TORONTO — The World Series on the line, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts exited the first-base dugout and lifted his right arm toward the right-field bullpen. The gates opened, and Tyler Glasnow entered a cauldron at Rogers Centre.
Through the first five games of the 2025 Fall Classic, no team had recorded a save. Now, here was Glasnow, tasked with picking up the first save of his career at any level. An elimination game at the World Series has a funny way of asking for the most out of those on the mound.
“I kind of was like, ‘I’m not even going to think about what’s at stake,’” Glasnow said afterward. “I just have to go and try to make a pitch. Each pitch at a time. If I execute it, things will work out.”
It capped a complete pitching performance from the Dodgers’ staff — on a night they needed it. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was excellent, as usual. But he wasn’t nearly as efficient as he’d been in his previous two starts, both complete games.
After six innings of one-run ball from Yamamoto, the Dodgers’ bullpen was called upon to cover the final nine outs, and they took quite the path to get there.
Yamamoto had thrown only 96 pitches. But after a high-stress, high-leverage sixth inning from Yamamoto, Roberts decided his night was done.
“I was ready for another inning,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “But my job, the most important part, was to protect our lead and then pass it to the guys coming behind me.”
Said Roberts: “I felt that Yamamoto did his job for the night.”
Roberts mulled letting Yamamoto return for the seventh on a batter-by-batter basis, but he opted against it. Rookie left-hander Justin Wrobleski was loose, and Roberts figured it would be better to give Wrobleski a clean inning to work with.
“It’s never good taking Yamamoto out of a game, certainly in a playoff game,” Roberts said. “But I think the way that Wrobo’s been throwing the baseball, his confidence — it’s a different look, and I trust him. I felt he was the right guy for that part of the order.”
Wrobleski surrendered a two-out double to Clement, but nothing more in a scoreless seventh. The path to closer Roki Sasaki had been bridged. Still, six outs from Sasaki was always going to be a big ask.
The Blue Jays made Sasaki work. They put two men aboard in the eighth. He stranded them. But in the ninth, the first two Toronto hitters reached — Alejandro Kirk on a hit by pitch and Addison Barger on a ground-rule double that got lodged in the base of the left-center-field wall.
“From that point on, for me, I just felt that Roki wasn’t as sharp,” Roberts said. “And I just felt we needed some swing-and-miss, and Glasnow was the guy. So I had him loose, kind of looming.”
Having started Game 3, Glasnow might also have been lined up to start Game 7. But the Dodgers first needed to ensure there would be a Game 7 at all. Prior to the game, Roberts announced that Shohei Ohtani would not be part of his pitching plans on Friday. Otherwise, all hands were on deck. Including Glasnow.
“I didn’t really have too much time to think about it,” said Glasnow, who retreated to the bullpen after the second inning. “I just went out, warmed up, ready to go, went on the mound. I know they’re going to early swing, especially with guys in scoring position.”
In no time, Glasnow was out of the jam — which could prove huge for Game 7 on Saturday, too. Glasnow only needed three pitches and thinks he might be available.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever done it,” Glasnow said of pitching on back-to-back days. “But I’ve pitched a heavy bullpen or something and then pitched. … I threw like barely any pitches. I didn’t really warm up a ton, either. Then I threw three pitches.
Yamamoto, of course, labored quite a bit harder than Glasnow on Friday and figures to be unavailable on Saturday. Roberts said as much after the game, and Yamamoto himself downplayed the possibility.
Sasaki is the more interesting question. He threw 33 pitches and has pitched on back-to-back days just once this postseason, having spent almost his entire life as a starter until late this summer.
Somehow, some way, the Dodgers will need to cover 27 outs if they’re going to repeat as champions. Ohtani will factor into those plans. Glasnow, too. Perhaps Wrobleski and Sasaki will. Heck, maybe Yamamoto, too, in the event of another marathon. (He did warm up for a potential 19th inning before Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run on Monday.)
These are questions the Dodgers will be asking themselves in the hours leading up to Game 7 on Saturday night — the very questions they spent all day Friday avoiding, but hoping they would eventually need to answer.
