NEW YORK — At a quarter past 4 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, Jack Flaherty embraced a somewhat awkward assignment. Flaherty is the man the Los Angeles Dodgers assigned to pitch a Game 5 that was not yet guaranteed, with the Los Angeles Dodgers on the brink of sweeping this World Series and making Flaherty’s pregame news conference into one about a start that remained hypothetical.
“My job is to get ready for tomorrow,” Flaherty told a room full of reporters. “I’ve got to focus on what I’ve got to do to get ready for tomorrow and root these guys on tonight. I’ve got to keep my mindset right there.”
Flaherty is used to limbo. In July, he sat four hours inside the Detroit Tigers clubhouse and waited for a decision on his trade-deadline fate. He was nearly a New York Yankee before concerns about his back scuttled a deal. The Dodgers acquired him instead and on Wednesday night he will pitch at Yankee Stadium with a chance to secure a championship.
“I’m just worried about getting one more,” Flaherty said. “We know we’ve got to continue to play really good baseball in order to get that done because those guys aren’t going to go away quietly.
The Yankees did not. “If necessary” was answered in the affirmative Tuesday night when the Yankees roared to life for an 11-4 victory. Anthony Volpe’s third-inning grand slam set the wheels in motion for Flaherty to start with the Dodgers up in the series 3-1.
Mookie Betts reacts after striking out in the seventh inning as the Dodgers went quiet against the Yankees bullpen. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
The Dodgers plotted a bullpen game for a potential clincher in Game 4. They have run this playbook before, with manager Dave Roberts twice steering their top arms away from a deficit during the National League Championship Series. Optics be damned, the Dodgers won the ensuing game both times, benefitting in each from having the full complement of relievers at their disposal.
Winning with Tuesday’s plan would require multiple innings each from Ben Casparius and Landon Knack, two rookies who at the beginning of the year figured to factor more into the Dodgers’ 2025 Cactus League plans than a potential World Series clincher. Casparius became the second pitcher ever to make his first big-league start in a World Series. Knack was called upon for his longest outing in a month. The two men combined to allow two runs over six innings.
“The big thing was just to save the dawgs out there,” Knack said, echoing the words from Brent Honeywell after the Dodgers’ most recent attempt to salvage their top arms from the wreckage of a game.
It was what occurred between Casparius and Knack that determined Roberts’ tenor for the evening. He entrusted an early 2-1 lead and the heart of the Yankees order to Daniel Hudson. The veteran has oscillated between roles this summer partly due to his propensity to allow fly balls and with them, home runs. But he represented a challenge against right-handed sluggers Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton without Roberts having to deploy one of his top arms early and render them unavailable for a potential Game 5. Facing Juan Soto functioned as a tax. Hudson struck him out by getting the prolific slugger to wave over a slider.
Hudson’s command eroded rapidly from there. He hit Judge with a first-pitch fastball. Jazz Chisholm Jr. lined a first-pitch fastball for a single. Hudson hit Stanton, too, though Stanton swung through the pitch before drawing a walk to load the bases.
“He was kind of all over the place,” catcher Will Smith said. “That’s unlike Huddy.”
“I just couldn’t stop the snowball from getting bigger,” Hudson said.
Hudson got a popup to get within an out of escaping with the Dodgers’ advantage intact, but his first slider to Volpe spun enticingly over the middle of the plate. It did not move. Volpe laced it into the left-field seats to make it 5-2 and give the Yankees their first lead since Game 1.
“Just kind of one of those that just pops out of your hand and you have that instant, ‘oh no’ feeling in your stomach,” Hudson said.
Hudson would be the only non-bulk reliever the Dodgers would deploy. Knack, not one of the Dodgers’ leverage relievers, was warming as the inning unfolded.
“I’m not going to go get somebody in the third inning to get Volpe where he just popped a guy up … it was his inning,” Roberts said.
It wouldn’t have mattered. A lineup that wore down the Mets bullpen has yet to do the same in the Bronx as they did in Queens, despite multiple looks. The Yankees bullpen has allowed just one run since Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1. The Dodgers never got closer than within a run of tying the score. So Roberts did not push the issue.
“We had many chances to win that ballgame tonight,” Smith said.
The dam broke in the eighth when the Yankees scored five times to put the game out of reach.
“We were urgent,” said Freeman, whose two-run homer gave the Dodgers a first-inning lead and set a World Series record for hitting a home run in six consecutive games (dating to 2021). “We know what’s at stake. We had a chance to win the World Series tonight and we’re all pretty urgent and we want to do that as fast as we can. We’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow.”
The Dodgers will do so against the reigning American League Cy Young winner, Gerrit Cole. The Dodgers once heavily pursued the Southern California native as a free agent, offering $300 million (reportedly with deferrals) years before they would do the same for Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who they guaranteed $1 million more than the $324 million Cole would get from the Yankees. Cole delivered six innings of one-run ball in Game 1.
“It’s always nice to face someone you faced a few days ago,” Freeman said. “But he’s still one of the best pitchers in the game. It’s not gonna be easy.”
That will put the onus again on the Dodgers’ approach in Game 4 paying dividends the following night. Flaherty will pitch Wednesday on regular rest with a chance to clinch a series, much like he did when the Mets bombarded him 12 days prior. He’ll have the Dodgers’ full arsenal of relievers behind him with a chance to secure a celebration and stifle a Yankees pursuit of something unprecedented in overcoming a 3-0 deficit in the World Series.
“Hopefully Jack calms them down and we score more runs than them,” Freeman said.
(Photo of Jack Flaherty: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
