After spending more than $1 billion in the offseason, the Los Angeles Dodgers put together their World Series run only after they were left for dead.
The team with the best record in the regular season was essentially considered the underdog in their opening round of the playoffs against the club just down the freeway in the San Diego Padres.
When the Dodgers fell behind 2-1 in the National League Division Series, their season obit was all but written.
Then the Dodgers showed they were more than star power and high tax brackets when they closed out the postseason with 10 wins in their last 13 games on the back of a deep bullpen, midseason additions, and bench players turned everyday postseason starters like playoff sage Kiké Hernandez.
Now, the question isn’t if the Dodgers can win it again but how many titles are ahead.
The lasting impression after the Dodgers rallied for an improbable 7-6 victory over the New York Yankees to clinch their eighth all-time World Series title Wednesday was that they won the clincher with grit, not flash. They won with contributions from the full roster, not a top-heavy constellation of MVP winners.
Consider that Los Angeles went into the postseason with just three starters they could count on. The list of unavailable pitchers included Tyler Glasnow, Bobby Miller, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Emmitt Sheehan and standout rookie Gavin Stone.
Mookie Betts (hand) and Max Muncy (oblique) each missed three months. Freddie Freeman had challenges in the second half that included a broken finger, health issues for his young son and a badly sprained ankle just before the postseason began.
Freeman won the World Series MVP anyway with home runs in each of the first four games.
Walker Buehler finally made it back in May from two years away following a second Tommy John surgery. Then he missed two months with a hip injury. He won Game 3 against the Yankees as a starter and earned the save in Game 5 to win the championship.
Buehler could be moving on as a free agent, while right-hander Jack Flaherty, outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, utility man Kiké Hernandez and right-handed reliever Blake Treinen are also key free agents. But the MVP lineup core will be back to make the Dodgers as much of a prohibitive favorite as there is in futures wagering.
Maybe a reference to sports wagering is a delicate topic. The Dodgers’ season looked as if it might be derailed when it had barely started. During a schedule-opening series against the San Diego Padres in South Korea, Shohei Ohtani was embroiled in a sports-betting controversy involving his friend and interpreter.
An MLB investigation cleared Ohtani of involvement, and the $700 million man went on to put together one of the best seasons in MLB history with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. And then Ohtani joined the list of the injured when he came away with a partially dislocated shoulder in Game 2 of the World Series.
Ohtani was just 2-for-19 (.105) in the World Series, but the Dodgers got the best of the Yankees anyway thanks to Freeman and a wild five-run rally in the fifth inning of Game 5 when the Yankees made three defensive miscues, or four counting Teoscar Hernandez’s two-run game-tying fly-ball double that landed untouched on the warning track.
“It’s hard to win a championship regardless of what your team is like,” Roberts said. “It’s hard, and there’s a reason why there hasn’t been a repeat champion since the Yankees did it (from 1998-2000). It clearly speaks to the difficulty, the playoff format, all that stuff.
“I’m going to be in the moment, and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of this one. I’m sure there’s no asterisk on this one.”
Roberts was as much a reason for the title as anybody with the best managing work in his nine seasons with the Dodgers. He had some of the best talent in baseball to work with, and yet he still needed to work the margins to bring home the trophy.
In his first career postseason, Ohtani will walk away with a championship ring. In the coming days he will be awarded his third MVP award and first in the National League. And next season he will return to pitching; for yet another reason, the Dodgers will be in prime position to repeat as champions.
“We were able to get through the regular season, I think, because of the strength of this team, this organization,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “And the success of the postseason is very similar to how we were able to pull it off during the regular season. Again, the strength of the organization. Extremely honored to be a part of this.”