Dave Roberts Has One Desperate Move Left to Save the Dodgers' Season

Dave Roberts has one move left to save the Los Angeles Dodgers' season.

Some might call it desperate. And it would be, because the Dodgers find themselves in a situation that requires them to make a stupid and futile gesture. And yet, stupid and futile might be all they have left after falling 6-2 to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the NLCS on Wednesday night.

With his team facing elimination, Roberts needs to stop managing, come out of retirement as a player, and activate himself before it's too late to beat the Milwaukee Brewers.

It might seem like a stretch for Roberts, who is 54 years old and has not played since 2008, to perform effectively as a player anymore. But it's not really about what's likely or logical. It's about the vibes.

As a pinch-runner 22 years ago, Roberts famously played a key role in the Boston Red Sox's historic comeback against the New York Yankees in the ALCS. With his team facing a sweep and trailing by a run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4, Roberts stole second base against Mariano Rivera and came around to score the tying run on a hit by Bill Mueller.

Multiple additional events later, the Red Sox beat the Yankees in Game 4 (and 5, 6, and 7) and became the first team in Major League Baseball history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit. It's a feat that has never been duplicated in 43 possible attempts. The Red Sox later won the World Series, obliterating Babe Ruth's curse.

The Dodgers of today aren't cursed, but they have a lot to overcome right now.

As managers go, Roberts has not done his best work in this series. In Game 4, he kept left-hander Blake Snell in the game for way too long, even though Snell has a well-known history of being pulled way too early. Will Snell even find the right porridge temperature?

Roberts also burned rookie Josue De Paula in a pinch-hitting fiasco that cost them a favorable matchup later in the game. Two pretty egregious mistakes. It's probably an overstatement to say Roberts' decisions alone cost the Dodgers the game, but he wasn't helping.

So who gets put on the taxi squad so Roberts can take an active roster spot? Before he started to show life at the plate in Game 3, Shohei Ohtani looked ripe for a benching. Roberts in fact sat him down to ask Ohtani if it made sense to have a seat after his slump continued through the first two games of the series.

Rather than making the call, Roberts made the questionable decision to let Ohtani decide for himself. There was no self-benching. Ohtani didn't produce any runs, but he did hit a 113.5 mph single in the eighth inning against DL Hall. A hard hit, such as it was. At this rate, Ohtani will have pulled himself out of the tailspin well into the coming owner's lockout.

The Dodgers, really, are out of time to keep the three-peat dream alive. Not even Roberts, with his old-man hamstrings, is coming through that door to save them with a metaphysical stolen base. That once-in-a-lifetime moment already happened.

The Brewers have just been better. They're tested, they're confident, and it looks like their time. It comes for everybody.