Dodgers advantage Giants after the bullpen maintains a tenuous lead

On Thursday night, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was not at his best.

This meant that despite pitching five and a half scoreless innings against the San Francisco Giants, he let the Dodgers' unsteady bullpen decide the outcome of the game.

Such a situation would be a prescription for tragedy, which has happened so frequently on evenings like these lately. Anything more than a couple of innings has felt like a hefty ask given the Dodgers' inconsistent relief corps, which went into the game with a 5.65 ERA in September.

However, the Dodgers' relievers managed to work things out this time.

No, Michael Kopech's command was still absent. No, Blake Treinen's appearance had not changed.

However, the Dodgers' relievers made pitches when they needed them most. They managed to extend the team's National League West division lead to three games with a 2-1 victory at Dodger Stadium.

First baseman Freddie Freeman stated, "Winning these one-run ball games is big for us because it feels like these are the ones we've been falling short in lately." Hopefully, that will help us in the bullpen. They play a significant role in what we can accomplish in October. Therefore, we have complete faith in them. And it was wonderful to watch them enjoy their evening.

Their lives were not made simple by Yamamoto.

The recently dominant right-hander gave up just one hit, but his command reverted to the unfortunate habit of being "too fine," as manager Dave Roberts put it. His six walks were a career high. Out of 108 pitches, he only found the zone 60 times. Additionally, he had too many pitches, despite Roberts' best efforts to get him through the sixth inning.

The bullpen was forced to take up the slack on a night when the Dodgers (86-67) only mustered two runs against Giants star Logan Webb, both of which came in a sixth-inning rally that was sparked by a double by Shohei Ohtani, an RBI single by Freeman, and a dropped ball at the plate by Giants catcher Patrick Bailey.

When Yamamoto gave Jack Dreyer a runner with one out in the sixth and stranded it in 11 pitches, things got off to a good start.

However, two of the Dodgers' most seasoned relief arms put themselves in grave danger during the seventh inning, which swiftly turned into an adventure.

It began with Kopech, who has been having trouble finding the ball ever since he returned from a knee injury sustained in the middle of the season. With a (very, very) wild pitch in between, the hard-throwing right-hander walked his first two batters. He recovered to get the opening out of the inning by striking out Drew Gilbert. However, he had only managed eight outs in his previous four appearances, throwing 50 balls to 45 strikes, and had given out eight walks overall by that time.

So Roberts returned to the mound and brought Treinen inside to try to extinguish the fire.

Treinen has recently struggled with unusual inconsistencies, just as Kopech. When the Dodgers wasted Yamamoto's almost perfect no-hitter in Baltimore earlier this month, he was the one at fault. Two nights before, he allowed the backup catcher for the Philadelphia Phillies to hit a three-run homer that ended the game.

The right-hander appeared ready to blow another lead on Thursday.

Additionally, he walked his first two batters, loaded the bases on the first, then forced a run on the next after being squeezed on a full-count cutter at the top of the zone by home plate umpire Ryan Wills. In the next at-bat, Treinen was one ball away from another catastrophe when the count went full to Willy Adames.

But that's when things went wrong.

Treinen struck Adames out looking by dotting a sinker on the outside corner. In order to retire the team and fan Matt Chapman, he snapped off his signature sweeper.

Roberts has stressed in recent days how important it is for his bullpen to hold onto any confidence they can find. The poor inning nonetheless counted as a building block because the club maintained its 2-1 lead in the seventh.

Regarding Treinen, Roberts stated, "I believe he's trending [upward], and we're going to need him." "All he needs to do is figure out how to get back into the circle of trust." Getting out of that situation gave me a lot of confidence.

The Dodgers then easily got the last six outs.

In the ninth, Anthony Banda went 1-2-3. In the ninth, Alex Vesia made the save with a clean frame.

Meanwhile, the Sox received encouraging signals from another possible bullpen option over 1,000 miles up the Pacific Coast. Roki Sasaki came out of the bullpen to retire three of the four batters he saw in a triple-A game in Tacoma, Washington, using a fastball that reached its peak velocity of 100.1 mph, two strikeouts, and one walk. Sasaki is still in the running for a playoff roster position, might return to the Dodgers' major league roster next week, and will make another triple-A bullpen appearance on Sunday.

He gave a performance tonight. He was excellent. And on Sunday, let's see it once more," Roberts remarked. "It then sort of places the burden of decision-making on the organization."

Acquisition of trade deadlines.  Although he followed Sasaki in Thursday's game against OKC, where he gave up four unearned runs on a single, a walk, and a hit-by-pitch in ⅔ of an inning, Brock Stewart is also recovering from a shoulder ailment. The Dodgers will, however, accept any reinforcements available at this point.

The team's lineup is ultimately manufacturing runs, after all. Since being healthy, their rotation has maintained its late-season surge. The team's final big question going into the final nine games of the season is the bullpen. And they did enough to win at Chavez Ravine for one night.

"It's large," Freeman remarked. You can expand on it. In the bullpen, you can feed off one another, just like hitting is contagious.

The Los Angeles Times was the first to publish this story.