On Monday afternoon, a flurry of news came out for the Dodgers. To begin, Kenta Maeda will be in the bullpen for Monday’s game and going forward. The move makes sense since Kenta Maeda will once again pitch out of the bullpen in October. This season, Kenta has thrown just one inning of relief and it was a scoreless inning.
In 2018, Maeda pitched 17 2/3 innings of relief posting an ERA of 3.57 with an opponent’s average of .269. While that doesn’t sound overly impressive, he did have a strikeout rate of 13.2 K/9IP. Dave Roberts also said that Maeda could be a candidate to close some games out with Kenley Jansen pitching once per series, regardless of the situation.