Whicker: Dodgers' bullpen picks up phone and slack in Game 3 WS win over Jays

Right-hander Will Klein became an unlikely World Series hero for the Los Angeles Dodgers when he pitched four scoreless innings in relief and picked up the win in the 18-inning, Game 3 marathon against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday. Photo: MLB.com

October 28, 2025

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

Game 3 was like an orphan, or maybe an old CD player left in the yard, for scavengers.

Six baserunners were nabbed at second, third or home. The Blue Jays lost a run because home plate Mark Wegner, faced with calling either a ball or a strike on Daulton Varsho, decided to call a ballike or a strall or something in between, and Bo Bichette got picked off because he couldn’t tell.

Shohei Ohtani continued to gobble the record books by getting on base nine times, but four of those were courtesy of Toronto, which preferred to pitch to ex-MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and kept walking Ohtani on purpose. And it worked for a long time, from Monday into Tuesday, as Freeman himself left seven men on base. Then the Blue Jays unaccountably pulled Alejandro Kirk, whose bat and arm were rising above the muck all night, in favor of a pinch-runner. Another pinch-runner, Davis Schneider, never to be confused with Usain Bolt, got thrown out trying to score from first with two out, as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. loomed on deck.

So, Game 3 stumbled into extra innings and then walked proudly into the pantheon. It went 18 innings, tying the record for the longest World Series game set by the Dodgers and Red Sox in another Game 3 in 2018. It involved all but one position player and, at the end, witnessed Yoshinobu Yamamoto, warming up, barely 48 hours after he had gone nine innings in Game 2. It got a one-out cameo from Clayton Kershaw, perhaps the final pitch of his career.

It ended when Freeman finally provided the oomph to get a fastball over the fence, a 3-and-2 pitch by Brandon Little that won it, 6-5, and that made Freeman the first World Series player ever to strike a second walk-off homer. But as Freeman tried to decompress, he recognized who the real MVP of the night was, and it sure as hell wasn’t Jason Bateman. It was Will Klein, the least recognizable Dodger on the World Series roster, now the best kind of postseason hero, the one you never saw coming, from the one room in the house that needed FEMA assistance. The Dodger bullpen got 40 outs. Not in two months. In one night.

Klein pitched the last four innings. He struck out five and gave up one hit. He threw 72 pitches, more than any of the other nine Dodger pitchers (another World Series record) except starter Tyler Glasnow. He usually throws a few cut fastballs, but this time he was just delivering the mail, with a fastball averaging 98.8 mph, and a hard slider and almost nothing else. The Blue Jays, who pride themselves on making contact, were either too exhausted or confused to resist.

Freeman’s blast made Klein the winning pitcher and spared Dave Roberts the decision to actually pitch Yamamoto, who had volunteered. But then Klein, later on, said he could have danced all night.

“I was ready for another one,” he said, then laughed. “Maybe.”

It wasn’t just him. The Dodger bullpen has been one of L.A.’s insoluble civic problems lately, like traffic and housing and $4 gas. When pitching coach Mark Prior picked up the phone as Glasnow fell behind 4-2, a voice on the other end almost said, “Spam Risk.”

But here they came. Justin Wrobleski is on the roster because Alex Vesia is going through personal stress at home, and was honoured with a makeshift “51” on every Dodger cap.

Wrobleski gave up one hit, got five outs. Roki Sasaki, the new closer, got five outs but wasn’t asked for more, understandably. When he came out, the Blue Jays had a right to feel inevitable, and Eric Lauer was in the midst of a bobbing, weaving 4 2/3 innings of shutout pitching. But that only opened the door to maybe the best sustained bullpen performance of the season.

Emmett Sheehan put aside his rough playoff moments and got eight outs. Kershaw came in with the bases loaded and got Nathan Lukes to hit a slow grounder to second base, as his wife Ellen agonized upstairs. “She’s starter-ready, maybe not reliever-ready,” Kershaw said.

Then came Edgardo Henriquez, who was overwhelming for two perfect innings, Klein came along and was just as good. This made Roberts look like the alltime sandbagger, but not to Dodger fans who had seen the bullpen break things most of the season. Henriquez and Klein were activated because Michael Kopech still wasn’t ready to pitch, and Roberts had lost faith in Ben Casparius.

As the relievers finished their work and commiserated, Wrobleski noticed that the scoreboard had reset, to accommodate all the innings.

“I look up, and the innings I pitched are no longer up there,” he told The Athletic.

Klein’s innings remained. He’ll take that photo back to Bloomington, Ind. where he could always throw hard but couldn’t stay healthy. Klein went to Eastern Illinois, alma mater of Tony Romo, and got drafted in the fifth round by Kansas City. Then he was passed around like a old bicycle pump. KC to Oakland, Oakland to Seattle, Seattle to the Dodgers in exchange for Joe Jacques. He made 14 Dodger appearances, walked 10 and struck out 21. Most of his numbers have been abysmal, on all levels, with a lifetime WHIP of 1.624. But if you have a pitcher in your organization with a noisy arm, someone in the Dodgers’ vast mine of data scientists knows about him. In 281 pro outings, Klein has averaged 13 strikeouts per nine innings.

The clubs need not wait long to judge the collateral effects of Game 3. The Blue Jays lost George Springer to an apparent oblique injury, during a hard swing. It was bad enough that he left immediately. Their pitcher in Game 4 is Shane Bieber, who has retired 37 batters in three postseason starts. Ohtani is the Dodgers’ starter, which probably means he goes a maximum of six innings, and Roberts and Prior might get a busy signal if they call too early. But at least the Dodgers have shreds of evidence that the bullpen door is not really a gateway to hell.

In 2018 Max Muncy won Game 3 with an 18th-inning homer off Nathan Eovaldi, who was pitching his ninth inning and thus saved the Boston bullpen for the Games 4 and 5 victories that followed. Roberts removed Rich Hill from a Game 4 that he was dominating, and LA’s Series unraveled from there. Odds are that Betts won’t go 1-for-8 again, or that Will Smith won’t strike out four times again. But odds don’t mean much when the Dodger bullpen goes 13 1/3 innings and gives up one extra-base hit. Will Klein got his closeup Monday night, just a jog away from Sunset Boulevard itself. It may become a sequel.