Evan Phillips was a critical piece to the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers’ bullpen, but he had mixed emotions watching his team play in the Fall Classic.
Phillips sustained an injury during Game 6 of the NLCS against the New York Mets and did not pitch against the New York Yankees in the Dodgers’ five-game series win. Instead, he had to watch his teammates on the sport’s biggest stage, unable to help.
“It’s probably the hardest 10 days I’ve experienced in pro ball,” Phillips told Foul Territory about the World Series.
.@Dodgers pitcher Evan Phillips says missing the World series was his “hardest 10 days in pro ball” pic.twitter.com/mZjYqJxEMK
— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) March 10, 2025
The veteran righty explained that he tried to recover between the end of the NLCS and start of the World Series, but it didn’t work out.
“I knew it wasn’t good,” he said of the injury. “Next day, I didn’t recover too well, tried to throw the next day, couldn’t produce any power. Knew I wouldn’t be able to pitch anytime soon but thankfully we had those five days off in between. So I go get the MRI, it says what it says, but our plan was to try and chip away getting ready.”
He added that there was a chance that if he was on the World Series roster and unable to pitch that the team wouldn’t have been able to replace him, so the Dodgers decided to leave him off entirely.
“We needed every bit of our bullpen plus Walker Buehler to win [Game 5],” he added. “But watching those games I certainly felt every time a certain spot in the order, a certain inning came up, like, ‘man that’s my spot.’ Then I’m watching my guys do it and I’m so confident in them, but I was on eggshells after every pitch. It was very hard.”
Evan Phillips returns to a retooled Dodgers bullpen
Phillips still isn’t 100 percent back from what turned out to be a rotator cuff injury. He won’t join the team in Tokyo for the Japan Series later this month, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he could be back in the first or second week of April.
When Phillips does return, he’ll rejoin a bullpen that ranked fourth in Major League Baseball last year in ERA (3.53) and eighth in strikeouts (626). Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen and Anthony Banda will join him as the returners, while the organization also added Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates.
Scott was one of the biggest names to move at the trade deadline last year as the lefty reliever went to the San Diego Padres for the playoff push. He earned his first All-Star nod in 2024, finishing with a 1.75 ERA. Yates was also an All-Star last year with the Texas Rangers, pitching to a 1.17 ERA with 85 strikeouts in 61.2 innings.
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