Walker Buehler
"Walker Buehler is a starter who has pitched in the biggest October games, and the question now is what the next chapter looks like."
In the 2024 World Series, a former Opening Day-caliber starter who had spent much of the previous two years recovering from elbow surgery was handed the ninth inning of the clinching game.
Buehler is a veteran in his early thirties, listed with the Padres, and his reputation was built in October. The open question is which version of him a new club gets: the ace of 2018 and 2019, or the resilient pitcher who rebuilt himself.
Buehler's career is often told as a decline-and-comeback story. That framing skips how unusual it is for a starter to adapt, in the middle of a championship run, to a role he had rarely filled.
In Japan, roles are usually clear: starters start, and the closer is a specialist. In the 2024 World Series clincher, the Dodgers gave the ninth inning to Buehler, a starter. American October baseball often works this way, with starters appearing in relief when the stakes are highest. For Japanese fans, think of the all-hands feeling of a Japan Series game where an ace unexpectedly comes out of the bullpen.
Americans treat Tommy John surgery as a routine rite of passage. It is named for the pitcher who first underwent it, in 1974, and the surgeon who performed it, Dr. Frank Jobe. In Japan the same injuries are tangled up in a national debate over the heavy workloads of teenage pitchers at the Koshien high school tournament. A pitcher's return from elbow surgery means something different on each side of the Pacific.
Walker Buehler, a right-handed pitcher born in Lexington in 1994, made his MLB debut on September 7, 2017. He is best known for his years with the Dodgers, where he pitched in the postseason and returned from elbow surgery to help the club win a title. He now wears number 10 for the San Diego Padres. This profile sticks to the documented public record.
| Year | Team | G | W–L | ERA | IP | SO | WHIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | SDP | 32 | 9–6 | 4.63 | 153.2 | 131 | 1.35 |
| 2025 | — | 26 | 10–7 | 4.93 | 126.0 | 92 | 1.52 |
| 2025 | PHI | 3 | 3–0 | 0.66 | 13.2 | 8 | 1.17 |
| Career | — | 189 | 66–35 | 3.69 | 993.1 | 977 | 1.18 |
Source: MLB Stats API · regular season
A career built in October
Buehler debuted in September 2017, after being drafted by the Dodgers out of Vanderbilt in 2015. He quickly became part of the club's postseason identity. In the one-game tiebreaker to decide the 2018 National League West, against the Rockies, he started and pitched six scoreless innings. A single game that decides a division is a very American construction: no series, no second chance, one afternoon. The Dodgers won, and Buehler's reputation as a big-game starter has followed him since.
The long middle
Public records show that Buehler was an All-Star in 2019 and again in 2021, and that elbow surgery later interrupted his career and kept him off the mound for long stretches. I have no interviews or articles in my source file, so I will not describe what that stretch was like for him. What the record does show is that he did not disappear. He returned and pitched for a Dodgers team that won the World Series in 2020 and again in 2024.
MLB sometimes ends the regular season with two teams level on record, and the tiebreaker is a single game. It is nicknamed Game 163 because a normal season is 162 games. It is a sudden-death afternoon in a sport that usually spreads its drama across a long grind, which is why Buehler's start in 2018 is remembered the way it is.
The ninth inning, 2024
In the clinching game of the 2024 World Series, Buehler was the one who took the ball in the ninth inning. A starter finishing a championship is a reminder that playoff baseball pays less attention to job titles than the regular season does. Whatever was said in the dugout before that inning, it is not in the materials available here, so this profile leaves it alone.
What comes next
Buehler is now listed as a San Diego Padre, wearing number 10, at an age when many pitchers are redefining themselves rather than proving themselves. The sources available for this entry say nothing about his routines, his home life or his views, and this profile does not guess. What is certain is that he has pitched in games that decide seasons, and a new club is betting that he can do it again.
In American baseball, a starting pitcher typically throws five to seven innings every fifth day, and a closer pitches one inning. When a starter pitches the final inning of a clincher, it signals that the manager is spending every resource, not following the usual roles. That is part of what made Buehler's 2024 appearance notable.
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Walker Buehler Gear — Official MLB ShopThis profile was written by AI (Claude Sonnet) using publicly available sources. Interpretations and cultural notes are AI-generated and may not reflect the views of the player, their team, or MLB. This page contains affiliate links.