And now they have a chance to banish the ghosts of the past two years when they host their regional rivals in a winner-take-all Game 5 on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.
Consider, for a moment, what the possibilities might have been.
Imagine that the Dodgers hadn’t lost what amounts to an additional starting rotation-plus worth of pitchers, in what has been a baseball-wide siege of arm/elbow/shoulder injuries but one that hit them particularly hard. What would their playoff rotation have looked like?
Maybe Tyler Glasnow as the ace, a fully functional Yoshinobu Yamamoto (rather than one still coming back from a triceps injury) as a solid Game 2 starter, followed by Jack Flaherty – sure, they’d still have traded for him – and a healthy Clayton Kershaw, or a fully rejuvenated Walker Buehler. You’d take your chances with that foursome any time, wouldn’t you?
Instead, the Dodgers have had 18 different pitchers on the injured lists at various times. The more than $1 billion they committed to new additions in the offseason didn’t buy good health. And just from that alone, this might have been the most improbable 98-win team in baseball.
So, again, consider: For the most important game of their season on Wednesday night, they gave the ball to Ryan Brasier to open a bullpen game. And they adjusted the lineup card shortly before game time because there would be no All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, after already ruling out shortstop Miguel Rojas.
Naturally, with their season on the line and most observers expecting an early exit from the postseason to match those of the last two years, these Dodgers pushed back. Their 8-0 victory assured a fifth and deciding game of the National League Division Series on Friday night at Dodger Stadium, where the noise and the energy will be on their side, the same way it was on the Padres’ side in Petco Park on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Bullpen games, as a rule, are not as much of a disadvantage as they might seem. The Dodgers have been over .500 in such games the last three regular seasons, and Brasier and Co. limited San Diego to seven hits, kept the explosive part of the Padres’ order relatively quiet, and reduced the decibel level of a crowd anxious to send the archenemy packing for the winter.
Instead, now the Dodgers have a chance to banish the ghosts of the last two Octobers.
Mookie Betts, with homers in the last two games (after being robbed by Jurickson Profar in Game 2 in L.
