“You look at the position players on both sides, grinding at-bats, and both teams have the ability to work pitch counts and get pitch counts higher,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said after Game 1. “So you’re going to have to go to the pen and play matchups, and that’s kind of how we saw it.”

This series represents peak modern baseball: two wealthy, data-savvy franchises with rosters constructed to account for virtually any possibility. Roberts has just four bench players and used them all before the seventh-inning stretch. The managers made five mid-inning pitching changes, and three of the relievers — Nathan Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez of the Red Sox and Alex Wood of the Dodgers — were starters for most of this season. (So were Boston’s Rick Porcello and the Dodgers’ Kenta Maeda, who were available but did not pitch in Game 1.)

“Having Nate and Rick available, it gives us a chance to be more aggressive during the game earlier,” said Red Sox Manager Alex Cora, who refers to those pitchers as rovers. “They’ve been amazing in that role, and the fact that they’ve been able to bounce back and give us a quality start, that’s what matters.”

In theory, the Red Sox want starters to pitch deep into games — unlike the Dodgers’ last postseason opponent, the Milwaukee Brewers, who emphasized relievers. Brian Dozier, who led off for the Dodgers on Tuesday, said the plan was to exploit the Boston bullpen.

“The whole thing on how you beat this team is get to that bullpen,” Dozier said. “They rely heavily on their starters. I think that’s how you beat them: You’ve got to get their horses out early.”

To that end, the Dodgers stacked their lineup with right-handers; incredibly, it was the first time in World Series history that a team fielded a lineup with nine right-handers and not a single lefty or switch-hitter. But the Dodgers should have been careful of what they wished for.

The Red Sox bullpen turned out to be much more effective than Sale, allowing just a run and three hits in five innings. In the last four games of the American League Championship Series and the first game of the World Series — all victories — Boston’s bullpen had a 2.21 earned run average. A perceived weakness has been a strong point.