Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts still stands behind bullpen decisions made in Game 4 of World Series

Dave Roberts has gotten a lot out of the healthy pitchers he has available this month, but there have been moments when the Los Angeles Dodgers skipper has looked at the ones he doesn’t have available and wished things could be different.

“A little bit,” Roberts said Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. “But I try to keep it to a small group of people and make sure the players don’t hear that. It’s crazy. Our roster is constructed so well, so deep. We’ve been on teams where it’s the best teams we had in the optimum situations and we didn’t win the last game of the season. So this is a very different team, a very close-knit team, a very talented team.”

The Dodgers made it to the World Series with a skeleton crew of pitchers and are especially depleted when it comes to the starting rotation. This is why the team has had to throw bullpen games four times in the postseason and why their 3-1 series lead on the Yankees feels a little tenuous. The bullpen couldn’t contain the Yankees’ bats in Game 4 on Tuesday night, and despite being down only two runs in the middle of the game, Roberts still opted against using his high-leverage relievers.

Some say he punted the game by using right-hander Brent Honeywell in the eighth inning. Roberts would probably say he protected his top arms and saved them for Game 5. It was a risky decision that he defended by saying he had to know his lineup was going to score more runs.

Clearly, he didn’t think they would. The Dodgers have managed only one run off the New York ‘pen since Game 1.

“I think we’ve done a really nice job with the starters, but unfortunately, with the ‘pen, we’re certainly not having the best at-bats,” Roberts said. “I think that there’s a lot of 3-2 chasing. There’s a lot of [two-strike counts] pitcher behind, spin, chase that we could get more count leverage. I don’t know the reason behind it, but typically we are much better, certainly seeing arms out of the pen we’re better.”

Chasing pitches out of the zone isn’t something the Dodgers were doing against the Mets in the last round of the playoffs or the Padres in the round before that. Their patient approach helped them come back in Game 1 against the Yankees at Dodger Stadium.

They struck out only four times in Game 1, but eight times in Game 4, contributing to the 11-4 loss.

“I would say we’re human beings,” said outfielder Mookie Betts. “We’re not machines up there. So we had a bad game and that’s part of it.”

The Dodgers had a chance to eliminate the Yankees but they fell short. That win for the Bronx Bombers gave them some hope. If the series goes any further, the decision to protect those leverage relievers will be looked at as a reason why.

Roberts and his New York counterpart, Aaron Boone, are quite possibly the most scrutinized and most critiqued managers in baseball. There are reasons for that, both geographical and otherwise.

New York has an illustrious baseball history and a fanbase that watched the Yankees become a dynasty in the 1990s. They remember the moves Joe Torre and Buck Showalter used to make and see different ones made by Boone. It’s a fanbase that loves nostalgia more than almost any other has been conditioned to expect nothing less than a dynasty.

Southern California is a baseball hotbed. The amount of fans that played at a high level, be it on scout teams, in college or even in the minor leagues, it’s an educated fanbase that understands the inner workings of the game. It’s much like how Canadians regard NHL coaches. They all played hockey, they’re going to know why certain moves are made and want to see different ones.

But both of these managers are capable of handling the blowback. They didn’t get this far by second-guessing their in-game substitutions and pitching changes. They have some of the top analytical minds in baseball helping to guide their decisions and they stand behind them, right or wrong.

Roberts stands behind his decision to save Alex Vesia, Ryan Brasier, Blake Treinen and his lone left-handed reliever Anthony Banda for Game 5.

Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Gavin Stone and Emmet Sheehan aren’t walking through the door anytime soon to save the Dodgers. The only thing they can do is save themselves by closing out the Yankees. Roberts is confident his pitchers will be able to prevail.

“We have guys that I feel very confident that can get 27 outs, that can prevent runs, and I feel we can score more than them,” he said. “So that’s kind of what it comes down to. But I don’t let my mind go there too far because, yeah, to have Clayton, Glasnow, May, Emmet Sheehan, all those guys, it would be fun. It would be great.”