PHILADELPHIA — As his bullpen once again threatened to descend into chaos, Dave Roberts left it to his players to come up with a way to get out of it. The Los Angeles Dodgers were at risk of squandering a potential commanding lead in the National League Division Series when Roberts summoned Alex Vesia into the cauldron.
All the momentum they’d taken from the Philadelphia Phillies was 180 feet away, with the potential tying run at second base with no one out. That’s when the manager looked at his players during the pitching change.
“You guys figure it out,” Roberts said.
Mookie Betts made a suggestion. The six-time Gold Glove-winning right fielder, making just his fourth career postseason start at shortstop, did not think. He just spoke.
Betts’ comfort at his new position allowed him to propose something the Dodgers had hardly considered since spring training, much less practiced or executed: the wheel play. It’s a scheme that aggressively shifts their defenders around in the middle of a bunt attempt to try to get the lead runner.
It worked. The Dodgers held on for a 4-3 win, jumping out to a commanding 2-0 lead at Citizens Bank Park in the best-of-five series. The Phillies are firmly on the ropes as the action shifts to Dodger Stadium starting Wednesday.
The Dodgers’ mood after Game 2 was one of jubilation, a remarkable conclusion to an enthralling game. Roberts found Betts, third baseman Max Muncy, infielder Miguel Rojas and outfielder Kiké Hernández and recounted what they’d just done.
They’d escaped a disaster because of the trust Roberts put in Betts, the former MVP who made a seemingly impossible transition to shortstop at age 32.
“Somebody’s gotta do it,” Betts said. “I figured if there was ever a good time to make a decision and roll with it, that was the time.”
The Dodgers got that precious last out just as their makeshift bullpen needed it, and it took a strategy they hardly ever attempt.
“For me, that was our only chance, really, to win that game in that moment,” Roberts said.
The wheel play is not something the Dodgers practice in spring training. And even if it were, it’s not something a team would pull out all that often. The mechanics can be chaotic. One misstep can make an aggressive play into a game-breaking one.
The Phillies entered the ninth trailing 4-1 and quickly reminded the Dodgers why their bullpen concerns are so loud. The Phillies strung three consecutive hits off Blake Treinen, with Nick Castellanos lifting a soft double that cut the Dodgers’ lead to one and brought Vesia into the game. The new reliever didn’t know what was happening until the robotic PitchCom voice laid out the call.
Nearly all 45,653 fans inside Citizens Bank Park figured Bryson Stott would bunt. So the Dodgers executed the maneuver.
Betts stayed behind Castellanos as Vesia came set. As soon as Vesia’s motion brought him toward home plate, Betts broke in an all-out sprint with the single goal of beating Castellanos to third base. Freddie Freeman charged from first base and Muncy from third base to field the bunt. Stott was instructed to push it in Muncy’s direction. Muncy fielded the ball cleanly, turned and threw as Betts was reaching third base. The throw and tag beat Castellanos, who tumbled into Betts for the first out.
“I mean, everything was just perfect on that play,” Freeman said.
“They executed it really well,” Rojas said. “You can have the idea, but it comes down to execution.”
The Dodgers had already flashed the play in the sequence, as Vesia misfired on his first pitch. Rather than slash and swing away after spotting the play, Stott tried to get the ball down and deaden it, increasing the level of difficulty.
“They ran it as perfectly as you can,” Stott said. “They just did it exactly how they drew it up.”
Vesia still wobbled from there, giving up a single to pinch hitter Harrison Bader and getting a groundout before Roberts emerged again to get Roki Sasaki in for the final outs. The Dodgers’ bullpen woes have been grave enough that they have gotten just three outs from traditional relievers — all from Vesia — to jump out to this 2-0 series advantage.
Sasaki needed two pitches to get the final out, as Tommy Edman fired a bouncing throw that Freeman had to sprawl to grab to close out the night.
“My gray (hair) right here might be up to my sideburn now,” Freeman said. “That was a stressful inning.”
It would’ve been a catastrophic one if not for the first out.
Betts’ first time calling for the wheel play was also just his second time ever running it. The Dodgers clung to an eighth-inning lead on Aug. 13 against the Los Angeles Angels when Rojas, then playing second base, put the play on and reminded Betts of the mechanics of a play he’d never really run from that position. No amount of training this winter with infield coach Chris Woodward had prepared him for a spot like this, and Rojas explained the important specifics. The play worked then, as Christian Moore bunted in Freeman’s direction, and he got the out at third base with Betts at the bag just in time.
“It’s something that we don’t really have on the books, for the other teams to know that we run that play,” Rojas said.
That was on Betts’ mind in the ninth inning Monday night. His season turned around, he said recently, because he stopped thinking at shortstop and let his rigorous offseason work take care of itself.
“Mookie’s growth has been … incredible,” Roberts said.
Betts needed to react, not think. It helped that Roberts was open to ideas.
“He trusts his guys, man,” Betts said. “He just trusts his guys. We’ve been together for I don’t even know how many years. So we have an idea of what each other can do. We do a pretty good job of putting each other in good spots to be successful. … He trusts us. We did it.”
It saved them in Game 2, and it potentially saved the Dodgers from the cascading effects of losing such a game. Roberts believed in his players, who are one win away from the National League Championship Series.
Now, the wheels go up on their two planes back to Los Angeles.
“Doc trusts us as much as we trust Doc,” Muncy said. “It’s not an easy thing to gain. And so that’s why, in that moment when we started talking, Doc heard us talking, and right away he was on board with it. He didn’t question it. He didn’t have anything to add. He was just like, ‘All right, sounds great. Let’s do it.’ And we went out and executed it.”
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