NEW YORK— The Dodgers trailed by one run with four innings remaining. Have the Dodgers considered using one of their best relievers?

“It doesn’t make sense,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

The Dodgers trailed by two runs with two innings to go. A bloop and a blast, as they say, and the Dodgers would have tied the game. Have the Dodgers considered using one of their best relievers?

“No,” Roberts said.

This is the World Series, not the third week of August.

The Dodgers could have gone for the jugular and the World Series sweep against the New York Yankees on Tuesday. The coaching staff and front office decided not to do this.

With four chances to win the deciding game of the World Series, the Dodgers decided Tuesday not to risk depleting their pitching staff, weakening it for a potential game Wednesday.

There’s a Game 5 on Wednesday. If the Dodgers couldn’t win on Tuesday, did Roberts believe the outcome went as well as could be expected in terms of the pitching plan? “Absolutely,” Roberts said.

It’s stunning that the Dodgers – the team with the best record in the major leagues – literally ran out of starting pitchers and still advanced to the World Series.

Tuesday was the Dodgers’ final bullpen game this postseason. They won two, lost two.

They have their three proven starters lined up for the rest of the series. Jack Flaherty will start Game 5. If the series returns to Los Angeles, Yoshinobu Yamamoto would start Game 6, while Walker Buehler is set for a possible Game 7.

One more win to go.

Jack Flaherty will start Game 5 of the World Series for the Dodgers on Wednesday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m not worried about how I expected the series to go,” Flaherty said before Tuesday’s game. “I’m just afraid I’ll get another one.”

There was a time in baseball — and for some teams, it still is — when teams didn’t use their top relievers in certain regular-season games when the situation seemed to call for it. The reason: Those relievers had to be fresh and ready to pitch every day in October, if necessary.

In the latter field of analytical research, this is not considered wise. If a reliever faces the opponent too often, no matter how fresh that reliever is, opposing batters can adapt to his repertoire and are more likely to hit him hard.

In this World Series, the Yankees are old-fashioned: use your best relievers as often as possible. Five relievers have worked at least three of the four games; Clay Holmes worked on all four projects.

The Dodgers are a new school: no reliever has worked in all four. Three of them have worked in three of the four games, including left-handers Anthony Banda and Alex Vesia.

In the third inning, with Daniel Hudson struggling and three of the Yankees’ left-handed hitters coming up within a four-batter span, Roberts declined to use Banda or Vesia.

“I just wasn’t going to use them in the third inning,” Roberts said.

Hudson gave up a grand slam to Anthony Volpe (who, to be fair, hits right-handed). The Yankees took the lead and never relinquished it.

With the Dodgers down two in the eighth inning, Roberts called Brent Honeywell Jr. on, made his first appearance in eleven days, and ordered him to finish. He did, but not before giving up five runs in one inning and making 50 pitches. According to Jay Jaffe of Fangraphs, no pitcher has made more pitches in a postseason appearance of one inning or less.

And honestly, analytics wasn’t the cause of everything that ailed the Dodgers on Tuesday.

Of the Yankees’ first five runs, three were scored by players who reached base on a walk or hit by a pitch.

In the eighth inning, the Yankees stole three bases off Honeywell – one of which was a steal of third base with a left-handed hitter at the plate.

Over the final four innings – all but one of which started with the Dodgers trailing by one or two runs – the Dodgers went 0 for 12, with six strikeouts.

And here’s another stat for you: In what was a bullpen game for the Dodgers, the Yankees used more pitchers.

No team in Major League history has won the first three games of the World Series and lost the series. No team with a 3-0 lead needed even a Game 6 to qualify.

The Dodgers will if they lose on Wednesday.

During the National League Championship Series, Roberts said he wouldn’t succeed in the postseason today like he did in 2017, when he used reliever Brandon Morrow in all seven games of the World Series. “I’ve evolved,” he said.

None of these relievers pitched Tuesday: Banda, Vesia, Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Ryan Brasier and Brusdar Graterol.

So the Dodgers are thinking much the same way they were the day before Game 6 of the NLCS, when the Dodgers clinched their place in the World Series. On that day, Roberts said, “I don’t think we’ve completely exposed our highly indebted guys.”

It doesn’t quite sound like, “If you don’t like the Dodgers, chances are you won’t get into heaven.” But that’s where the Dodgers are today, still one win out of a championship.