Dave Roberts started out of the dugout with a walk.
Once Blake Snell caught his gaze, it turned into a trot.
With two out in the seventh inning Wednesday night, and Snell trying to put the finishing touches on his best performance in a Dodgers uniform, Roberts appeared to be coming to the mound after a pair of walks to turn to his shaky bullpen with a three-run lead.
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As he usually does when removing a pitcher, his gait was slow — at least, initially.
Once Snell saw him coming, however, Roberts picked up his pace — as he will sometimes do when electing to leave a pitcher in the game.
“You know what, in that situation, I was actually 50/50,” Roberts said. “Obviously, 99.9% of the time, I’ve got my decision made. But in that moment, I was kind of up in the air.”
This time, Roberts did the unexpected.
After a brief discussion with his starting pitcher, he let Snell stay in.
“He’s one of the guys that we have to push,” Roberts explained afterward. “He’s got the track record for it. The DNA, the talent to do it. So it’s important.”
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“For us to win 13 games in October, we’re gonna need certain guys to be pushed and go deeper.”
Five throws later, the two-time Cy Young Award winner, and $182-million centerpiece of the club’s offseason, rewarded the decision. He sent Otto Kemp down swinging with a 95 mph fastball. He authored an emphatic ending to his scoreless seven-inning start, one that lifted the Dodgers to a 5-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies to maintain a two-game lead in the National League West standings.
“It’s one of those moments,” Roberts said. “He was adamant he wanted that last hitter. And I trusted him. And he finished him off the right way. Just a huge boost for us. Just a great performance from pitch one.”
Entering Wednesday, all the discussion around the Dodgers (85-67) had centered on the bullpen. The slumping unit was coming off two of its worst performances of the season. The majority of Roberts’ pregame address with reporters was spent dissecting how to fix it.
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“Before the results, has to be confidence,” Roberts said, comparing the relief corps’ struggles to the second-half scuffles that the offense only recently emerged from. “It’s just kind of trying to reset a mentality, a mindset and expect that things happen. … You can’t chase a zero in an inning until you execute the first pitch, and then keep going like that. And I think that right now you can see that they’re kind of trying a little too hard.”
On Wednesday night, however, Snell offered a reminder:
While the relief corps remains a work in progress, a surging rotation can make their life a whole lot easier.
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On Wednesday night, however, Snell made their job easy.
Efficient from the start with the kind of aggressive, attacking game plan he had acknowledged was missing in his last three outings, Snell went to work quickly against the Phillies (91-62) and their star-studded lineup.
In the first, he retired the side in order on eight pitches and two strikeouts. In the second, he went 1-2-3 again with a couple more Ks. Brief trouble arose in the third, when Bryson Stott and Harrison Bader hit back-to-back singles.
But then, Snell froze Kyle Schwarber with a curveball for a called third strike, starting a run of 12 straight batters he would retire into the seventh.
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“Any time I face a really good team, I try to bring the best out of myself,” said Snell, who finished the night with a season-high 12 strikeouts while lowering his ERA to 2.44. “I think the biggest thing was just command. I could command the fastball, which really set up the offspeed. And then the sequencing was really good today … Just felt comfortable attacking the zone.”
Indeed, Snell painted corners with his heater, which he ran up to 97 mph. He got foolish swings on his breaking pitches, inducing 24 whiffs on 54 swing attempts. His curveball was particularly lethal, accounting for seven of his 12 Ks. And he kept his workload under control, throwing more than 17 pitches in just one of his first six innings.
“[His curveball] comes from the rafters. His fastball is taking off like a jet,” said catcher Ben Rortvedt, who started his third straight game behind the plate even with Dalton Rushing back from a leg injury.
“He was speeding ’em up, slowing ’em down, landing stuff in the zone, not getting in hitters’ counts,” Rortvedt. “It was really impressive.”
Freddie Freeman reacts towards the Dodger bullpen after homering in the second inning Wednesday. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In the meantime, the Dodgers built a lead. Freddie Freeman homered to lead off the second. Ben Rortvedt (starting his third straight game behind the plate, even with Dalton Rushing back from a leg injury) added an RBI single later in the inning, following an Andy Pages hit-and-run single that put runners on the corners.
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Another run came around in the fourth, after Pages worked a two-out walk, stole second, took third on a wild pickoff throw and scored on an RBI single from Kiké Hernández (who played third base in place of Max Muncy, who still felt “fuzzy” on Tuesday from a hit-by-pitch he took to the head over the weekend).
And by the time they reached the seventh, the Dodgers were under no discernible stress.
That changed after walks to Nick Castellanos and Max Kepler with two outs in the inning, pulling Roberts out of the dugout as left-hander Alex Vesia got warm in the bullpen. For a brief moment, it appeared the game would turn over to the relievers. Vesia was halfway to the mound as Roberts went to consult with Snell.
“I wanted to feel and hear what he had to say,” Roberts said.
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Snell’s answer, after a few shakes of his head: “Please. Keep me in. I got it.”
To the delight of a packed crowd of 50,859, the Roberts simply nodded, and kept the ball in Snell’s hand.
“It meant a lot that he trusted me,” Snell said later. “I don’t like the bullpen finishing my innings … I don’t want them in that situation. I put myself in this, I can pitch my way out of it.”
On his 112th pitch of the night, that’s exactly what Snell did.
In a 2-and-2 count, Kemp flailed at an elevated fastball. Snell went screaming off the mound with a pump of his fist. In the dugout, Roberts raised a clenched hand in the air, then applauded with his arms above his head. Chavez Ravine erupted all around them, serenading the first truly signature moment of Snell’s Dodgers tenure.
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“It’s obviously not something that Blake needs to prove to anyone, because he’s got that hardware,” Roberts said. “But it’s still good for our guys, for him, with a new ballclub, to pitch playoff-type baseball against a potential playoff opponent, and to put forth that performance.”
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The next two innings were refreshingly simple. Vesia retired the side in the top of the eighth. The Dodgers made it a five-run lead by scoring twice in the bottom half of the frame, including on Shohei Ohtani’s 51st home run of the season. Embattled closer Tanner Scott spun a stress-free ninth, pitching three consecutive scoreless outings for the first time since early July.
“Big confidence boost,” Roberts said. “To play a normal game and win it the way we should have won it, I think we all feel really good about that.”
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Come October, it’s the kind of blueprint the Dodgers will have to try and replicate repeatedly to defend their World Series title.
Their bullpen still needs fixing. Their relief issues aren’t solved. But more gems like Snell’s would go a long way towards helping.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
