Welcome to the bigs: The story of Walker Buehler’s MLB debut
(Editor’s note: In this series, we look back at Dodger players’ Major League debut and include the prelude, the game and epilogue using unearthed information, images and interviews.)
by Cary Osborne
Walker Buehler was fighting through a painful right elbow during his junior year at Vanderbilt in 2015. His hopes were to help lead the Commodores to a second straight national title.
As he recalled in a 2016 interview with Dodger Insider, a fastball that sat in the 92-96 mph range when he was healthy was all over the place during his final collegiate season. It could be as high as 96 but as low as 86.
“I thought I was better in a little bit of pain than the next guy,” Buehler recalled in 2018. “Our class was really close-knit. A lot of us were in our last year there, so I wasn’t not going to pitch.”
When the Dodgers drafted him in the first round of the June 2015 MLB Draft, 24th overall, it wasn’t a secret that the elbow wasn’t right. And that August, Buehler had a ligament removed from his wrist to replace a damaged ulnar collateral ligament.
The day before the surgery, then-Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi told MLB.com: “We still think he’s one of the top pitching talents in the draft, and we have the luxury of being able to play the long game. Even if it puts him a year behind, we feel he can come back and justify where we selected him.”
Walker Buehler’s professional career might have started with a loss, but a victory followed.
Originally told it would take 14 months for him to be back and competing in a game after Tommy John surgery, it took him 12.
On Aug. 10, 2016, in front of his father who flew in from Colorado and his Cape Cod League host family who was in town, Buehler made his pro debut at Camelback Ranch in Arizona for the Dodgers’ Rookie League team. (Baseball Reference shows a July 7 debut with Low-A Great Lakes — however, that’s because the game was suspended on July 7 and continued on Sept. 3 when Buehler actually appeared.)
Buehler struck out three of the six batters he faced and retired them all.
He was promoted to Great Lakes in late September and pitched in the team’s run to the Midwest League championship.
“I kind of got lucky — the first team I play for wins a title,” Buehler said to Dodger Insider that winter. “It’s not everything you hope for or gets you the year back, but it mends the wounds.”
Innings/pitch limit be damned, Buehler was big league bound in 2017.
After five starts in High-A Rancho Cucamonga and 11 in Double-A Tulsa, he was in Triple-A Oklahoma City on July 20, appearing to be groomed for a tryout in September for the Dodgers’ postseason roster. The LA Dodgers were 66–30 on July 20. Coming into Sept. 6, they were 92–46 with an 11 ½ game lead in the National League West.
The Callup
On Sept. 6, the Dodgers called up Buehler. Because he wasn’t on the 40-man roster, they needed to make room. The team designated right-handed pitcher Fabio Castillo for assignment. Castillo, at 28 years old, had just been called up to a Major League roster for the first time in his career on Sept. 1. He made two appearances — Sept. 2: a scoreless 1 1/3 innings and Sept. 3: two earned runs in an appearance where he didn’t get an out. He pitched in Japan the last two seasons.
The Game
There have been only 13 starts in Clayton Kershaw’s career in which he has lasted 3 2/3 innings or fewer. That accounts for 3.8% of his career starts. Sept. 7, 2017, at Dodger Stadium was one of those games.
It was completely out of character — three walks, a wild pitch, four earned runs. Fourteen pitches into the game, he was down 3–0 after surrendering a home run to Nolan Arenado.
With two outs in the fourth inning, Kershaw was pulled. The Dodgers used five pitchers through seven innings and were down 9–1.
In the eighth, they turned to Buehler for his Major League debut. The first batter he faced, Carlos González, singled to left field. Then, Buehler got out of the frame with a double-play grounder and a groundout.
In the top of the ninth, he struck out Charlie Blackmon looking. Then the same with Alexi Amarista. Ryan McMahon then grounded out.
His final line: two innings, one hit, no runs, two strikeouts, 26 pitches, 18 strikes.
“Everyone here has ability,” Buehler said that night. “Everyone here’s worked really hard. I don’t think I’m any different in any aspect of that. The (Tommy John) surgery benefitted me in more ways than one. My arm works different now than it did.”
Meaning, Buehler threw harder after the surgery than before. Buehler’s sixth pitch that night hit 100 mph on the radar gun.
“At the back end of the game, the one highlight was obviously Walker Buehler,” manager Dave Roberts said that night. “To see him break in like that, just the presence, the command of all his pitches, it just looked right. That was really exciting for us.”
Epilogue
Buehler was hit hard by the Rockies in his second outing. In eight 2017 games (9 1/3 innings), he allowed eight earned runs. He didn’t make a postseason roster for a team that reached the World Series.
But the next year, he was one of the bright stars of the World Series. After one of the greatest seasons ever by a Dodger rookie starting pitcher (including a Game 163 in which he dominated the Rockies to help the Dodgers clinch the NL West), Buehler became the third starting pitcher in World Series history to go at least seven innings and allow two or fewer hits with at least seven strikeouts and no walks. He did so in a magnificent Game 3 of the 2018 World Series.
Buehler is an ace-in-the-making. He was a first-time All-Star in 2019. And at 25 years old, he is on the cusp of becoming one of the game’s great pitchers.
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