Inside Walker Buehler’s October renaissance: ‘No one I’d want more in a big game’

Rowan Kavner

MLB Writer

NEW YORK — Walker Buehler wishes he could feel this way all the time.

He wishes the velocity and characteristics on his fastball, which guided his gem Monday night in the Bronx and moved the Dodgers to within one win of a World Series sweep, could have emerged earlier when he was searching for answers in a rocky transition back to the mound after his second Tommy John surgery.

He wishes the mechanics that finally came together, which helped him stretch his streak of postseason scoreless innings to 12 after his latest Fall Classic masterpiece, could have been there all year when his command was in disarray.

He wishes that extra boost of epinephrine, the one that comes from pitching and thriving in October, could be channeled the same way during the six months prior.

But he can’t help it.

The postseason, and the World Series in particular, brings out a different version of him.

“I think, as kind of brutal as it is to say, it takes that adrenaline and stuff to kind of really get me going mentally,” Buehler said after quieting a crowd of 49,368 fans at Yankee Stadium in a 4-2 win. “I wish I would have felt that all year. I could tell you I’m excited to pitch every single game I’ve ever gone out there, but there is something different in the playoffs.”

After a forgettable start to Game 3 of the National League Division Series marred by defensive miscues, he tossed three scoreless innings in San Diego to end that outing. Then he tallied four scoreless innings in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, riding his secondary pitches to more swings and misses than he had in any game since the 2021 season.

And on Monday, he kept the Yankees off the board for five innings. He has now allowed just one run in 18 innings over three career World Series starts.

“I think it’s just in his DNA,” Gavin Lux said. “Some guys have it like that.”

This time, it was Buehler’s fastball — the one that helped him rise to fame, the one that used to overpower opponents, the one that had suddenly lost its bite after his latest elbow procedure — guiding his success.

Hitters had annihilated his four-seamer as he tried to figure out how to pitch with the new version of his surgically-repaired arm. But he relied on it against a Yankees lineup that whiffed six times against the pitch and watched another nine go by for called strikes.

They did not record a hit against it.

“Kind of like it used to be,” Buehler said, “or a little bit closer.”

The Yankees did not have a hit at all against him until a Giancarlo Stanton double in the fourth inning. Stanton was thrown out at the plate by Teoscar Hernández trying to score from second on an Anthony Volpe single to left field, extinguishing the Yankees’ only real threat against Buehler, who was removed only because the lineup turned over a third time through.

Hernández wasn’t on the Dodgers when Buehler first developed his penchant for clutch performances, but he watched enough baseball to know what to expect from the starter when the calendar flipped to October.

“This is how it is, every time,” Hernández said. “He’s locked in, and just does that. He’s got three games in the World Series, all three games, he wins. It’s Walker.”

In what might have been his final showing before free agency, in a season diminished but not defined by inconsistency, Buehler again saved his best for the most important time of year.

He is the only Dodgers starter ever to throw five shutout innings while allowing two hits or fewer in a World Series game. And he has now done it twice.

“At least long term, for me to get through the playoffs in the way that I have, it’s really encouraging for me personally because I know it’s in there, and I’ve just got to unlock it a little bit,” Buehler said. “But that feeling of, ‘there’s an organization relying on me today to win a playoff game,’ I think it’s kind of the weight that I like feeling and kind of gets me in a certain place mentally that it’s kind of hard to replicate.”

Buehler’s 2024 debut didn’t come until May. Knowing there might be some limitations this year coming off his second elbow reconstruction, he did not want to start and stop his season. He expressed a desire to be available in October, when the team would need him most.

He’s there now, performing to his capabilities once again, even if it took a winding path to reach this familiar finish.

“Second TJ takes guys a lot longer to figure out who they are,” Max Muncy said. “For him, the timing wasn’t there for a while. But his last couple games going into the postseason, he looked more like himself. Some guys live for the moment. He’s definitely one of those guys.”

There were often times during Buehler’s rehab when he didn’t want to look at the radar gun, knowing he’d be underwhelmed. His four-seamer averaged 95 mph this year, not the 96-97 he was throwing four years ago, but not far off from where he was at in 2021 and 2022. Still, it wasn’t missing bats. Opponents hit .342 against the pitch. They had nearly as many homers (eight) as strikeouts (nine) against it.

In a contract year, it made for an uncertain future. But Buehler was more concerned with getting right than looking ahead.

“Obviously, it’s my free-agent year and whatnot,” Buehler said this spring, “but at the end of the day, I just want to play and be good again.”

In the midst of the mediocrity, a hip issue this summer stunted his progress further. He had a 5.84 ERA before missing a month of the season. He spent part of that time at a private facility in Florida trying to find a way to get right again. His first few starts back were just as inauspicious.

But while the results weren’t there, Buehler began to find some consistency in his mechanics during an August bullpen session in St. Louis. He had a 4.44 ERA in September — hardly the Buehler of old, but enough to demonstrate to the Dodgers that he deserved a postseason role in their depleted rotation.

The way his regular season ended, with Buehler holding off the team that was chasing the Dodgers in the standings, there was a building block. The Dodgers won the division on Sept. 26 when he limited the high-powered Padres to one run in five innings.

The October stage, his baseball haven, beckoned.

“This,” Buehler said after his regular-season finale, “is what I live for.”

It’s where he thrived in 2018, when he began to develop his playoff reputation. Then, as a 23-year-old rookie, he was the pitcher the Dodgers called upon in a Game 163 tiebreaker to decide the division. He held the Rockies to one hit in 6.2 innings in a 5-2 win. Later that postseason, he bounced back from a rough start to October by allowing one run in Game 7 of the NLCS to send the Dodgers to the World Series, where he fired seven scoreless innings in his lone start.

Two years later, in the Dodgers’ 2020 championship run, Buehler kept the team’s season alive with six scoreless innings in a Game 6 win against Freddie Freeman’s Braves. He followed that up with 10 strikeouts in six innings of one-run ball against Tyler Glasnow’s Rays.

“He just always shoved,” Glasnow recalled. “The moment was never too big.”

Monday was just the latest example of his October prowess. After posting a 5.38 ERA in the 2024 regular season, Buehler has a 3.86 ERA this postseason.

When he takes the mound this time of year, you can throw his regular-season stats away.

“You just see that different look in his eyes,” Lux said. “He doesn’t care, man. This guy’s the most confident human being in the world.”

Buehler’s work this October, at the end of his most grueling season as a big leaguer, has been especially notable.

And while it might not fully erase his regular-season struggles in the minds of potential suitors, it demonstrates what still remains from the 30-year-old pitcher who was, just a few years ago, the Dodgers’ ace the last time they won a World Series.

Now, this version of Buehler epitomizes a Dodgers pitching staff that has risen far above expectations.

If the Yankees had one main advantage over the Dodgers entering the series, it was, seemingly, the depth of their rotation. But in Game 2, Yoshinobu Yamamoto outpitched Carlos Rodón. And in Game 3, the Dodgers knocked Clarke Schmidt out before Buehler had even given up a hit.

“When it’s going good, there’s not much else you’d rather do on this earth,” Buehler said.

Buehler has now thrown the second-most playoff starts of any player in his franchise’s illustrious history, behind only Clayton Kershaw. He has a 3.07 ERA in those 18 outings.

If Monday was his last as a Dodger, it was one hell of a parting gift.

“There’s no one I’d want more in a big game,” Muncy said, “than Walker Buehler.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

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