Justin Wrobleski, Pitch by Pitch: NLCS Game 3 Analysis

Justin Wrobleski reached two strikes against Christian Yelich immediately after entering the eighth. A slider foul and a missed 97.1 mph fastball put him ahead, but the next slider escaped for a wild pitch that scored Brice Turang from third. Wrobleski recovered to strike Yelich out on an 85.9 mph sweeper.

The run belonged to Roki Sasaki, who had left runners at first and third with one out. Wrobleski then struck out Jake Bauers to strand the remaining runner. His final line included five outs, two hits, one earned run, no walks and three strikeouts on 32 pitches in Los Angeles’ 6–2 Game 3 loss.

The comparison uses 192 physical pitches in six regular-season Dodgers relief appearances from March 30 through September 27. It excludes his starting work, which would otherwise dominate a full-season pitch sample and blur the role comparison.

Five classifications and three strikeout finishes

Wrobleski threw 17 four-seamers, seven sliders, six sweepers, one changeup and one sinker. The four-seam share rose from 45.8% in the relief baseline to 53.1%, while the sweeper rose from 5.2% to 18.8%. Slider share fell from 33.9% to 21.9%. The six-appearance baseline makes these descriptive differences rather than an established new pattern.

Four-seamers averaged 96.9 mph against 95.6 in the comparison sample. They supplied five called strikes and two misses in seven attempts. Sliders and sweepers each supplied another miss, and the lone changeup was taken for a strike. Overall, hitters missed four of 14 attempts, while Wrobleski added eight called strikes.

He finished each of his three strikeouts with a different classification: Yelich on the sweeper, Bauers on a called slider and Garrett Mitchell on a called four-seamer to open the ninth. That variety matters more than crediting all three outs to the pitch that appeared most often.

One inherited run and one charged run

The opening wild pitch scored an inherited runner and moved Contreras to second. Contreras did not score. Wrobleski’s own charged run came in the ninth, when Cooper Pratt singled, stole second after a review upheld the safe call, and scored on Joey Ortiz’s 95.0 mph single.

Four balls were put into play against Wrobleski. Their average exit velocity was 81.9 mph, with Ortiz’s single the only one to reach the hard-hit threshold. The hardest contact arrived after a seven-pitch plate appearance in which Ortiz fouled off two two-strike offerings before grounding a slider through for the hit.

Wrobleski used 10 pitches for the final two outs of the eighth and 22 in the ninth. His four-seamer averaged 97.4 mph on four measured pitches in the eighth and 96.7 on 13 in the ninth. Those are the actual samples behind the difference; the record supplies no diagnosis of fatigue.

The appearance showed several ways to finish hitters, but it also contained two distinct scoring events. Keeping the inherited runner separate from Pratt’s run preserves both the official one-run line and the fuller account of how Milwaukee added its last two runs.