Rojas puts on best Dodgers pitching staff impression?

After a close game against the Cubs became a late-inning laugher on Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, you’ll never guess who took the mound to mop up for the Dodgers in the eighth and ninth innings of a 16-0 loss. There was Roki Sasaki, who had started the game and pitched five solid innings before things got out of hand; there was Yoshinobu Yamamoto, one day after his dominant start against Chicago on Friday; there was franchise legend Clayton Kershaw, who was supposedly on the 60-day injured list.

OK, so no: None of those pitchers actually got into -- or back into -- the game. But if you were watching the final two innings you might have been confused. That’s thanks to veteran infielder Miguel Rojas having some fun with the situation. And why not, with his team down by double digits?

Rojas, making his fifth career pitching appearance (all with the Dodgers, in the past three seasons), did his part not only to save his club’s bullpen but also lighten the mood on the way to the most lopsided home shutout loss in franchise history.

“I guess a little bit of levity in a game like that is certainly helpful,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, per Dodgers reporter Eric Stephen at True Blue LA. “It just shows he watches the games. But he gave us -- to be able to throw two innings was huge for us, and we needed every bit of that.”

Rojas imitated the way teammate Landon Knack, when pitching from the stretch, keeps his glove at the belt and leans back a bit before starting his delivery. He mirrored the way Yamamoto wiggles the ball around in his glove, then works with a slight hesitation in his windup -- all while using Yamamoto’s No. 18 blue glove. He then recreated Kershaw’s iconic pre-pitch process: lifting both hands high above his head before dropping them back down. And finally, he repeated the way Sasaki, the Dodgers’ highly-touted rookie, starts with his back knee bent and his front leg straight out ahead of him before lifting it way up high as he goes into his windup.

“I hope he goes through the whole staff,” Dodgers play-by-play man Joe Davis said through laughter on the SportsNet LA broadcast.

Rojas didn’t quite do that. And did have some second thoughts about his choices, but not because of the reaction of his teammates, who were cracking up on the bench.

“Let me tell you something. Roki, it’s really uncomfortable to pitch like that. I don’t know how I can bring the leg up like that,” Rojas said after the game, per Stephen. “I think it was a bad decision. I should have stuck with the Yamamoto and Landon Knack combo.”

Rojas allowed five earned runs on seven hits over two innings, inflating his career ERA to 10.50. But even if the 12-year MLB vet won’t go in the books as a Hall of Fame pitcher, at least he can say -- in the likely event Kershaw heads to Cooperstown someday -- that he played one on TV.
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