On a day when the Los Angeles Dodgers had already wrapped up the series, the more interesting question was not who had the advantage, but how the pitching plan would be managed. The answer arrived Sunday: Will Klein was named the opener for Game 2, a move that fit the Dodgers' bullpen-game approach in a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium.
According to Maddie Lee, Dave Roberts said Klein would open Game 2 and Kyle Hurt would also be available as the 27th man. The setup was straightforward enough, but it still said something about how the Dodgers were handling the second game of the day: not as a conventional start, but as a matchup built around innings, coverage and flexibility.
That mattered because the Dodgers had already beaten the Yankees 2-1 in Friday's Game 1, then followed it with an 8-2 win in Game 2 on Sunday afternoon. In other words, the opener assignment was not about protecting a lead in the series. It was about navigating the workload of a doubleheader while keeping the game plan intact.
The choice also fit the broader pattern of how the Dodgers have used pitching depth. Klein had already pitched on June 22, 2026, against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while Ryan Yarbrough played against the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park in Detroit, Michigan. The point is not that those games were identical, but that the Dodgers were again leaning into arms they could deploy in specific roles rather than asking one pitcher to carry a full traditional start.
For Game 2, the scheduled first pitch was 7:20 p.m. EDT, and the structure reflected a bullpen game from the start. That kind of plan can look cautious, but it can also be practical in a doubleheader, especially when the objective is to keep the game manageable rather than chase a headline-grabbing starting assignment.
The Yankees were making their own pitching decisions with a similar mindset, as Jorge Castillo noted that Ryan Yarbrough would start or open for New York and Elmer Rodríguez was expected to handle multiple innings out of the bullpen. That mirrored the basic reality of the matchup: both teams were treating Game 2 as a game to be pieced together, not handed to a single starter for six or seven innings.
So the headline was not just that Will Klein would open Game 2. It was that the Dodgers had reached the stage of the series where the opener mattered more than the label of starter, and where bullpen usage was the real storyline behind the scoreboard.
