You will be forgiven for not remembering the deal.
June 2 this year Dodgers needed help with pitching. At the time, their rotation was decimated by injuries and their bullpen was overworked and lacking depth. Thus, the next morning after their assistants were further taxed after short start from Yoshinobu Yamamoto against the New York Yankees, the Dodgers came out and added a little-known pitcher in a deal with the Seattle Mariners.
Will Klein's origin story began quietly.
Almost five months before becoming Dodgers World Series Herothrowing four miraculously scoreless innings in his Win the third game with 18 innings Monday night over the Toronto Blue Jays, Klein joined the organization as a largely anonymous entity acquired in exchange for fellow reliever Joe Jacques in the kind of deep trade the Dodgers make dozens of each season.
At that moment, even Klein could not foresee the stellar turn in his future.
He had a career ERA over 5.00 in the minor leagues. He struggled in limited major league action in 2024, battling poor command and giving up nine runs in eight appearances. He had already changed organizations three times and the day before was assigned to a mission by the Sailors.
“I woke up to a missed call and text at 9 a.m.,” Klein recalled Tuesday. “Found out I was DFAed. It was very low back then.”
Now, thanks to a stroke of luck that only October can create, Klein has etched his name into World Series history.
“I don't think this will happen for a long time,” he said.
As the last man standing in the Dodgers' bullpen in Game 3, Klein pitched more than he had ever pitched as a pro, throwing 72 pitches to save the team from placing a position player on the mound.
Afterwards, he was surrounded by his teammates. Freddie Freeman home runhe was then greeted in the clubhouse with a handshake and a “good job” from Dodgers pitching icon Sandy Koufax.
When the game ended, there were 500 missed messages on his phone. He received another 500 when he tried to reply to everyone on Tuesday morning. He says his high school in Indiana even hung his photo in the hallway.
“I woke up this morning still not feeling like last night happened,” he said at a news conference before Game 4. “It was an out-of-body experience.”
The path to Monday's extra-inning marathon could hardly have been more tortuous for Klein, a bushy-bearded 25-year-old right-hander from Bloomington, Indiana.
In high school, he was primarily a catcher until a broken thumb forced him to focus on pitching. When he was recruited to college at Eastern Illinois, his ACT score (he scored a 34) helped almost as much as his natural arm talent.
Dodgers pitcher Will Klein also pitched in the eighth inning of Game 1 in Toronto, allowing no runs.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m into science,” Eastern Illinois coach Jason Anderson said by phone Tuesday. “If you can figure out science class, you can figure out how to throw a slider.”
Anderson wasn't wrong. Although Klein was initially raw on the mound, posting a 5.74 ERA in his first two collegiate seasons, he worked tirelessly to improve his speed while learning how to harness the power he generated from his long, 6-foot-5 limbs.
As his fastball neared triple figures, he began to attract the attention of MLB scouts. Although Klein's 2020 junior season was cut short after four starts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he showed enough promise early on in collegiate summer leagues to be drafted in the fifth and final round that year by the Kansas City Royals.
From there, Klein's rise to the big leagues was not linear. His poor command (he averaged nearly seven walks per nine innings in his first three years in the minor leagues) hampered him even as he climbed the Royals' organizational ladder.
Klein reached the major leagues last year but appeared in just four games before being included in a trade with the Oakland Athletics. Last winter, after finishing the 2024 campaign with an 11.05 ERA, he was dealt back to the Mariners.
Return in this package? “Other considerations,” according to MLB's transaction log.
“His whole career was [full of] “He really just needed time and someone to believe in him.”
With the Dodgers, that's exactly what he found.
Long before his arrival, Klein had fans in the organization. The club's pitching director Rob Hill was immediately impressed by his high drive speed and 80 mph curveball when he first saw Klein pitch in minor league games during spring training in 2021 and 2022.
“I remember his performance against us in spring training,” Hill said. “I was walking around asking people, 'Who is this guy?' This was my first acquaintance with him.”
After being traded to the Dodgers, Klein was given the opportunity to play in Triple-A Oklahoma City under the tutelage of minor league pitching coaches Ryan Dennick and David Anderson. There, he began to refine his approach and trust his high-octane arsenal more in the zone. In 22 ⅔ innings, he struck out as many as 44 batters.
“[He was] I never need things” Anderson told the OKC television company at the end of the season. “It was just access to the area and forcing action.”
During four appearances with the MLB roster in the second half of the year, during which he posted a 2.35 ERA in 14 appearances, Klein also worked with major league pitching coaches Mark Pryor and Connor McGuinness to develop a sweeper that would give him the all-important third pitch.
“I think our coaches have done a fantastic job of cleaning up the pitch, getting him in the strike zone, working on the slider,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He's a wonderful young man. And it's one of those things you don't know until you throw someone into the fire.”
This October, the Dodgers didn't do that, sending Klein to a so-called “stay hot” camp in Arizona for the first three rounds of the playoffs.
But while Klein was there, Hill said it was “very noticeable how locked in he was” during two weeks of live training, with the pitcher “constantly asking for feedback and trying to continue to make sure his stuff was ready.”
During the rest week before the World Series, Klein was sent to Los Angeles to get more live action against his major league hitters. He immediately made another impact, helping to further dive into the Fall Classic lineup considerations as the team brainstormed ways to shuffle the bullpen.
Still, when Klein learned he would actually be playing in the World Series, he admitted it came as a surprise.
“I’m just going to go out there,” he told himself, “and do everything I can to help all these guys who have worked their asses off.”
After holding off a scoreless inning mop in a blowout loss to the Blue Jays in Game 1, Klein began to feel another opportunity coming as Monday's game stretched late into the night.
“I realized that when I looked around the bullpen and saw that my name was the only one left there, I was just going to [keep pitching] Until I couldn’t,” he laughed.
Every time he returned to the bench between innings, he told the coaching staff that he was ready to continue playing.
“No one will care anymore that my legs are tired now,” he said. “Just found the strength to throw one more pitch, and then another.”
Back in Illinois, Anderson was just like everyone else from Klein's past. I'm amazed at how deep he managed to dig into the mound. Touched by a moment that they, like him, could never have foreseen or even imagined.
“Everything about him — his mentality, his work ethic, his obstacles, his path — seemed like he was destined to be on this field at that time,” Anderson said. “This is one of the greatest baseball games in history.”
And, despite everything, it was Klein who left perhaps the most heroic mark.
