Dave Roberts taking heat after Shohei Ohtani decision leads to epic bullpen collapse

On Tuesday night, Shohei Ohtani was more than cruising through five innings against the Phillies — he was flying. He'd only allowed a single baserunner in the first, when Bryce Harper got on with a walk, but otherwise took the Phillies' batters down in order - and he only needed 68 pitches to do it. Meanwhile, the Dodgers' offense gave him four runs of support as they tried to wrestle a series win away from the new NL East champions.

And then Dave Roberts pulled Ohtani after the fifth and replaced him with Justin Wrobleski, and everything went up in flames.

Wrobleski got his first out quickly, then proceeded to give up three consecutive singles, then a two-run double, and then a three-run homer to give the Phillies a one-run lead. Edgardo Henriquez came in to try to staunch the bleeding, but after he got the second out of the inning, he gave up a solo shot to Max Kepler.

The Dodgers battled back to a tie in the eighth, which included Shohei Ohtani hitting his 50th home run of the season, but Blake Treinen allowed a two-out, three-run homer that allowed the Phillies to bury them the next half-inning.

With so many confounding, infuriating bullpen losses in the span of just a few weeks, there was no way that Roberts was going to escape the vitriol of fans.

Dave Roberts pulled Shohei Ohtani after five no-hit innings vs. Phillies and Dodgers immediately fell apart

Dodgers fans are running out of new ways to be angry at this team. Nothing about the loss was novel by this point. The rotation is great, the bullpen is utterly terrible. The offense can still be good and try to make up differences, but they don't when it actually matters.

Roberts said after the game that there was no way he was going to allow Ohtani to pitch past five innings no matter how well he was doing. They're still handling him with kid gloves. In Roberts' defense, he's already said it himself: what's the alternative? The entire bullpen, to a man, is unreliable. Treinen, Kirby Yates, and Tanner Scott were supposed to make the backend of the bullpen basically unhittable, but Yates has basically become a middle reliever and the Dodgers don't trust their younger relievers in high-leverage.

There's just no way that this bullpen will be able to carry the Dodgers into a deep October run. What we're seeing is an incredibly likely postseason matchup, if the Dodgers can even make it out of the Wild Card round, and they're letting themselves be buried at every opportunity.