As Freddy Peralta put it after the Dodgers swept the Brewers in the National League Championship Series, “They didn’t even let us breathe.” That’s what it feels like to face a formidable Dodgers team that’s peaking at exactly the right time.
They entered the year with a hardline expectation to win the World Series in back-to-back seasons. It hasn’t been done since the Yankees’ three-peat run from 1998-2000. Earlier in the year, the Dodgers gave us more reasons to doubt them than to believe in them. Now, they’re showing us why they always thought it was possible, even when the first half of the regular season featured mediocre results.
The Dodgers were built to sustain another World Series run. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
“I think you always want to be peaking and playing your best baseball in October,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said before Game 1 of the World Series. “I don’t know that we have a formula or a thought of really how to do that.”
Friedman indicated the blueprint that has gotten the Dodgers one win away from winning their second straight title wasn’t calculated. But it sure appears that way.
At one point in June, the Dodgers had 15 pitchers on the injured list, including Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell, Emmet Sheehan, Blake Treinen, and Roki Sasaki. Shohei Ohtani had not yet thrown a pitch in a major-league game for Los Angeles. One of the reasons Friedman signed top-tier arms and bulked up the pitching staff in the offseason was to avoid last October’s injury-riddled journey to, eventually, hoisting the championship trophy.
But, once again, the Dodgers’ rotation was in shambles. Their fans were panicking. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said midseason that he was confident all of their pitchers would return healthy, but the club was being cautious in case of setbacks. Rushing them back might hinder their availability for October, when the team would need the depth of those arms the most. The Dodgers can say they were just trying to avoid more stints on the IL. But slow-playing those pitcher injuries always seemed deliberate.
“A lot’s been made about us slow-playing,” Friedman said. “I don’t know how much it was slow-playing — there’s a lot of unknowns about injuries. We’re not going to sit here and pretend we know what exactly causes them. And the build-up to get back, for us, it’s about getting back to stay back. So it’s imperfect and it’s much more art than science. So we just erred a little bit more on the side of caution to give ourselves a better chance of when they come back to stay back.”
Being cautious was a risky strategy because by mid-June, the San Francisco Giants had tied the Dodgers atop the NL West. If the Dodgers didn’t get their act together, they were in danger of letting the division slip away.
But division pennants and championships are not won in June, and the Dodgers knew Snell was on the verge of a healthy return, which is when things snapped into place for the rotation.
Since Aug. 2, the Dodgers boasted the best starting-pitching ERA (2.79) in baseball — and it has carried over into the postseason. They’re equipped with a well-rested rotation that’s sharper and fresher, at least in part because most of their top starters threw fewer competitive innings during the regular season. Sure, Yoshinobu Yamamoto went wire to wire. But Glasnow (90 innings pitched), Sasaki (36 IP), and Snell (61 IP) had plenty of stamina reserved for these taxing October starts.
‘Extra Hunger Wouldn’t Hurt’
Blake Snell signed ahead of the season with the hope of finally getting a World Series. (Photo by Katharine Lotze/Getty Images)
And it wasn’t a coincidence that they started playing their best once Snell rejoined the starting pitching staff. That, too, seemed premeditated.
“For us, when we won last year, our focus and meetings were all about, okay, how do we win in 2025,” Friedman said. “And there were two big risk factors that we had seen looking back. One is complacency. You’ve reached the top of the mountain, you’re less hungry. I didn’t worry about that with our group.
“The second is, usually to win 11 or 13 games in October, you have to really step on your pitching to do it. So for us, it was about how do we add some guys that are really hungry to our group that will do everything they can to win that final game of the season. And it ties back to Blake and just how much he wants this as well.”
Snell was the centerpiece of the Dodgers’ offseason additions. His on-paper value was pitching a 2.41 ERA in nine starts from when he came off the IL in August to the end of the regular season. Having won the Cy Young award and ERA title twice in his career, what drove Snell now was the hunger to win a World Series, something the 32-year-old has not yet accomplished.
He spoke about that desire before the Dodgers offered him a $182-million, five-year deal last November. Snell emphasized to Friedman that he loves rising to the occasion in October moments. It was that intense fire that Friedman believed would rub off on the team when it most mattered. The Dodgers brass wasn’t worried about complacency from their players. But the way they saw it, a little extra hunger wouldn’t hurt.
The Dodgers found themselves in an unexpected division race in September. (Photo by Brandon Sloter/Getty Images)
By early September, the Dodgers were again in a tight division race. They got swept by a pathetic Pirates team (ace Paul Skenes notwithstanding). The Padres were in close pursuit of the NL West crown. In Baltimore, after a walkoff loss, Roberts had seen enough. Though the manager tries to refrain from frequent team meetings so as not to minimize the impact of his words, he felt the Dodgers needed to be reminded of what they still had a chance to do. Forget the expectations. Move on from the recent lapses. Flip the switch.
Then they won 15 of their next 20 games to end the season with a 93-69 record and a fourth consecutive NL West title.
“I do think that when you intentionally try to focus and ramp up your focus, I do think that you can do that,” Roberts said when asked if the Dodgers intentionally turned it on as the calendar got closer to October. “It doesn’t always provide the results. But I hate saying there’s a switch you can flip on and off. It’s a dangerous way to live.”
For Los Angeles, getting to this point was just a matter of time. That was true even as the season tested the club’s strength and will to win at every turn. Even as they seemed to slog their way through the long regular season. Even when they went 9-1 in the first three rounds of the postseason. Even when they had a subdued on-field celebration after eliminating the Brewers from the playoffs and clinching their spot in the World Series.
Throughout all the ups and downs of the season, their untapped potential was being a ruthless juggernaut, bulldozing their way through the playoffs to the World Series, on the cusp of being repeat champions.
Flip switched in October? (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
“I don’t think that exists,” Dodgers star Mookie Betts said when asked if the Dodgers flipped a switch in October. “I think you play the game how you play the game, and it doesn’t matter the situation going on around you. You don’t really rise to the occasion. You kind of fall to your training. We train properly. We train hard every day. So there shouldn’t be much of a change when the game comes.”
It’s not that they’re tired of winning or celebrating. All this time, the Dodgers have been acting like they’ve been here before. This flip of the switch always felt inevitable, even if it wasn’t intentional.
“I don’t know that we have this (plan of) like, hey, let’s just take our foot off in the regular season and then step on it,” Friedman said. “I know it’s what it looks like, but it wasn’t anything conscious.”
Deesha Thosar covers Major League Baseball as a reporter and columnist for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.
