LOS ANGELES — Edgardo Henriquez was one strike away from keeping the Dodgers in it. His team trailing by two runs in the seventh with runners on the corners — and fresh off two hitless innings with two strikeouts two nights ago — all the 23-year-old flamethrower had to do was put Vladimir Guerrero Jr. away.
Or with a base open, a walk wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world — except for the way it happened.
On the sixth pitch, Henriquez threw a 99.9 mph fastball. It hooked way left for ball four, past the glove of Will Smith. Guerrero took first, Addison Barger scored from third, and things snowballed from there.
“It’s hard because you can only push a starter so much,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought Blake [Snell] emptied the tank, and you have an opportunity with the base open, in this situation second base with Vlad up, and I felt Henriquez was the guy to get him out.”
The good news? The Dodgers got to rest most of their high-leverage arms after an 18-inning marathon two nights earlier. The bad news, though: The other arms haven’t been able to keep the last two games close.
For all the concerns about the bullpen heading into the postseason, they had gotten through the first 10 games of October — the Wild Card, Division and Championship Series combined — allowing just four inherited runners to score. They’ve allowed 12 to score in the World Series.
“You look at the three games that we lost, it spiraled on us with guys on base,” Roberts said. “But guys got to be better. … Everyone’s got to do their job.”
Bo Bichette followed up Guerrero’s walk by lining a single into right field for another run. Henriquez then walked Alejandro Kirk on four pitches, prompting Roberts to turn to Anthony Banda for the third straight night.
He was able to get out of that jam immediately, but later gave up a run on two singles in the eighth to give the Jays another comfortable win for the second consecutive night.
“They’re just pesky,” Will Klein said. “They don’t swing and miss a lot and they don’t strike out a whole lot, so if you chase that, that can get you in trouble, too, because they’re not going to expand a whole lot.”
In addition to that, the Blue Jays foul off a lot of pitches. They just put the bat on the ball in general, which naturally creates more opportunities. Klein noted that even when pitchers get them to put the ball in play weakly, some still have managed to get through for hits, adding another layer of frustration.
But for Klein, the answer to that is to just keep at it, not looking too far ahead and staying within each pitch.
“A lot of times those are going to be outs, though,” he said. “So you just got to keep making them put it in play and just getting ahead. That really flips it in your favor. … Good things will happen if you execute like how we can. We just got to stay in it.”
After two days of rest since throwing a career-high 72 pitches over four innings, carrying the Dodgers on the mound down the stretch of the longest game in World Series history, Klein says he feels ready to get back on the mound whenever he’s called upon.
“So right now, we’re at elimination,” Roberts said. “And we’ve got to kind of wipe the slate clean and find a way to win Game 6 and pick up the pieces and see where we’re at.”
Jack Dreyer’s trying not to make the moment bigger than it is. He has full confidence that whoever gets called out of the bullpen can get it done, despite how it’s looked the last two nights. It is, after all, the same game no matter the setting.
“I know that in the context of the World Series, it might seem like a bigger stage,” Dreyer said. “But you have to think of it in terms of it’s just another game and all you can do is focus on what you can control and nothing else. … Nobody goes into a series thinking we have to win four games, it’s just one. Winning one game at a time.
“We knew we’re going to go to Toronto anyway, so we’re going to go put our best foot forward. We have [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto on the mound, so all kinds of confidence, and we’ll be ready to go.”
