Dodgers Insider Says LA Needs to Address the Ninth-Inning Bullpen Situation

After the Dodgers lost the NLDS to the Padres, everyone in Los Angeles has been searching for answers about what’s happened and how to keep it from happening again.

That includes Petros & Money, who had insider David Vassegh on their AM570 radio show on Monday to talk about the shockingly premature end to the L.A. baseball season.

Vassegh talked about some of the questions ahead for the Dodgers, including figuring out their ninth-inning plans in the bullpen.

"And also, what are they going to do to address their closer? Craig Kimbrel will not be back and the Dodgers removed him from that role at the end of the year.

"And you kind of saw the difference between the Padres and Dodgers where they could work backwards and shorten the game and the Dodgers were counting on multiple pitchers and that's always a roll of the dice because very few times are five or six pitchers on their game all on the same night."

Is this just a case of what Andrew Friedman would call an after-the-fact analysis? Well, let's see what Vassegh said on a different AM570 show, Roggin & Rodney, just six weeks ago when he was asked if Kimbrel would remain the Dodgers' closer:

“For the regular season. But, when we get into October, it’s going to be a combination of different pitchers to get the final nine outs. Depending on match ups. I can see Evan Phillips getting the final three outs. I can see Alex Vesia getting the final out. I can even see if the Dodgers decide on deploying Dustin May out of the bullpen and him kinda filling the role that Julio Urias did at times in 2020.”

It remains to be seen whether the Dodgers can really pull off the closer-by-committee, and they might go with a dedicated closer next year. But the 2022 NLDS had a lot more lessons about starters going deeper in games and how much one bad inning can hurt than about the need for a lockdown ninth-inning guy.