Dodgers' Dave Roberts Explains Controversial Pitching Decisions in NLCS Game 2 Loss

The Los Angeles Dodgers are two games away from being eliminated at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.

With right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto having pitched in Game 2, the current state of affairs is far from where fans expected the Dodgers to be as the series heads back to LA. The 2025 World Series MVP lasted just 2.2 innings on Monday in an uncharacteristic one-strikeout performance, but there was still tons of baseball to be played after his exit.

After left-hander Alex Vesia finished off the third inning with four pitches, one of last year's October standouts in Roki Sasaki trotted out to the mound to face the Brewers in the fourth.

Sasaki's October success last season, especially in multi-inning spots, is partially why manager Dave Roberts was in a position to explain himself for only having Sasaki out to throw one frame.

The man who opened up the bottom of the fifth inning for LA, southpaw Kris Bubic, recorded just two outs on 22 pitches, one of which was turned into a solo home run for Brewers catcher William Contreras to tie the game.

Despite Sasaki's resume, Roberts went with the left-hander, but revealed he was looking for far more than two outs from the former All-Star.

"To me, you're trying to cover six-plus innings," Roberts said. "For me, I felt Bubic had four out of five left-handed hitters, and that's a perfect spot for him. I knew they weren't going to for him, and you got Roki for an inning, and then you still have a guy — in my opinion, you've got a great spot for Bubic. Tries to go with the fastball up to Contreras and then hits a homer.

"That's a decision I made, and we just didn't — again, that's his lane to be able to go out there and throw up a zero."

After Bubic walked a batter to leave a man on first and second, Brock Stewart came in to end the inning. Instead of a fresh arm coming in for the bottom of the sixth, Stewart remained in the game. Three batters later, Contreras was back up to bat with a tie game, two on and one out.

Contreras hit the first pitch he saw 76.9 mph into the outfield grass to give his team the lead and Stewart was removed from the contest. Tanner Scott entered the game after him and promptly struck out the next two batters to get out of the inning.

Roberts was asked about why Stewart was in instead of Scott entering against an already hot Contreras.

"It just felt like trying to put Contreras on the ground," Roberts said. "Contreras didn't hit the ball hard. He flared it out to left field, drove in a run, and that's what they do."

Roberts continued to point out the differences between the kind of at-bats that the Brewers' brand is a byproduct of.

"I think for me just in total they saw a ton more pitches than we did," Roberts said. "They had much better at-bats than we did across the board top to bottom, and then they put the ball in play, created havoc, and that's what they do, and we didn't do that.

"That's the difference in the game. I think that there's certainly a lot to unpack, but they did what needed to do tonight."

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