Dodgers Interview: Klein Reflects on a Life-Changing Week of Baseball

LOS ANGELES — World Series weeks in Los Angeles move fast. One minute a pitcher is throwing in Arizona in front of a few scouts and coaches. Ten days later he’s on a float in downtown LA and fans are calling him a Dodger legend. When the confetti had finally settled, we caught up with Will Klein, still kind of blinking at how quickly his life turned. He was relaxed, grateful, and very clear about one thing: that marathon relief outing in Game 3 was not going to get away from him.

“It’s been a complete 180 from where I was two weeks ago,” Klein told us at a recent meet-and-greet appearance at the Shops at Montebello. “I was just sitting at home in Arizona and then I get on the roster and then everything that happened with Game 3 on, my life just completely flipped around. It’s been so great having the support from everyone in Los Angeles and getting to bring them home a World Series has just been unbelievable.”

We asked him to go back to that long, weird, tense Game 3 in Los Angeles. The one that would not end, the one that needed someone to just take the ball and refuse to hand it back.

“We were all just waiting to hear our names called,” he said. “I had thrown in Game 1 and it kind of got my feet wet, so I was nervous then. That helped me calm down a little bit. But as the game goes on and it just keeps going and going, you get more anxious watching your team than you are about pitching.”

Guys kept going. Edgardo Henriquez went in. Klein looked around and realized the bullpen cupboard was empty.

“Henriquez went out there and I was like, well, I’m the last one left,” he said. “If we don’t win here, I’ve got to finish the thing. I heard my name and I was like, ‘Okay, if we don’t walk it off here, I’ve got to lock it in.’ We had some traffic so I thought maybe we do it. But we got that third out and I just went out there like, ‘I’ve got to finish this. I’m not going to let us lose.’ Every time I came back in it was the same thing. Keep going. Don’t let the team down. We’re not going to lose this game.”

He didn’t just cover an inning. He threw a career-high 72 pitches out of the bullpen in a World Series home game. Nobody does that anymore. Klein said there was a short check-in, but he made it easy for the Dodgers’ staff.

“Either after the second or third inning, [Connor] McGuiness, our assistant pitching coach, came and asked how many I was good for,” Klein said. “I told him, ‘As many as you guys need.’ I knew I was the last one. I was not going to make any of our starters try to do what Yoshi almost did and then eventually did in Game 7. I just wanted to keep everyone healthy and not have to go in there. So every time I came back in, that’s what they kept saying, ‘Keep going.’ Out there I knew I was the last one. Even if you start to feel tired, you have to find that extra gear.”

By then, the game had turned into a battle of attrition. Many of the Blue Jays best hitters were already pulled from the game for pinch runners. Everybody was worn down. That was part of why it mattered to him so much. “We were 17, 18 innings in and everyone’s tired,” he said. “So it’s kind of like, who is stronger mentally and who can find that will to win.”

What makes his story even better for Dodgers fans is how close he was to not even being here. Earlier in the year, Seattle DFA’d him. He went from thinking he might be called up to being told he was off the roster.

“I was super depressed after getting DFA’d,” Klein said. “I had been trending better. It wasn’t a great start to the year for me. I figured something out and it was going well. Then I wake up to a phone call at 9 a.m. on a Saturday and I think maybe something happened and I’m going up. I answer and it’s, ‘Hey, we’re going to DFA you.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, well, that’s not it.’ You get really down.”

A few hours later the Dodgers called.

“Later that night I get a phone call from the Dodgers saying, ‘Hey, we’re trading for you,’” he said. “I was like, ‘Well, this is significantly better than anything I’ve gone through so far.’ To feel wanted by a team with that caliber really instills some confidence. They know what they’re doing. It was a complete 180 in 12 hours. I couldn’t have been more excited to come here and everything that’s happened since has been unbelievable.”

Once he arrived, the plan was simple. The Dodgers liked the raw pieces. They just wanted to tune it.

“A lot of it was based around they liked my fastball shape and my curveball,” Klein said. “My slider hadn’t been performing or had been a little inconsistent, so we scrapped the slider I was throwing. We focused more on fastball, curveball and cutters to lefties. That really helped me get more comfortable with my curveball. I was basically pitching fastball, curveball and cutter for the first couple weeks here.”

Then they went to work on right-handers.

“We went through it and were like, ‘All right, we’re struggling a little more with righties,’” he said. “McGuiness helped me add a new sweeper. We basically turned my curveball sideways. I never thought I could throw a sweeper and they were like, ‘If you turn your curveball sideways and seam-shift it, you can make one.’ I threw a couple and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can throw a 90 mile per hour sweeper now.’ That’s sick.”

He lit up talking about Mark Prior, Connor McGuiness and Josh Bard.

“Prior and McGuiness and Bard are just wizards,” Klein said. “The confidence they have in you instills confidence in yourself. You see it in other guys. You get into that with yourself. The mantra of getting that first guy and getting ahead, you see it in practice, then you do it in a game, then it builds and builds. The attitude and culture we have with the pitching staff really helps.”

That culture is part pitching lab and part family. When the conversation turned to Alex Vesia and what he has been going through away from the field, Klein’s voice softened.

“He means everything,” he said. “You kind of see it with how it affected everybody. Being able to get that done for him means a lot with what they’re going through. He was one of the leaders in the bullpen. Losing him for that series was tough. I’m just glad he got to see that and that we got to do that for him. We miss him and hopefully he sees what we did for him.”

Before we wrapped, we had to ask about what he saw in Game 7, watching Yamamoto throw a complete game in Toronto and watching Miguel Rojas and Will Smith flip the stadium.

“Yamamoto is the most insane pitcher I’ve ever seen in my life,” Klein said. “You can’t count us out ever. We were down 3–2 going back to Toronto and none of us were like, ‘This is over.’ It was, ‘All we’ve got to do is win one game.’ Then we won one game and it was, ‘All we’ve got to do is win another one.’ Even when we were down 4–2, you just know something’s going to happen.”

Will Klein came to the Dodgers in the middle of a tough year. He left October as the guy who saved the bullpen in the longest night of the series. “I appreciate it,” he said as we wrapped. “Forever Dodgers champion. Dodgers hero. Dodgers lore.”

Have you subscribed to the Bleed Los Podcast YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows & promotions, and stay up to date on all Dodgers news and rumors!