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NEW YORK — It had been 1,109 days since Walker Buehler looked this good.
In Game 3 of the NLCS on Wednesday, the Dodgers’ starter conjured 18 swing-and-misses from Mets hitters in just four innings of work, his highest raw total in a single outing since his final start of 2021. More importantly, neither he nor the Los Angeles bullpen surrendered a run. The Dodgers, buoyed by a trio of home runs, including a supersonic blast from Shohei Ohtani, won in a rout, 8-0.
For Buehler, it was a sparkling return to form on a chilly evening in the Big Apple.
Once the impenetrable ace of a perennial contender, Buehler is a different pitcher now. Arm injuries robbed him of the better part of three seasons and chipped away at his once unshakable confidence. He endured a stop-start 2024 during which he spent a month away from the team to rehabilitate a bad hip at a private training facility.
Buehler steadied the ship somewhat down the stretch run, but his selection as Los Angeles’ Game 3 playoff starter had as much to do with the team’s infirmary of pitchers as any obvious rebound from the righty. In his first postseason start last week against San Diego in the NLDS, he surrendered six runs in an L.A. loss. With the NLCS tied at one heading into a raucous Citi Field on Wednesday, the Dodgers needed their beleaguered former ace to turn back the clock.
And Buehler delivered.
“I don’t trust anyone more than Walker,” longtime Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes told Yahoo Sports after the game. “His ability to, you know, be alive in those moments. A lot of people can’t. Since I’ve been here, he’s done a lot of big games for us. And no matter what happens early in the season or how he’s been feeling, I trust that he’s gonna go out there and compete.”
The competing came early in Game 3. In the bottom of the second, the Mets loaded the bases with one out behind two walks and an infield single. Gifted a pair of runs in the top half of the frame, Buehler was playing with fire, giving the hosts an opening for a counterpunch. But the brash right-hander bore down, striking out Francisco Álvarez and Francisco Lindor to end the threat.
His strikeout pitch to Lindor — a full-count knuckle-curveball that ducked beneath a monstrous hack from the Mets’ superstar shortstop — was vintage Buehler. He bounced off the mound in a cloud of braggadocio, yelling to himself and nobody and everyone at the same time.
Buehler has always straddled that fine line between confidence and cockiness, sometimes going beyond it.
This is a man who prefers to open twist-off beer bottles with his teeth because “it’s fun and it makes [him] feel cool.” At his best, Buehler is arrogant, swaggering, unapologetic. A rottweiler with high-90s heat. An F-bomb geyser on the mound and on the record. Better than you and well aware of it. That confidence begat success, which only bred more confidence.
It was a powerful, nearly unstoppable cycle, one that propelled Buehler to the top of his craft.
From 2018 through 2021, the swashbuckling right-hander posted the fourth-lowest ERA in Major League Baseball, behind such luminaries as Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. During Los Angeles’ championship run in the shortened 2020 season, Buehler was the club’s unquestioned ace, the obvious choice to start Game 1 in each of the first three rounds. Across five starts that October, he surrendered five total runs.
The following season, he was even better, earning a fourth-place Cy Young finish with a 2.47 ERA in over 200 frames. He was, quite simply, one of the best pitchers in the world.
Then the injuries came, as they so often do for those in this line of work. In August 2022, a second Tommy John surgery (he had one right after being drafted in 2015) to go with an additional procedure on his flexor tendon. Buehler’s rehab was a sobering reminder that the road back from elbow surgery is not always linear. Twenty-three months — from June 2022 to May 2024 — passed between big-league starts.
Buehler has been strikingly honest about the difficulties of that process, though he was reluctant to classify his Game 3 performance as redemption. To him, at least publicly, it was just another playoff victory.
“It doesn’t mean a whole lot much more to me than winning Game 3 of the NLCS,” he expressed in his postgame interview. “I think later down the road, it may mean a lot to me, but right now, I’m gonna enjoy tonight and then get ready if we have to play Game 7.”
After a high pitch count limited Buehler to just four innings Wednesday, the bullpen quartet of Michael Kopech, Ryan Brasier, Blake Treinen and Ben Casparius didn’t blink, combining for five scoreless. The Mets managed just three baserunners against Dodgers relievers. Postseason prophet Enrique Hernández added a two-run poke, his 15th career playoff homer, to provide some cushion in the sixth inning.
From there, the game appeared headed for a forgettable conclusion. But Ohtani wouldn’t let that happen. In the eighth inning, with two runners on base, the two-time MVP silenced the already quiet crowd with a jaw-dropping, upper-deck moon shot. The homer pushed Ohtani’s playoff line with runners on base to a preposterous 7-for-9 with two homers.
Ohtani’s swing also sent disgruntled Mets fans streaming up the aisles. By the bottom of the eighth, the lower bowl of Citi Field was speckled with empty seats reflecting the stadium lights. It was a strange image. Since the now-infamous team meeting that precipitated a historic turnaround on May 30, the Mets were 27-5 in night games at home. The sight of this team losing in this setting felt rare on its own. The stakes only added to the disappointment.
But as bad as it was for the hosts, there is a lot of series left. New York will send crafty lefty José Quintana, who has been outstanding for going on two months, to the mound in Game 4. Los Angeles will counter with Japanese thrill ride Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Wednesday, though, was all about Buehler, who is now second in Dodgers history in career playoff starts, behind only Clayton Kershaw. There remains a small chance that Game 3 was his last. Buehler is a free agent this winter, and a return to Chavez Ravine is far from guaranteed.
Then again, three straight Mets wins feels improbable, lining Buehler up for either NLCS Game 7 or a World Series start. Either would be another chance to continue rewriting his story.