The Los Angeles Dodgers only have themselves to blame for an abysmal Game 1 performance Friday night.
Los Angeles made just three minor acquisitions at the trade deadline, bringing in reliever Brock Stewart, outfielder Alex Call and catcher Ben Rortvedt. Stewart was the added in the position of greatest need for the Dodgers, but that doesn’t mean his addition alone was enough.
Rather than add multiple high-caliber relievers and deal with roster construction issues at a later date, Los Angeles banked on its internal options. The Dodgers hoped Tanner Scott would get healthy and bounce back, and they hoped Blake Treinen would turn a corner.
Every piece of optimism Los Angeles had about its bullpen didn’t work out, and the Dodgers are now three games away from having the group of relievers cost them history.
“(Friday) was just very bad,” Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda told Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic Friday night after the game.
“With the construct of the ‘pen, we’re going to need ’em,” Roberts told Ardaya. “We have a long way to go, a lot of baseball, but they certainly have to make good pitches.”
Roberts, who had a lot of influence on the construction of this bullpen, should be looking in the mirror at how he and the organization set the team up for failure. It doesn’t take a genius to know this bullpen is abysmal and should’ve been reconstructed as much as possible at the trade deadline.
As Ardaya pointed out, the Dodgers bullpen has a 6.16 ERA in the playoffs. They’re lucky the starting pitching and offense has gotten them to this point because the lack of quality among relievers currently sticks out like a sore thumb.
Only 14 teams in Major League Baseball history have won back-to-back World Series championships, and the Dodgers came into this series looking to become team No. 15. They still can, of course, but things are much harder now with Los Angeles losing the first game in the series.
In fact, it may not be Bo Bichette or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that leads to the Blue Jays winning the World Series; the Dodgers bullpen could very well be their own kryptonite.
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