Julio Rodríguez’s bases-clearing double off a collapsing Los Angeles bullpen blew open a one-run game in the seventh inning Saturday night, and the Seattle Mariners survived a late Dodger rally to win 10-6 at Dodger Stadium, pushing within one victory of their first World Series championship.

The Mariners now lead the series 3-2, returning to Seattle needing just one win to close it out. They may not need to ask twice.

The decisive moment arrived in the seventh with the Dodgers’ bullpen in free fall. Los Angeles had chipped back to within one, 5-4, on a pair of Shohei Ohtani home runs and a Freddie Freeman solo shot, and the sellout crowd of 56,000 at Chavez Ravine had found its voice again. Then the Dodgers burned their bullpen down to the studs in a span of seven batters, and the series changed.

With Brock Stewart having handled two clean innings, the Dodgers’ AI manager pulled him at the first sign of trouble — a leadoff single — citing the leverage. “Leverage index of 1.87 with a runner on second and no outs in a one-run game — this is a premier high-leverage situation,” the manager explained. “Stewart has done his job admirably, but this moment demands our best.” In came Edwin Díaz, their closer, to face a bases-loaded jam with one out. Díaz got one strikeout but was inexplicably pulled after just ten pitches — again, for leverage reasons, despite having neutralized the immediate threat. “The leverage index is high at 1.82 with runners aboard,” the manager reasoned. “This moment demands adaptation.” Evan Phillips took the mound and promptly surrendered a three-run double to Rodríguez on the very first batter he faced, the ball splitting the left-center gap before an outfield that never had a chance. Just like that, the Mariners led 8-4, and the evening belonged to Seattle.

The Mariners tacked on two more in the eighth on a Rob Refsnyder double — his second extra-base hit in as many at-bats — making it 10-4 before Freeman’s second home run of the night, a towering two-run shot to left in the bottom of the seventh, provided the game’s final margin. Seattle manager Claude made the call to lift Eduard Bazardo immediately after that blast, protecting a two-run advantage with Matt Brash on the mound. “Bazardo gave us solid work — six batters, three punchouts — but we’re up by two heading into the bottom of the seventh at home,” the Seattle AI explained. “That lead is precious.” Brash locked the door, retiring the final six Dodgers in order.

Freeman was extraordinary in defeat. The Dodgers’ first baseman went 2-for-4 with two home runs and three RBI, both blasts carrying well to right field, and gave Los Angeles chances to stay in it each time Seattle seemed to have broken the game open. Ohtani matched him with a pair of homers as well — a solo shot in the first inning to answer Seattle’s early two-run lead, and another solo blast in the fourth to pull the Dodgers within one — finishing 2-for-5 with two RBI. That’s four home runs between them on a night their team lost by four. The Dodgers left 12 hits on the box score and still couldn’t survive their pitching staff’s collapse.

For Seattle, the offensive engine ran on patience as much as power. Brendan Donovan delivered the game’s first blow with a two-run single in the first, and Josh Naylor followed with another two-run knock in the second, each coming via walks that set the table. The Mariners drew seven walks against a Los Angeles staff that began the night with Tyler Glasnow on the mound and ended it desperate. Randy Arozarena added a solo home run in the third for good measure.

Glasnow lasted just 1.2 innings, a stunning early exit for a man who was supposed to anchor the Dodgers’ season. He walked two and allowed four runs before the Dodgers’ AI manager decided — correctly, given the bases were loaded — to keep him in after the first inning despite the damage. “Despite the high leverage index and bases loaded, Glasnow is at only 23 pitches and still in his first time through the order,” the manager noted, choosing to ride him into the second. The line continued to bleed and the hook came with two on and one out in the second frame. Ben Casparius cleaned up reasonably and bridged to Stewart, but the real damage came from the seventh-inning bullpen carousel — Díaz, Phillips, and Justin Wrobleski each logging fractional innings in a span that cost Los Angeles three runs and the series advantage.

Logan Gilbert was fine. That’s the maddening part for Seattle: their starter went 4.1 innings allowing nine Dodger hits and four runs, giving up the solo shots to Ohtani and Freeman, and was lifted by his manager at the first sign of fatigue. “Logan’s given up nine hits and four runs through four-plus innings — that’s not a guy who’s dealing,” the Seattle AI said. Bazardo and Brash combined for the final 4.2 innings, giving up only Freeman’s two-run homer, to secure the win. Bazardo earned the victory.

The series heads back to Seattle, where the Mariners will try to close out their first championship at T-Mobile Park in Game 7. The Dodgers need to find a way to stop the bleeding in their bullpen — and perhaps reconsider when exactly Edwin Díaz is deployed — or this World Series ends with a whimper three thousand miles from home.

SEATTLE MARINERS Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: You pulled Logan Gilbert in the fifth inning after he’d given up 9 hits and 4 runs. That’s an early hook for a guy you’ve leaned on all postseason. Walk us through that call.

A: Look, I’ll be honest — I didn’t want to do it. Logan’s been our horse, and I trust him with my life out there. But 9 hits in four-plus innings, that’s not bad luck, that’s a guy who’s losing the feel for his pitches, and I could see it in his mechanics by the third inning. You protect your starter’s confidence and you protect the game — sometimes those two things pull in opposite directions, and tonight I had to go with the game. Bazardo came in and gave us exactly what we needed to bridge it.

Q: In the seventh, with a two-run lead and the bases empty, you went to Matt Brash to close it out after only 31 pitches from Bazardo. That’s a lot of pitcher movement in a game you’re already winning. What’s the thinking?

A: A two-run lead in the bottom of the seventh in Los Angeles in the World Series — that’s not a comfortable lead, that’s a working lead. Bazardo did his job beautifully, but he’d just allowed two runs and I didn’t like what I was seeing from him to the last couple hitters. Brash has got filthy stuff and he’s been rested; that’s the guy I trust to slam the door in that ballpark with that crowd. You don’t nurse leads in October — you go get outs.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: Glasnow was pulled at 23 pitches in the second inning with the bases loaded. Your own decision log showed 72% confidence — that’s not a high bar. Should he have stayed in?

A: The surface read on that decision was correct — 23 pitches, first time through the order, that’s typically a stay-in situation. But the walk rate was already at 50% of batters faced, and with a 2.04 leverage index and bases loaded, the expected run value of leaving him in was climbing fast enough that the math shifted. In hindsight, the sequencing that followed was worse than the original problem, and I’ll own that — the aggregate bullpen performance tonight, 7 walks and 10 runs allowed, makes that early hook look worse in retrospect.

Q: The seventh inning — you used three pitchers in one inning, including Edwin Díaz. Díaz recorded one out before you pulled him for Phillips, who got nobody out. That’s your best reliever essentially wasted in a loss. How do you evaluate that sequence?

A: The leverage index was 2.59 with bases loaded and one out — that is the correct spot for a 1.63 ERA, elite-velocity closer, full stop. Díaz executed; he got his out. The issue was Phillips, who came in against a specific matchup profile that didn’t hold up, and in a zero-out appearance his expected value contribution was negative by the time the damage was done. Freddie Freeman then hit a two-run shot in the bottom half to make it a two-run game, which tells you the offense was still in it — but we couldn’t keep Seattle from extending when it mattered. We’ll watch the film, reset, and come back for Game 7.

The Dodgers’ AI didn’t lose Game 6 in the seventh inning. It lost it in the first, and then spent the rest of the night making a bad situation catastrophically worse by confusing activity with management.

Let’s start with the original sin. Tyler Glasnow exited after 1.2 innings having walked two batters and surrendered a three-run single to Brendan Donovan, and the Dodgers’ AI — operating at a confidence level of 72%, notably — decided to keep him in through that damage. Fine. That’s defensible. What isn’t defensible is that the starter decision itself was flagged as an AI fallback at 50% confidence. Fifty percent. You’re starting a World Series game — with your season on the line, down 3-2 — and the system that’s supposed to be smarter than a human manager essentially flipped a coin on who takes the ball? A human skipper in that situation doesn’t need a confidence interval. He knows his rotation, he knows his matchups, and he knows which guy gives him the best shot to extend the series. The Optimizer apparently did not.

What followed in the seventh was the most spectacular mismanagement of a bullpen I’ve seen since this AI experiment began. Brock Stewart had been genuinely excellent — seven batters faced, one hit, zero runs, 14 pitches — and the Dodgers pulled him with a runner on second, no outs, citing a leverage index of 1.87. In came Edwin Díaz, who got one batter out before the AI decided he needed to come out too, at a leverage index of 1.82 and just 10 pitches thrown, because there were runners on base and the situation was escalating. So Díaz — again, your best reliever, 1.63 ERA — exits after facing two batters. In comes Evan Phillips. Phillips records zero outs and allows a three-run double to Julio Rodríguez that blows the game open. Three pitchers in a single inning, and the one guy with the nastiest stuff and the freshest arm got jerked before he could face the hitter that mattered most.

I’ve been skeptical of the Optimizer’s hair-trigger bullpen philosophy all series, but this was something different. This wasn’t aggressive deployment — this was paralysis dressed up as optimization. The AI saw leverage numbers climbing and kept reacting to them, never recognizing that every pitching change itself was generating new leverage. A human manager understands that sometimes the answer to a dangerous inning is to trust your best guy and let him work through it. The Optimizer kept searching for a higher-confidence option and found none, because it had already burned through them chasing a moving target.

To Seattle’s credit, The Skipper was straightforward and largely untroubling in its decisions. Pulling Logan Gilbert after 4.1 innings and nine hits allowed was obvious, and the move to Eduard Bazardo paid dividends — the right-hander was efficient and sharp until the Dodgers’ lineup finally caught up to him in the seventh. Handing the ball to Matt Brash with a two-run lead and an empty bases situation for the final six outs was exactly the call any experienced closer-era manager makes. Boring, correct, effective.

The uncomfortable reality heading into a potential Game 7 is this: the Dodgers have Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani combining for four home runs tonight and showing they can absolutely punish any pitcher who challenges them. The offense isn’t the problem. But if the Optimizer takes the mound tomorrow night and the AI fallback is still making starter decisions at 50% confidence while the bullpen management treats leverage indices like a hot stove to be dropped the moment they rise, Seattle is going to win the World Series in Dodger Stadium. And no amount of Freeman heroics will be able to paper over that.