Dodgers unable to finish sweep, so all eyes turn to Jack Flaherty for Game 5

NEW YORK — At a quarter past four on Tuesday afternoon, Jack Flaherty embraced a somewhat awkward assignment. Flaherty is the man the Los Angeles Dodgers assigned to pitch a not-yet-guaranteed Game 5 with LA on the brink of sweeping this World Series, making Flaherty’s pregame press conference one about a start that remained hypothetical.

“My job is to get ready for tomorrow,” Flaherty told a room full of reporters. “I’ve got to focus on what I have to do to get ready for tomorrow and root for these guys tonight. I’ve got to keep my mindset right there.”

Flaherty is used to limbo. In July, he sat in the Detroit Tigers’ clubhouse for four hours awaiting a decision on his trade deadline fate. He was almost a New York Yankee before concerns about his back scuttled a deal. The Dodgers acquired him instead, and on Wednesday night he pitches at Yankee Stadium with a chance to secure a championship.

“I’m just worried about getting one more,” Flaherty said. “We know we have to continue to play really good baseball to get it done because those guys are not going to go away quietly.

The Yankees didn’t. “If necessary” was the answer Tuesday night as the Yankees roared to life for an 11-4 victory. Anthony Volpe’s third-inning grand slam set the wheels in motion for Flaherty to start with the Dodgers up 3-1.

Mookie Betts reacts after striking out in the seventh inning as the Dodgers went quiet against the Yankees bullpen. (Brad Penner/Imagn Images)

The Dodgers planned a bullpen play for a potential clincher in Game 4. They’ve run this playbook before, with manager Dave Roberts twice steering their top arm away from a deficit during the National League Championship Series. Optics be damned, the Dodgers won the ensuing game both times, benefiting each from having the full complement of relievers at their disposal.

Winning with Tuesday’s plan would require multiple innings each from Ben Casparius and Landon Knack, two rookies who at the beginning of the year figured to factor more into the Dodgers’ 2025 Cactus League plans than a potential World Series clincher. Casparius became the second pitcher ever to make his first major league start in a World Series. Knack was called to his longest outing for a month. The two men combined to allow two runs over six innings.

“The big thing was just saving the chicks out there,” Knack said, echoing the words of Brent Honeywell after the Dodgers’ latest attempt to save their top arm from the wreckage of a game.

It was what happened between Casparius and Knack that set Roberts’ tenor for the evening. He entrusted an early 2-1 lead and the heart of the Yankees order to Daniel Hudson. The veteran has bounced between roles this summer, in part because of his propensity for allowing fly balls and with them, home runs. But he represented a challenge against right-handed sluggers Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton without Roberts needing to use one of his upper arms early and making them unavailable for a potential Game 5. Facing Juan Soto served as a treasure. Hudson struck him out by getting the prolific slugger to wave over a slider.

Hudson’s command quickly eroded from there. He hit Judge with a fastball on the first pitch. Jazz Chisholm Jr. lined a first-pitch fastball for a single. Hudson also hit Stanton, though Stanton swung through the pitch before drawing a walk to load the bases.

“He was kind of all over the place,” catcher Will Smith said. “It’s unlike Huddy.”

“I just couldn’t stop the snowball from getting bigger,” Hudson said.

Hudson got a pop-up to get inside and escape with the Dodgers’ lead intact, but his first slider to Volpe spun enticingly across the middle of the plate. It didn’t move. Volpe laced it into the seats in left field to make it 5-2 and give the Yankees their first lead since Game 1.

“Just one of those things that just pops out of your hand and you have that moment, ‘Oh no’ gut feeling,” Hudson said.

Hudson would be the only non-bulk reliever the Dodgers would field. Knack, not one of the Dodgers’ leverage relievers, warmed up as the inning unfolded.

“I’m not going to get anybody in the third inning to get Volpe where he just popped a guy … that was his inning,” Roberts said.

It wouldn’t have mattered. A lineup that wore down the Mets bullpen has yet to do the same in the Bronx as they did in Queens, despite several appearances. The Yankees bullpen has allowed just one run since Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1. The Dodgers never got closer than within a run after tying the game. So Roberts didn’t press the issue.

“We had a lot of chances to win that ballgame tonight,” Smith said.

The dam broke in the eighth as the Yankees scored five times to put the game out of reach.

“We were pushy,” said Freeman, whose two-run homer gave the Dodgers a first-inning lead and set a World Series record for hitting a home run in six consecutive games (dated to 2021). “We know what’s at stake. We had a chance to win the World Series tonight and we’re all pretty urgent and we want to do it as fast as we can. We’ll do the same thing tomorrow.”

The Dodgers will do so against the reigning American League Cy Young winner, Gerrit Cole. The Dodgers once heavily pursued the Southern California native as a free agent, offering $300 million (reportedly with waivers) years before they would do the same for Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who they guaranteed $1 million more than the $324 million Cole would get from the Yankees . Cole pitched six innings of one-run ball in Game 1.

“It’s always nice to face someone you faced a few days ago,” Freeman said. “But he’s still one of the best pitchers in the game. It’s not going to be easy.”

That will put the onus back on the Dodgers’ Game 4 approach that pays dividends the following night. Flaherty will pitch Wednesday on regular rest with a chance to pitch a series, just as he did when the Mets bombarded him 12 days prior. He’ll have the Dodgers’ full arsenal of relievers behind him with a chance to secure a celebration and stifle a Yankees pursuit of something unprecedented in overcoming a 3-0 deficit in the World Series.

“Hopefully Jack calms them down and we score more runs than them,” Freeman said.

(Top photo: Steph Chambers/Getty Images)