's highest late game may be Roki Sasaki, who beat two batsmen in one single inning in the last week of the regular season.
But, outside of Ohtani, he ended the recent World Baseball Classic Championship game, can any of these starters really rely on unfamiliar characters?
If Yamamoto and Snell could also rest assured, would their starting point really not be affected?
It is not yet clear.
But it's clear that the Dodgers can't wait for the likes of Tanner Scott or Blake Treinen, or the form that anyone who pitched in the eighth inning Tuesday, as Friedman envisioned. They have to try something new.