The Los Angeles Dodgers rode a $500 million roster through the regular season and all the way to the World Series, yet there’s really just one thing keeping it from being a bust: starting pitching.
After ending up on the “thrash” end of an 11-4 thrashing by the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 of the World Series, the Dodgers bounced back with a 5-1 win in Game 2 on Saturday. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the only pitcher they needed, which is improbably the second time we’ve been able to say that in 12 days.
After throwing a complete game in Game 2 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers, Yamamoto threw another on Saturday. He is the first pitcher with multiple complete games in a single playoff run since Madison Bumgarner in 2014, and the first with two in a row since Curt Schilling in 2001.
This is ridiculous, yet it’s all in a day’s work for this Dodgers’ rotation in this October. Through 12 games, the rotation has a 1.84 ERA and has tallied eight of the club’s 10 wins.
Per the age-old proverb “You get what you pay for,” this is about what you’d expect. The Dodgers have used four starters in these playoffs, and these are their contracts:
Shohei Ohtani: 10 years, $700 millionYoshinobu Yamamoto: 12 years, $325 millionBlake Snell: 5 years, $182 millionTyler Glasnow: 5 years, $136.6 million
Yeah, yeah. There’s nuance here. Ohtani is obviously more than just a starting pitcher, and his and Snell’s contracts are heavy on deferrals. All the same, the $1.3 billion worth of this rotation is close to $1 billion more than the Pittsburgh Pirates have spent in free agency in the last three decades.
This is not, of course, even including Roki Sasaki, who chose the Dodgers as the most sought-after international amateur since Ohtani back in 2017. His future is as a starter. For now, he’s shining as the Dodgers’ closer to the tune of eight innings of three-hit, one-run ball in the playoffs.
The Dodgers Are Showing That Starting Pitching Is an October Kingmaker Again
The Dodgers did not exactly plan for their rotation to be the only thing sustaining them this late in the season. For their $500 million—that includes both salaries and luxury tax penalties—they also expected to have an overwhelming offense and a shutdown bullpen. Increasingly, both are failing them.
The offense? It was first in scoring through May, then 11th through the end of the season. It roared to life in the Wild Card Series against the Cincinnati Reds, but has since mustered only 3.7 runs per game.
The bullpen? Those are cursed words in Los Angeles these days. The pen didn’t crack the top 20 in ERA in the regular season, and its ERA in October is…[double checks]… wow, it really does say 6.16.
The rotation, on the other hand, finished the year with a 2.73 ERA in August and September after finally getting healthy and beginning to fire on all cylinders. At the time, you might have concluded the Dodgers would need more than just elite starting pitching to make their way through October. But if you had, you would have been wrong.
Starting pitching in the playoffs is back, folks. Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman both made it through six innings on Saturday, bringing the total to 24 instances this October. There were 19 all of last October.
As both also cleared six strikeouts to go with their six-plus innings, that has happened 20 times in these playoffs. Not including the COVID playoffs in 2020, it’s the most since 2019.
It’s hard to go so far as to say this was bound to happen, but it does feel like a proper zig after so many teams zagged with bullpen-heavy pitching plans in recent Octobers. It made sense to be careful about overexposing starters to the same hitters, but now we know it’s worse to overexpose relievers to the same hitters—isn’t that right, Dan Wilson?
Because the Dodgers have yet to use Sasaki in this series, they have already set themselves up to avoid overexposing the one good reliever they have. The Blue Jays, by contrast, have already shown the Dodgers their best: Jeff Hoffman, Louis Varland and Seranthony DomÃnguez.
Starting pitching-wise, this series is about to shift from two more or less fair fights to two that overwhelmingly favor the Dodgers.
For Games 3 and 4 in Los Angeles, the Blue Jays will throw Max Scherzer, who had a 5.19 ERA in his age-40 season, and Shane Bieber, who is in his first year back from Tommy John surgery. The Dodgers will throw Glasnow and Ohtani, who have combined to allow four runs with 37 strikeouts in 25.1 innings this October.
The lesson is already clear, and it’ll be in big, bold letters if the Dodgers ultimately emerge as the winners of this series: Elite starting pitching is good to have, up to and including in the playoffs again.
This could quiet the drumbeat on the whole “starting pitching is dying” thing, which could be especially lucrative to a lucky few. Upcoming free agents like Framber Valdez, Dylan Cease, Michael King and Zac Gallen must be licking their chops right now. And if Tarik Skubal doesn’t become the first $400 million pitcher in free agency after 2026, Paul Skenes may well become the first after 2029.
Of course, there aren’t many teams that can afford deals like those. But for any that can, they should have a pretty good idea of where following the Dodgers’ lead can get them.