Dodgers Interview: Roberts Hints at Lineup Changes in Wake of Game 4 Defeat
LOS ANGELES — After the marathon of Game 3 and the grind of Game 4, Dave Roberts sounded like a manager who might be ready for some change. He gave Toronto their due. He gave his own club a candid assessment. And he put a little intrigue on tomorrow’s lineup card with Shohei’s start in the rear-view and Blake Snell up next.
“We knew it was going to be a great series,” Roberts said. “This team is talented. They’re resilient,” he added of the Blue Jays. “They came back fighting.” He walked through Game 4’s shape in plain terms: “They caught an early lead and Bieber does what he does, used the cutter, spun us, minimized damage, limited traffic, and we really didn’t get a whole lot of good swings.” Across the field, Roberts saw pressure baseball from Toronto: “You see these guys grinding and using the whole field and putting some hits together. Obviously the homer by Vlad [Guerrero], and that seventh inning they built an inning right there and we just didn’t have an answer.”
Was there any hangover from the 18-inning epic? Roberts refused the easy out. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’ve got to give credit to [Shane] Bieber for making pitches, getting ahead.” He noted both clubs lived through the same long night. “I felt like we were prepared tonight. Guys came in fresh, and starting off with the play from Kik in left field, I thought we had some good kind of energy early and then it just kind of petered out a little bit.”
Zooming out on the whole October picture, he was frank with his assessment of the offense. “We haven’t found our rhythm,” Roberts said. “It sort of draws dead at certain parts of the lineup in different parts, different innings, different games.” The plan for the quick turnaround came out in the next breath: “My hope is we regroup tomorrow, gather the information we had from [Trey] Yesavage, keep him in the hitting zone, understand what that split does, which is certainly helpful, and when we get the fastball, really get on it.”
Shohei Ohtani’s night, and the accumulated miles on his legs after reaching base nine times the game before, came up quickly. “Mark asked him in the sixth inning how much more he had. He said he had three more innings,” Roberts said. “He’s very self-aware of his body. I thought the sixth inning was one of his best innings, and where he was at, the way the ball was coming out, I felt good.” Then it turned. “It just kind of happened right there where [Daulton] Varsho gets a base hit and [Ernie] Clement hits a ball in the gap. I felt we needed to find a way to get a punch out and tried to get [Anthony] Banda on three lefties. Obviously they hit [Ty] France there at the top for [Nathan] Lukes, but he gave us a good effort. He really did.”
The room returned to a running topic of the week: stick with the familiar lineup or tinker when the calendar is thin. Roberts didn’t dodge it. “I think so,” he said. “I’m going to think long and hard, and it might look a little bit different tomorrow.”
Ohtani’s bar is sky-high, and someone asked if nights that fall short of spectacular feel strange after what he just did at Dodger Stadium. “He’s mortal,” Roberts said, then explained what he saw. “There’s a lot of energy obviously on the pitching exerted, but they made good pitches. There were some backdoor cutters, some breaking balls, crowding him a little bit. I thought his intent tonight at the plate was good, but you look back at those at-bats, they made good pitches on him. They really did.” Is it unfair to expect the extraordinary from him every night? “I know he doesn’t see it as pressure,” Roberts said. “I would say that’s what he expects from himself. It’s part of being a fan and seeing great things from great players. So every time he steps up I expect great things to happen, and maybe unfairly.”
Late-game defense and outfield alignment were also on the table after Tommy Edman finished in center field during the 18-inning win. Roberts ran through the choices ahead. “I’ve got to make a decision. Am I going to play Andy [Pages]? Am I going to play [Alex] Call? Or am I going to play Miggy Ro?” He added that he’s “trying to think through all that stuff and net it out and see what gives us the best chance tomorrow,” and he made a point to defend Andy Pages’ fight. “I did think that Andy still took some good at-bats. He’s having a hard time having anything to show for it, but the defense is still good and I still feel the fight, the compete. When he gets good pitches, he’s just got to find a way to finish it. But I’m not there yet.”
The manager even let everyone in on how close things came to the edge in Game 3. “If Roki or if Yamamoto couldn’t have taken the ball in the nineteenth, it was probably going to be Miguel Rojas,” he said. “Blake Snell threw a bullpen earlier yesterday and Shohei dealing with the cramps last night wasn’t going to pitch. It was one of those, it was either Yamamoto or Miguel Rojas in a World Series game.”
There was a lighter moment about recovery, too. “Everyone’s certainly different,” Roberts said of coming down from the high of Game 3. “I took a little sleep aid to get off my high and woke up with clarity, freshness, and excited to go tonight.”
He did not waver on one rules question. Asked about the idea of a postseason ghost runner after living through 18 innings, he shook it off. “No,” Roberts said. “It’s baseball in its truest form. Part of winning a seven-game series is if there are games like that, then to have to go through the battle of attrition with pitching. It’s hard once you get into extra innings to not play for one swing, which you saw both teams certainly doing. That’s a strategy in itself. We had our chances and couldn’t come through. I like the way it is.”
Through it all, the theme was belief in the room, with a practical edge about adjustments. “The lessons are you’ve got to just believe in your players,” Roberts said. “Hope that they’re prepared and going to perform well in big spots. You don’t know what you don’t until you know, and Henriquez, Wrobleski, Will Klein, Will Smith catching eighteen innings, there’s a lot of things that until guys get in the fire, you don’t know about a guy.” He circled back to tomorrow’s card, and left it there. “I’m going to think long and hard,” Roberts said. “It might look a little bit different tomorrow.”
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