The history books will forever show that 26-year-old Dodgers left-hander Alex Vesia made a grand total of eight pitches (five strikes) in Friday night’s 4-1 Dodgers win over the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. But it will also show that the soft-spoken Alpine, CA native and 17th-round draft pick in 2018 by the Miami Marlins out of California State University – East Bay continues to flat out dominate opposing hitters, getting Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber to line out to Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts, and getting Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto to groundout to Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner to successfully end the bottom of the seventh inning.

But even though Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had his 6′ 2″ / 209-pound hard-throwing lefty face only two batters, he later explained that there was a method to his (seemingly) madness.

“I thought all the guys came in, threw the baseball well,” Roberts said of Messrs. Yency Almonte, Vesia, Evan Phillips, Phil Bickford, and closer Craig Kimbrel, who pitched a combined four innings of relief after the stellar five-inning start by Dodgers left-hander Julio Urías. “It wasn’t really clean for Bickford (who allowed the lone Phillies run on back-to-back doubles by Schwarber and Realmuto with two outs in the bottom of the ninth), but I thought everyone else came in, and once we tacked on that last run, I wanted to stay away from Kimbrel. But once it got a little stressful, he did a nice job being efficient getting the save, getting us a win. But, yeah, I thought the guys threw the baseball well tonight.”

The method to Roberts’ (seemingly) madness was, of course, to keep his extremely efficient bullpen relatively fresh for the remaining three games against the NL East second-place Phillies.

“Mitchell (White) is going to start (on Saturday), he’ll start, and it’s kind of a three/45 inning exercise, and then we’ve got our guys all kind of available,” Roberts said, explaining his logic behind using his five relievers only briefly on Friday night. “Everyone’s available, and we’ll just kind of go from there.”

…and make no mistake about it, having “…everyone’s available” is going to play big in the nine games remaining in the Dodgers’ current 10-game road trip.

Play Ball!

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