NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS BREWERS

October 13, 2025

Dave Roberts

American Family Field

Los Angeles Dodgers

Postgame 1 Press Conference

Dodgers - 2, Brewers - 1

Q. Obviously Blake pitched a terrific game. He's rolling there, his pitch count is in check. Why pull him at that point?

DAVE ROBERTS: I thought it was a tough one for me. Hadn't been in the ninth inning, eight ups, potentially going on regular his next outing. I thought it was 50/50.

Roki has been throwing the baseball really well. Have a two-run lead. I felt good with Roki there.

Q. With Ohtani and Treinen, two guys that you really need, have both been scuffling a little bit. Not great performances but Shohei got the three walks, set up what proved to be the winning run, Treinen did get out of that inning, closed the game out. Is this moving in the right direction? Are these positive signs?

DAVE ROBERTS: Absolutely. Obviously it was a tight ball game to the end, but I thought offensively we were very good tonight. I thought we took good at-bats all night long. We put the ball in play, didn't strike out.

Obviously there were some crazy things that happened that they weathered some innings, but offensively I thought we were great. I thought the defense played really well. And to see Blake come in and close it out was big for his confidence and us going forward.

Q. And Shohei?

DAVE ROBERTS: And Shohei. I thought Shohei's at-bats were great tonight.

Q. What did you see from Roki in the ninth inning? Do you think there might have been some carry-over going three innings in Game 4 of the DS there?

DAVE ROBERTS: I don't know. He had three days off. Everything I heard, he felt great, and there were some near-misses, but you walk three guys.

So he was off just a little bit. I thought his stuff was still good, but just missing. I don't know if there was carry-over from the three innings. Just kind of betting on how he is saying how he feels and the coaches and training staff. With the three days off, I felt good with him.

Q. With Blake, obviously you've seen a lot of good postseason pitching performances, but where do you think Blake Snell's outing ranks among those tonight?

DAVE ROBERTS: This is as good as I can remember in the postseason against a very gritty team. Puts the ball in play. The change-up was the pitch of the night. His command was great. And you're not going to see too many performances like that, certainly in the postseason. This was pretty special.

Q. When you're seeing the change-up get so much swing and miss, is there a feeling, first, second inning, where you know he has the full arsenal working?

DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, I did. And he just has an ability to kind of manipulate the change-up within the change-up. And I thought his command -- I thought his delivery, he was just sort of in that zone tonight.

So I saw that early on and had no hesitation obviously running him through six, through seven and through the eighth inning.

Q. What is going through your mind in the ninth when -- not that there was ever a large margin in this game -- but a game that was relatively secure suddenly becomes not so much?

DAVE ROBERTS: That team's going to fight. They're going to fight until the end. We know what we're up against. You just want to hope guys make pitches, keep making pitches.

You've got to give credit to those guys. They took the walks. They kept the line moving. And ultimately we had to put the ball over the plate. And Blake, fortunately had a good at-bat versus Turang.

But it's not going to come easy. This is going to be a grind. It's going to be tough. And no one expects it to be.

Q. Wonder what you saw in that weird double play. Did you figure it out as it was going on, or it happened so fast you didn't even realize what was happening?

DAVE ROBERTS: It happened fast. I didn't know he didn't catch it, to be quite honest. We go over that rule. Teo knows the rule. I think right there he had just a little bit of a brain fart, appreciating that when it does hit the glove you can tag there. But then he tagged, did it correctly, then saw he didn't catch it, he went back. That was the mistake.

But he owned it. And after that there's nothing else you can do about it.

Q. It seemed like even after they reviewed it, you sort of went out for an explanation. What were you looking to get from the umpires there? Was it about who relayed what to where in terms of the ball --

DAVE ROBERTS: I just wanted clarity. Honestly, I didn't know they ruled it a no catch. I just wanted clarity on the whole situation. And then kind of making sure that they got a couple of forced outs, which they did. And ultimately those guys and replay, the guys on the field got it right. They nailed it.