Phillies

The Phillies Will Beat the Dodgers if They Can Do One Obvious Thing in the NLDS

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Oct 2nd, 2025 · 11:59 AM EDT

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Philadelphia Phillies vs. Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2025 National League Division Series.

Awesome. This is what October baseball is all about. The defending champs come to Philly for a slugfest between high-spending, heavyweight teams with a trip to the NLCS on the line. The Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani going against Cristopher Sanchez in Game 1. If that doesn’t get your blood pumping, then you may have a circulation problem.

There’s an identifiable path to beating the Dodgers, and that’s by getting to their bullpen. In the Wild Card sweep of the Reds, five of Cincy’s nine runs were scored off relievers. Alex Vesia and Edgardo Henriquez gave up three in game one and Emmet Sheehan gave up a pair of runs in the eighth inning of game two. The Dodgers used Roki Sasaki as a Game 2 closer, and Sheehan had been a starter for most of the year, which shifts the equation, but here’s how their bullpen performed in the regular season:

• 4.19 ERA (10th highest)
• .727 opponent OPS (8th highest)
• 1.33 WHIP (tied 9th highest)
• 79 home runs conceded (9th most)
• 27 blown saves (tied 7th most)
• 269 walks (tied sixth most)

Bottom ten in most of those categories. Similar to the Phillies over the course of a full season with the Jordan Romano numbers included.

Individually, Tanner Scott and Blake Treinen finished with ERAs above 4.0 while Justin Wrobleski had a 3.23 and Vesia a 3.02. Henriquez finished with a 2.37 ERA in 19 innings and Jack Dreyer a 2.51. Notable is that from August 1st through the end of the regular season, the Dodgers were tied with the D Backs for 11 blown saves, which was most in Major League Baseball. The ERA increased to 4.34 but they actually did well in keeping inherited runners from scoring while striking out a lot of batters.

As mentioned a few days ago in our stats story, this Phillies team hammered relief pitching in 2025:

The Phils abused relief pitching in 2025, finishing first in MLB with a .264 batting average, plus a .345 on-base percentage, and .438 slugging percentage. That was good for a .787 OPS, which was #1 overall, ahead of the Yankees, Dodgers, Blue Jays, and, surprisingly, the Marlins in 5th.

More specifically, the Phillies clubbed 1.52 home runs per nine innings against relief pitching, which was 1st. They struck out only 8.29 times per nine innings, which was 7th best. And they mustered 213 extra-base hits, which was 4th. Their strikeout number against relievers was bottom ten and their walk number was inside the top 15. They scored 363 runs against relievers.

This was on display when the Phils took 2 of 3 from the Dodgers in LA in mid-September, when Rob Thomson’s group hit Vesia, Wrobleski, Dreyer, Treinen, and Henriquez for 12 runs in those two wins.

Of course, this is a Dodgers team that rakes, and finished the regular season with 5.09 runs per game, which was second behind only the Yankees. They had a team OPS of 7.68 and clubbed 244 home runs. No team is shutting them down entirely.

So it’s really just a matter of which club can chase the starting pitching and get to the other team’s bullpen first. But isn’t that always the case when it comes to playoff baseball?