The Los Angeles Dodgers kickstarted the final week of regular season play with an impressive 7-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field, lowering their magic number to five games in the process.
Clayton Kershaw registered a quality start, allowing six hits and three runs with six strikeouts across six innings pitched. But perhaps more impressive was the Dodgers’ bullpen, which kept the Diamondbacks lineup at bay and enabled Los Angeles to complete their late-game comeback.
The quartet of Caleb Ferguson, Scott Alexander, Kenta Maeda and Kenley Jansen combined for three innings of one-run ball, yielding only two baserunners while compiling four strikeouts without issuing a walk.
It was the latest instance of the Dodgers’ relief corps stepping up at a pivotal point in the season. Manager Dave Roberts has taken notice and offered praise to the unit for stepping up when it matters most, via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“We have a lot of guys that have responded positively in some pretty tough spots,” Roberts said of the current bullpen. “In the middle part of the season, there was some questions, but I think that it’s become a lot more clear who we have now and going forward.”
As Roberts points out, it wasn’t too long ago in which the Dodgers bullpen was more of a revolving door rather than a strength of the team.
The club has since rebounded from a brutal month of August, reinforced by a healthy Jansen as well as midseason acquisition Dylan Floro and starting pitcher-turned reliever Maeda.
With the help of the aforementioned players, the Dodgers’ relief corps has put forth an excellent showing in September. The unit is tied for second in FanGraphs’ WAR (1.1) while additionally ranking second in ERA (2.54) and FIP (2.94) over 71 innings of work thus far.
