The Los Angeles Dodgers won Game 3 of the World Series on Monday in 18 innings, but the outcome could have been a lot different for them had Freddie Freeman not hit his timely walk-off home run.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admitted Tuesday that the team may have had to send out a position player to face the Toronto Blue Jays had they reached the 19th inning. The team sent Yoshinobu Yamamoto out to warm up just two days after he threw a 105-pitch complete game in Game 2, and it was no certainty that he would feel good enough to come into the game.
Had Yamamoto not been an option, Roberts said infielder Miguel Rojas would have been lined up to face the bottom third of the Blue Jays’ lineup.
The Dodgers used ten pitchers to get through 18 innings on Tuesday. Four of those pitchers only recorded one out, be it because of matchups or struggles. Roberts likely would have handled some of those pitchers differently had he known the game would go as long as it did, but nobody prepares for an 18 inning contest.
The Blue Jays were prepared to use scheduled Game 4 starter Shane Bieber had the game continued. The Dodgers had no such luxury, as there was no way they were going to put Shohei Ohtani, their Game 4 starter, on the mound at that point.
Rojas has been used as an emergency pitcher in blowouts before. He actually has eight career pitching appearances, with nine runs allowed in as many innings. He has actually made four scoreless appearances in his career, but needless to say, there is an enormous difference between eating an inning in a blowout and pitching in a tie game in the World Series.
Seeing a World Series game come down to position players on the mound might have been amusing, and a number of fans actually wanted to see it. It also would have been a strange and brutal way for a classic World Series game to end. Some fans will disagree, but Freeman probably hit that home run at the right time.
