Did Dave Roberts Make Right Decision to Leave Jack Flaherty In, Save Dodgers Bullpen?

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts chose to leave a struggling Jack Flaherty on the mound in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series to preserve the bullpen. It was the right call, here’s why.

If Roberts had deployed multiple high-leverage relievers and the Dodgers still lost, the next two games of the NLCS would’ve been a disaster.

Instead, he chose to leave Flaherty in for three innings and replaced the starter with Brent Honeywell for 4.2 innings of Game 5. Flaherty gave up eight run, eight hits, four walks, and earned zero strikeouts. Honeywell gave up four earned runs.

Asking “What if?” would be a mistake since the Dodgers have limited options as it is. The Dodgers starting rotation was decimated by injury, leaving Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Walker Buehler to bear the burden of October.

Roberts has just three starting pitchers and a bullpen to work with, wasting relievers on Friday likely would’ve backfired for the plan in Games 6 and 7.

“For me at 5-1 I’m not going to deploy our leverage guys knowing there’s a cost on the back end and appreciating the fact that there’s still more baseball to play in the series,” Roberts said Friday night. “So those are thoughts that went through my head. But I think for me, I have five leverage guys that I wanted to make sure that you gotta deploy at the right time.”

Following the Dodgers’ 12-6 loss to the Mets in Game 5, fans went to social media to express their frustrations with Roberts. Some felt as if Roberts punted the game too early in order to save the bullpen. Others felt he made the right call.

At the end of the day, winning two of three games in New York is ideal. The Dodgers now have two chances to win one more game to advance to the World Series.

“You have to kind of remain steadfast in how you use your pitchers because ultimately it’s about winning four games in a seven-game series,” Roberts added. “When you’re careless, then it will show itself at some point, certainly in a long series.In that point, you know, with our leverage guys, mainly Blake and Evan, it’s just not responsible in that point of the game, for me. So [Brent] Honeywell did a fantastic job saving everyone and knowing we’ve got a bullpen game coming in Game 6 as well. There’s that part of it.”

Roberts was thinking of the big picture in Game 5 and it should pay off since the Dodgers have a rested bullpen and the lineup is hot for the upcoming matchup Sunday night.

Photo Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images

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