Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts revealed he is still trying to find out which of his relievers he can trust in high leverage situations during the postseason.
The Dodgers’ bullpen has been fairly inconsistent as of late, and the Dodgers lost several games towards the end of the regular season due to mistakes coming from their relief arms.
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“Yeah. I think — you like them all, you trust them all, to various degrees,” Roberts said. “And I think in the postseason, you have to go with ultimately who you feel best in that one spot.
“And so it’s ever-evolving, and I’m not going to be a ‘It can’t be blind to performance and heartbeat and how guys respond to certain situations.’
“It’s sort of a daily kind of conversation with the pitching coaches, the front office and just kind of — and most importantly, what I see.”
High-leverage spots were few and far between against the Cincinnati Reds, who the Dodgers swept in the NL Wild Card series, however, some problems still arose in each game with the Reds managing to load the bases in the late innings.
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Outside of those occasions, the Dodgers’ pen looked solid in the final inning of each game. Blake Treinen bounced back from a horrid final month of the regular season and gave the Dodgers a scoreless ninth inning in the opening game, and Roki Sasaki shut the door on the Reds with a dominant performance in Game 2.
The Dodgers get two days of rest before their NLDS matchup against the Philadelphia Phillies, which begins on the road on Saturday. Shohei Ohtani will make his first postseason start against the Phils, and will hope the bullpen can shake off their struggles to give them a huge advantage in the series.
Photo Credit: © Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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