After spending more than $1 billion in the offseason, the Los Angeles Dodgers have put together their World Series game only after it was left for dead.
The team with the best record this regular season was considered an underdog in their first round playoff for the club just down the highway in the San Diego Padres.
When the Dodgers fell behind 2-1 in the National League Division Series, their season was not yet written.
Then the Dodgers proved they were more than star power and high-tax brackets when they closed out the season with 10 wins in their last 13 games behind a deep bullpen, midseason additions, and bench players turned everyday starters of the season like playoff sage Kiké. Hernandez.
Now, the question is not whether the Dodgers can win it again but how many titles to come.
The lingering impression after the Dodgers rallied to an improbable 7-6 victory over the New York Yankees for their eighth World Series title on Wednesday was that they won the clincher with grit, not flash. They won with contributions from the entire roster, not a top-heavy constellation of MVP winners.
Consider Los Angeles going into the postseason with three starters they can count on. The list of missing pitchers includes Tyler Glasnow, Bobby Miller, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Emmitt Sheehan and rookie standout Gavin Stone.
Mookie Betts (hand) and Max Muncy (oblique) missed three months. Freddie Freeman has had challenges in the second half including a broken finger, health issues with his young son and a badly sprained ankle just before the start of the postseason.
Freeman won the World Series MVP anyway with a home run in each of the first four games.
Walker Buehler finally returned in May from two years ago following his second Tommy John surgery. He then missed two months due to 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 may move on as a free agent, but most people will come back and make the Dodgers as prohibitive a favorite as there is in future betting.
Perhaps the reference to sports betting is a sensitive topic. The Dodgers’ season looked like it might be derailed if it hadn’t even started. During the series opener against the San Diego Padres in South Korea, Shohei Ohtani was involved in a sports betting dispute involving his friend and an interpreter.
The MLB investigation removed Ohtani from involvement, and the $700 million man went on to put together the best single season in MLB history with 54 runs and 59 stolen bases. He then went on the injured list when Ohtani left with a 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 five-run fifth-inning rally by Game 5 where the Yankees made three defenses. errors, or four counting Teoscar Hernandez’s two-run fly-ball that remained untouched on the warning track.
“It’s hard to win a title no matter what your team is like,” said Roberts. “It’s tough, 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 those things.
“I’m going to be in the moment, and I’m going to be happy to get out of this. I am sure there is no star in this.”
Roberts was as big a reason for the title as anyone with the best managerial career in his nine seasons with the Dodgers. He had the best talent in baseball to work with, yet he still had to work around the edges to bring home the trophy.
In his first postseason game, Ohtani will walk away with a championship ring. In the coming days he will be awarded his third MVP award and his first in the National League. And next season he will return to depth; for another reason, the Dodgers will be in a good 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 are able to pull it off in the regular season. Again, the power of organization. It is a great honor to be a part of this.”
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