The playoffs began with Blake Treinen rescuing a wobbly Dodgers bullpen, the 36-year-old right-hander replacing Michael Kopech and escaping a two-on, one-out eighth-inning jam and throwing 39 pitches for a five-out save in the National League Division Series opener against the San Diego Padres.
Saturday night was payback time, with left-hander Alex Vesia throwing Treinen a life preserver after Treinen yielded a run, gave up two more singles and hit a batter and pushed his pitch count to 33 as the Dodgers moved perilously close to blowing a three-run lead in Game 2 of the World Series.
Vesia, with anxiety coursing through the veins of 52,725 fans in Chavez Ravine, replaced Treinen with the bases loaded and two outs and needed only one pitch to retire pinch-hitter Jose Trevino on a fly ball to center field to save a 4-2 victory that gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
“Blake limited damage, he made pitches when he had to,” second baseman Kiké Hernández said. “He wasn’t able to finish the game, but like we’ve been able to do all October, if somebody doesn’t get the job done, somebody’s gonna come behind him and pick him up, and that’s what Vesia did.”
Left-hander Anthony Banda replaced superb starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto and got the last two outs of the seventh inning, Kopech retired the side in order in the eighth to preserve a 4-1 lead, and it looked like the Dodgers, who gave up only one hit through eight innings, would cruise to a win.
But Treinen, who threw 22 pitches in 1⅓ innings of Friday night’s 6-3 Game 1 victory, ran into immediate trouble when Juan Soto led off the ninth with a single to right field and took second on a wild pitch.
Treinen struck out slugger Aaron Judge with a nasty, down-and-away, 85-mph sweeper, but Giancarlo Stanton ripped a hard grounder off the third-base bag for an RBI single that made it 4-2. Jazz Chisholm Jr. capped an eight-pitch at-bat with a single to right, and Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch to load the bases.
“I was living and dying with every pitch,” said fellow reliever Daniel Hudson, who was watching from the left-field bullpen. “That’s about as stressful as it gets, man.”
Hudson has been in Treinen’s shoes. He was the closer for the World Series-winning Washington Nationals in 2019, he pitched out of several jams that postseason, and he threw the final pitch of a Game 7 win in Houston.
“I get more nervous watching than I do when I’m actually on the mound,” Hudson said. “Seriously, it sucks. I hate it, especially in these types of games, maybe because it’s an out-of-my-control type of thing, and all I can do is sit there.”
Treinen was hardly quaking in his cleats, despite the fine mess he had gotten himself into.
“You definitely feel the competition, but I play this game for God, and no pressure from man gets to me like it used to,” Treinen said. “I don’t really have the anxiety or the stress of the moment.”
The more pitches Treinen threw, the more pressure there was on manager Dave Roberts to make a move, “but I just felt that Blake had enough stuff to get to [Anthony] Volpe in that spot,” Roberts said.
Treinen rewarded his manager’s faith by getting Volpe to chase another down-and-away sweeper for a strikeout, but he clearly was gassed. Roberts summoned Vesia to face left-handed-hitting catcher Austin Wells. Yankees manager Aaron Boone countered with the right-handed-hitting Trevino.
One 93-mph fastball on the inner half of the plate produced a routine fly ball to center field, and the Dodgers were celebrating a victory that moved them to within two wins of their eighth World Series title.
“It’s unbelievable,” Vesia said of his first World Series save. “This is everything to me, playing on the biggest stage with the two best teams you could possibly play for, the biggest franchises with the most history, the list goes on. It’s very special.
“And if you would have told me 2½ weeks ago when I was taken out of the Padres game [because of a rib-cage strain], I would have told you I probably wouldn’t be here pitching and on the roster. I can’t say enough about what the training staff has done. Every day we got a little better, and we’re good.”
Vesia missed the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets but showed in Game 1 of the World Series that he was fully recovered, striking two of three batters in a scoreless eighth.
“Getting that inning was great,” Vesia said. “It was a huge boost of confidence to know that, one, my velocity is there, and two, making sure I was controlling all my pitches in the zone.”
Vesia, who went 5-4 with a 1.76 earned-run average in 67 regular-season games, has given up only one hit, struck out six and walked one in 4⅓ innings of five playoff games.
“In a perfect world, you’d like to finish your inning … but I had full faith when [Vesia] came in,” Treinen said. “Ves has been our most lock-down guy all year, consistently. He’s had a phenomenal year and has pitched in huge spots, and what he did tonight was no different.
“We’ve all been battle-tested. If one of us falls short in the task at hand, somebody else comes in and picks him up. I’d like to think I’ve been able to do that for some of my teammates in the past, just like any one of the guys, and that’s why we’re a close unit.”