For as bad as the Dodgers’ pitching situation looks here in the final month of the season, there’s a world where it could have been so much worse.
A world where the team failed to execute its buzzer-beater acquisition of Jack Flaherty at the July 30 trade deadline. A world where the Southland-raised right-hander never returned to his hometown team. A world where uncertain post-injury versions of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow, or an inconsistent post-Tommy John version of Walker Buehler, might have been their only established pitcher in a potential postseason rotation.
A world that, when presented with the hypothetical Sunday morning, manager Dave Roberts had no interest in imaging.