Dodgers Interview: Doc meets with the media after “wild” opener with Giants
LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers opened the series against the Giants with a one-run win that felt like it required every tool in Dave Roberts’ kit: patience with a wobbly strike zone, a quick hook at the right moments, and a bullpen carousel that finally clicked. Afterward, Roberts framed the night around two themes—Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s competitiveness and a relief corps trying to re-earn its swagger.
On Yamamoto, Roberts praised the result while acknowledging the mess underneath. “He found ways to make pitches when he needed to,” Roberts said of the five-and-a-third scoreless innings that included six walks and one hit. “If you can poke any holes in Yoshi this year, it’s sometimes he gets too fine. Works behind, pitch count gets up, but he has a great ability to compete and make pitches when he needed to—and that’s what he did tonight.” The manager’s point was less about aesthetics than survival: Yamamoto’s command wavered, but when the game pivoted with runners on, he executed.
The bullpen story has been a roller coaster for weeks, and Roberts didn’t shy from the stakes or the standards. He spotlighted Alex Vesia and Anthony Banda for stacking clean frames. “If you look at what Alex has done essentially all year, he’s very confident,” Roberts said. “I thought Blake [Treinen] made some good pitches and he’s trending—and we’re going to need him. And Bond—Anthony Banda—is doing a heck of a job. Very efficient. This was three out of four tonight, so we pushed him a little because we needed to, but for him to go out there and do what he did was big.” That sequence—Banda’s crisp eighth into Vesia’s three-up, three-down ninth—felt like the template Roberts wants to bottle for October.
Not everyone is in the circle of trust right now, and Roberts was candid about Michael Kopech’s struggles. “I love Kopi. I know he’s doing everything he can,” Roberts said when asked how long the team can keep giving opportunities while he searches for the zone. “But you’ve got to win games and give your defense a chance to make plays. The strike throwing has been difficult and inconsistent.” In the seventh, when the game began to tilt, Roberts turned to Treinen rather than let Kopech try to pitch his way out of it. “At that point in the game, you’ve got to go with somebody you know can throw the ball to the plate and potentially get guys out,” he explained. The subtext was loud: auditions are giving way to outcomes.
Treinen rewarded that faith by walking in a run, then punching out Willy Adames and Matt Chapman to strand the bases loaded—exactly the kind of micro-battle Roberts believes can reset a veteran’s season. “It is [a building block],” he said. “Blake is like Tanner [Scott] in the sense of such a high ceiling. With Blake’s track record, we need him. He’s in the circle of trust, and he’s got to find ways to regain the confidence, which I feel he has and is doing. Getting out of that jam was a big confidence boost.”
Zooming out to the group, Roberts defined the next two weeks with unusual bluntness. “Right where we’re at, we’ve seen enough of a sample of guys that we’ve got to go with the most trusted guys right now,” he said. And as for postseason bullpen hierarchies? Don’t expect rigid labels. “It’s for spots,” Roberts said. “Because in the postseason there are no roles—they’re all leverage, and it’s for spots.”
There was also some forward-looking intrigue from Oklahoma City: Roki Sasaki made his first relief appearance and breezed through a scoreless inning. Roberts painted the experiment as both player-driven and potentially consequential. “To his credit, he’s open to doing whatever he can to help the 2025 Dodgers,” Roberts said. “He did something he’s never done—pitched out of the bullpen—and from what I hear, he was fantastic. He’ll pitch again on Sunday, and once he gets through Sunday, we’ll make a decision on the following week.” Could there be enough time for Sasaki to show he belongs on a postseason roster as a reliever? “I do [think so],” Roberts said. “The first part was him agreeing to go to the pen. The next part is he’s got to perform. Tonight he performed. Let’s see it again on Sunday, and then it puts the onus on the organization to make a decision.”
Amid the tactical talk came a question about whether Clayton Kershaw’s retirement announcement can serve as an emotional accelerant down the stretch. Roberts pushed back on making it a slogan. “That’s not what Clayton would want anyway,” he said. “He wants to help this team in any capacity win the World Series in ’25, but it’s bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than Clayton. It’s for the organization. It’s for the fans. It’s for everyone in that clubhouse. That’s what it’s about. It’s just bigger than one person.”
Finally, the standings. For the first time in a bit, the Dodgers won while the Padres lost, a tiny but satisfying bit of daylight in the division race. Roberts allowed himself a grin. “I can’t remember the last time we won and they lost,” he said. “To get a little bit of separation—it was good.”
In one game you could see the map Roberts is drawing for September and beyond: ride Yamamoto’s competitiveness, lean hard on the relievers who are executing (Vesia, Banda, a re-centering Treinen), shorten the audition window for anyone fighting the strike zone, and keep an open lane for a wild card like Sasaki. The roles can wait. The leverage is already here.
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