ANAHEIM — Tuesday was Shohei Ohtani night at the Big A. Then again, so many nights were Shohei nights here over the last six seasons, but this was the one-year anniversary of his last game as an Angel, and the people chanting “M-V-P” this time were wearing Dodger blue.
Yet, as baseball’s best active player continues his quest for a historic 50-homer, 50-steal season, and as his presence in the Dodgers’ lineup tends to eclipse most everything else going on with the team from game to game, Shohei’s return to his professional home was not the most important storyline in their 10-inning, 6-2 victory on Tuesday. Not close.
And perhaps the key story wasn’t even that of Mookie Betts, whose three-run homer in the 10th broke it open and whose laser of a throw from right field in the bottom of the inning kept Logan O’Hoppe anchored at third base and deserved its own moment in the nightly highlights.
The most significant moments might have come earlier in the evening, from Walker Buehler.
As the Dodgers head toward October, with so many questions surrounding their starting pitching, Buehler’s fourth start since a midseason injured list stint was, if not critical, at least urgent. If he’s going to be a contributor during the postseason, he needs to show it now. He took steps in that direction Tuesday night.
With plenty of uncertainty surrounding currently sidelined pitchers Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Clayton Kershaw, there are postseason opportunities to be grabbed.
But time is growing short.
“Performance will dictate everything,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said late Tuesday afternoon. “So we’ve got a lot of things going on as far as injuries. All we can deal with is: Who’s taking the baseball? And he (Buehler) is one of the five right now. And he’s gotta pitch well.”
Tuesday night he was trending upward. He gave up a solo home run to O’Hoppe in the second inning – “a bad pitch,” Buehler said, a cutter – and another to Taylor Ward in the fifth on a four-seamer lofted down the right field line. He lasted five innings, allowed five hits – essentially no damage beyond the homers – and struck out six, and Roberts said his use of the curveball made a difference.
Buehler threw 25 of them out of his 87 pitches, got six called strikes and three whiffs, and got four strikeouts (one called) with the pitch.
“He’s probably using it more than he ever has in the past, but it just gets ’em off the fastball,” Roberts said. “He’s working more of a front-to-back game. … I think it’s just making him a better pitcher.”
Buehler called this a “building block.”
“For me, it’s all these little tiny boxes checked,” he said. “I feel like myself and I feel like I can go and throw the ball well. Tonight wasn’t my best game ever, but for right now I’m pretty happy about it and confident (that) in another four or five, six days, whatever we end up doing, I feel ready to take the ball and feel like I can help us win.”
If this is more than a mirage, it could be a big development for a starting rotation in flux. Right now Jack Flaherty and Gavin Stone are the only sure things in a postseason starting rotation, and this wasn’t supposed to be the predicament after the club’s wintertime shopping spree.
While Buehler pitched in Anaheim on Tuesday night, Yamamoto pitched for Triple-A Oklahoma City against the Sugar Land Space Cowboys in his latest rehab start. He pitched two innings, facing 10 batters and throwing 53 pitches and giving up two hits, two walks and two earned runs and fanning three.
Glasnow, signed to be the bellwether of the rotation, is long-tossing before games as he tries to come back from elbow tendinitis. Kershaw, who came out of his last start Friday in Arizona when a bone spur in his left big toe flared up, affecting his ability to push off, was playing catch down the right field foul line three hours before Tuesday night’s game, wearing a walking boot on his left foot.
So the Dodgers could have a plethora of pitchers by Game 1 of whatever series they start with, or they could be looking for volunteers. And if you are a fan, and whipsawed between the allure of Ohtani-Betts-Freeman at the top of the lineup and the dread of a repeat of the last two Octobers, it’s not exactly a calming thought.
But more than the numbers, Buehler is starting to feel like his old self again. That was part of the issue earlier in the season and part of the reason he visited Cressey Sports Performance in Florida after going back on the injured list with a hip injury in mid-June.
“At the end of the day, the pitching coaches here got me in my delivery,” Buehler said. “And now everything kind of feels familiar as opposed to feeling really foreign like I did for a while.
“I would have loved to have felt like this in April, you know what I mean? But at the end of the day, I have a month to … put the finishing touches on how I feel as a major league starter and hope I can help us win in the playoffs.”
And maybe, Roberts said, Buehler’s composure is trending upward, too.
“Right now, Walker’s in compete mode,” he said. “And I think that’s important when you’re in September. … At some point you’ve got to put mechanics aside and you’ve got to go out there and compete and make pitches. And his last start, and (Tuesday) night, I thought he did that.”
The task between now and Sept. 29, the final day of the regular season: Re-assemble a starting rotation while trying to win a division. Simple, no?
jalexander@scng.com
