LOS ANGELES — This was always going to be a World Series for Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alejandro Kirk. And through three games, the series has largely followed that script.
But here’s the thing about the Fall Classic, baseball played on its biggest stage:
If you didn’t know much about Klein before Monday night — before the 25-year-old right-hander pitched four brilliant relief innings in the Dodgers’ 6-5, 18-inning victory — you probably weren’t alone. Klein was not on Los Angeles’ postseason roster in any of the first three rounds. He pitched all of 15 1/3 innings during the regular season.
On Monday, in the most dramatic of circumstances, Klein pitched one scoreless inning after another — with no end in sight, until Freeman launched a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 18th. When it was over, Klein had thrown 72 pitches — roughly 14 percent of the pitches he’s ever thrown on a big league mound … in extra innings of a tied World Series game.
Really, what choice did he have?
“I started to feel it,” Klein said. “There were times when you’re starting to feel down and you feel your legs aren’t there or your arm’s not there. And you’ve just got to be like, ‘Well, who else is going to come save me, you know?’”
Klein was the last of nine Dodgers relievers to pitch on Monday night. The much-maligned L.A. bullpen turned in a performance for the ages, with those nine relievers combining for 13 1/3 innings of one-run ball. Klein capped it with four scoreless, one-hit innings.
“We weren’t losing that game,” Klein said. “And so I had to keep going back out there. I was going to keep doing that — and doing all I could to put up a zero and sit back down and do it again.”
Each time he came off the mound, Klein was asked by Dodgers coaches what he had left. Each time, he informed his staff that he had, “As many as you guys need.”
“Freddie hit that home run,” Klein added. “So we didn’t have to find out.”
The reality was: Game 2 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto had retreated to the left-field bullpen, meaning Klein was almost certainly done after his dramatic top of the 18th inning. The Blue Jays put two runners in scoring position with two outs, before Klein dialed up a beautiful curveball to punch out Tyler Heineman swinging and end the threat.
He hopped off the mound, pumped his fist, and let loose a roar. He was greeted with hugs in the dugout. Moments later, Freeman walked it off, formally putting an end to Klein’s night — the winning pitcher in one of the most memorable games in baseball history.
As is customary after a walk-off, Freeman — a likely hero on a night like this one — was mobbed by his teammates. Quickly, however, those teammates turned their attention to an unlikelier hero: Klein. They surrounded him in the on-deck circle and mobbed him.
“That was so cool,” Klein said. “I never dreamed that anything like this would happen. So just having the guys like [Clayton Kershaw], Freddie, Shohei, Mookie [Betts], all those guys kind of celebrating me for a second there was just insane. I don’t think I could have dreamt a dream that good.”
A few months ago, it would’ve seemed outlandish. Klein had been traded twice this season — from the A’s to the Mariners in January, then from the Mariners to the Dodgers after he was designated for assignment in early June.
Klein almost certainly would have been left off the Dodgers’ World Series roster, if not for a huge confluence of events. The L.A. bullpen has been hit hard by injury. On the eve of the World Series, Alex Vesia was left off the roster due to a personal family matter. Klein — and the rest of the Dodgers bullpen — inked the No. 51 into the sides of their hats in support of the Vesia family.
That bullpen turned in its best performance of the season — one of the best by any bullpen in World Series history. Still, with the game hanging in the balance in the 18th, manager Dave Roberts mulled the possibility of going to Yamamoto early. He stuck with Klein.
“You don’t ever plan on playing 18 innings, and you just kind of ask more from the player,” Roberts said. “He delivered. He threw probably three times as much as he’s ever thrown before and — certainly with the adrenaline on this stage — what he did was incredible.”
Truth is, Klein had thrown more than 72 pitches before — in college at Eastern Illinois. He’d begun his collegiate career as a catcher, but converted to the mound full-time after breaking his thumb. Klein was selected by the Royals in the fifth round of the 2020 Draft and has bounced around four organizations, a largely unheralded career.
Unheralded — until Monday night, that is.
“In the postseason, people talk about the superstars,” Roberts said. “But a lot of times it’s these unsung heroes that you just can’t expect. … Tonight was Will Klein’s night.”
