Dodgers Interview: Dave Roberts on a Statement Win: Bullpen Swagger, Glasnow’s Role, and a Trust Tree in Full Bloom
SEATTLE — If the Dodgers were looking for a declarative sentence to end their penultimate night of the regular season, they found it in punchouts. Nine consecutive strikeouts to close a 5–3 win in Seattle was part punctuation, part proclamation—and to Dave Roberts, a glimpse of the October gear his club has been searching for.
“It was amazing,” Roberts said, beaming as he cataloged the late charge from his relievers. “Guys are starting to smell the postseason, and you can see the intensity and the focus. They played tonight like it was a postseason game. We got some good pitching performances. We’ve got one more regular season game, and we’re ready.”
The tone was equal parts satisfaction and resolve. For weeks, Roberts has pointed to the bullpen as the team’s variable—high ceiling, uneven results, the group most likely to determine how far the Dodgers go. Nights like this are the reason he kept the faith. Asked about Blake Treinen, who jump-started the strikeout parade with his sharpest outing in weeks, Roberts didn’t hesitate. “The last couple, two or three, I think he’s starting to get that real confidence back—that swagger,” he said. “I expect good things to happen every time he comes into a ballgame. He’s starting to reestablish that confidence in himself.”
Confidence, of course, cuts both ways: the manager’s in his players, and the players’ in themselves. Roberts has spent September drawing his postseason “trust tree,” a concept he referenced again when asked how quickly belief can form heading into October. “It can,” he said. “We’ve done nothing but talk about the postseason these last few weeks, and to see certain guys respond the way they have—that’s telling. It continues to build my trust in them. You look at the last few days, there are a lot of guys—the trust tree is growing. That’s a good thing for all of us. It creates options. And at the end of the day, nothing they’ve done matters outside of the recency and the confidence they have going into the postseason. It’s been a really good few days.”
If there was a subtext, it was that patience met payoff. “I’m kind of an eternal optimist,” Roberts admitted, noting that with bullpens you sometimes have to “take the long view.” But he didn’t confine praise to the mound. “Positionally, our at-bat quality with certain guys has really ramped up—Kiké being one of them. The starting pitching has been fantastic for the last couple of months. Now you see guys competing for an opportunity to be on the postseason roster and potentially getting innings. I like that fight. They’re leaving it all out there. That’s all I ask—don’t be afraid to fail, and leave everything you have on the field.”
Saturday’s script featured a pivotal pre-October rehearsal for Tyler Glasnow, who worked only 36 pitches across three scoreless innings before giving way to the bullpen. That brevity was by design, and it opens strategic doors. “It opens up him in the pen,” Roberts said. “We had a good conversation. He’s ready for whatever we need of him.” The Dodgers have intentionally “shortened up” certain arms—Glasnow and Emmet Sheehan among them—to optimize the roster for three high-leverage games next week. “The goal is to get our best 12 or 13 pitchers on the roster, and that’s our plan,” Roberts said. How likely is Glasnow to be on the Wild Card roster? “Pretty likely.”
As for role definition—long relief, fireman, or something in between—Roberts preferred flexibility. “I don’t know what happens, but whatever is needed, he’ll be ready,” he said. The manager made clear the guiding principle is simple: go with the best group, regardless of how those pieces looked in June. “Right now, where we’re at, we want to go with our best,” he said, circling back to the rationale for trimming workloads. “That’s kind of the reason why we shortened Emmet, shortened Tyler—because we feel they’re among our best 11 or 12 pitchers.”
The other superstar pitcher on everyone’s mind, Shohei Ohtani, had what Roberts jokingly described as a “spa day,” even as Ohtani slipped in a bullpen session before the game. “I knew he was going to throw a bullpen today,” Roberts said with a grin. “I don’t know if that was [a sign of anything]. He could do whatever he wanted today.” Translation: the club is keeping Ohtani’s exact usage close to the vest, but nothing about his routine raised a red flag.
In the bigger picture, this was the kind of night that compresses a month of talking points into one clean message. The bullpen finished with authority. A lineup featuring a resurgent Kiké Hernández produced the timely swing. Glasnow executed the tune-up without stress and now offers the Dodgers another power arm in the middle innings, should they choose to deploy him there. And Roberts, who has been transparent about evaluating roles on the fly, left the Pacific Northwest sounding like a manager who’s found his October 25-man (or rather, 26-man) rhythm.
The strikeouts will grab the headlines, but it’s the sequencing that matters most. The Dodgers didn’t just miss bats—they did it in order, with purpose, and with command of the zone. That’s the postseason formula: shorten the game by stacking precise, high-octane pockets. On Saturday, Roberts saw that blueprint executed to the final out. “We got some good pitching performances,” he said. “We’ve got one more regular season game, and we’re ready.”
Ready is the point. Ready to leverage a deeper “trust tree.” Ready to ride newfound bullpen swagger. Ready to use Glasnow wherever the leverage spikes. After a month spent testing, trimming, and tuning, Roberts finally sounded like a man who could look at his roster and say, without hedging, that the Dodgers can win the kinds of games October always demands.
One more rehearsal on Sunday. Then the lights get brighter, the innings get shorter, and the strikeouts matter even more. If Saturday was a preview, the Dodgers’ closing act is in good hands.
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