Walker Buehler owned our city. When the Dodgers ran out of arms last fall, he instantly reimagined himself as a closer and slayed the mighty New York Yankees in the final inning of the World Series. In the championship parade, he donned the jersey of fellow Fall Classic hero Orel Hershiser. He and catcher Will Smith auctioned the ball used for the final out and donated the $414,000 in proceeds toward wildfire relief.
From the day he arrived at Dodger Stadium as a rookie in 2017, Buehler exuded confidence. Tommy Lasorda had to goad Hershiser into becoming a bulldog. Buehler always had been one.
That made it shocking, frankly, to hear Buehler talk after the Angels dazed him in a five-run first inning Monday at Angel Stadium. They beat him, he beat himself, whatever.
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But among the words uttered by the one-time Dodgers ace with the supreme confidence were these: “I think I can still pitch in the major leagues.”
Buehler’s earned-run average is 6.29, the highest of any American League pitcher with at least 60 innings.
That leaves the Red Sox with this unsettling dilemma: They are a game and a half out of an American League wild card — and only a game ahead of the Angels — so can they afford to keep Buehler in their starting rotation?
“We’ll talk about it,” Boston manager Alex Cora said.
Buehler does not shy from accountability, or from the question of whether he worries that the Red Sox might move him to the bullpen, at least for a spell.
“Yeah, I think you have to,” he said. “At some point, there are 26 guys that are going to help this team hopefully make the playoffs.
“If you’re not one of them, I don’t really think it matters what you’ve done in years past.”
In his previous start, Cora noted before the game, Buehler had failed to retire eight batters with two-strike counts.
In this game, after the Red Sox handed him a 3-0 lead, Zach Neto hit Buehler’s first pitch over the center-field fence. The Angels scored the remaining four runs with two outs. In all, the Angels scored five runs on two hits, two hit batters and four walks.
Buehler hit the Angels’ No. 7 batter with two strikes, walked the No. 8 batter with two strikes, and walked the No. 9 batter with two strikes. Then he hit Neto to force home a run.
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“It’s embarrassing,” Buehler said. “It’s just not who I want to be as a baseball player. Obviously, I’d rather get whacked around than do that.
“Somehow, this year, I’ve managed to do all the negative things you can. I’ll keep working. It’s just tough to let down our team, especially with the first inning that we had.”
The Dodgers signed Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki to replace Buehler and Jack Flaherty in their rotation. Snell and Sasaki are on the injured list. Flaherty has a 4.83 ERA and an AL-high eight losses for the team with the best record in the majors, the Detroit Tigers.
Buehler has started 13 games, more than anyone on the Red Sox except Garrett Crochet and more than anyone on the Dodgers except Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Dustin May. Buehler’s ERA in seven games since returning from an injured list stint for what the Red Sox called shoulder bursitis: 8.59.
Cora insists that Buehler’s stuff and velocity are fine, and that mechanics and execution are the issues. Buehler walked a career-high seven in his four innings on Monday, more than he walked in 15 innings in the 2024 postseason. Opposing batters have an OPS over 1.000 against his four-seam fastball.
“Honestly, his stuff is good. It’s really good,” Cora said before the game. “The one thing we always talk about is the misses. If you look at his four-seamer, when he goes up, it’s actually a non-competitive pitch.
“If we can tighten that up — and that’s with more repetitions, of course — he’s going to be OK. Hopefully, it starts soon.”
After the game, Cora said he is “100%” sure Buehler is not pitching hurt. Buehler, asked if he is pitching through anything, said: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
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Buehler is in his first full season after his second Tommy John surgery. The track record for pitchers returning to their previous performance level after a second such surgery is not encouraging. Shohei Ohtani is trying the same thing this season.
For the Dodgers last October, after returning for an abbreviated season, Buehler threw 10 shutout innings in the league championship series and the World Series. I asked him whether the comeback might be harder over the course of a full season. That was the context for volunteering his remark about his ability to pitch in the majors.
“I think, in all honesty, it’s a lot easier to stay good than to get good,” he said. “The guys on the other side of the field from me drive nice cars, get paid a lot of money to be really good at what they do. Outside of a couple swings, I think largely I beat myself, which is just not something that you can do here.
“I think it’s in there. I think my arm still moves good. I think I can still make the ball move. I think I can still pitch in the major leagues.
“At some point, the belief, it gets hard to keep tricking yourself. At some point, I have got to put some results up there, for myself, but also for this organization.”
That is the reality, and the reason for the talk about whether the Red Sox might remove him from their rotation.
“I’m a guy open to doing whatever needs to be done,” he said.
“I’m a starting pitcher. I’ve been a starting pitcher my whole life. I don’t necessarily think that changing that is going to somehow magically fix everything.”
Something’s gotta give. Could be his results, could be his role. Whatever the case, he'll always have last October.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
