Dodgers strengthen their status as baseball’s greatest

NEW YORK — That’s what I thought, right?

An improbable season, in which the Dodgers had the best record in baseball even as their injured list grew, ended in an improbable victory in the Big Apple on Wednesday night.

According to the people who look up these things for Fox Sports, no team so far had come back from a five-run deficit to win a World Series clincher. And by the end of the second inning of Game 5, the Dodgers were staring at a 5-0 deficit, starter Jack Flaherty was done for the evening after facing just nine batters, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was probably already mentally preparing on throwing a goal. Game 6 against the Yankees Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

Sit down, Yoshinobu. Your next obligation is Friday, okay, but it’s going to be a parade through the streets of LA

Yes, the Dodgers are World Series champions. And perhaps you could describe them as world champions, a team with representatives from Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. (Kiké Hernández literally wrapped himself in the Puerto Rican flag during the on-field celebration.) And if you want to take the World Baseball Classic representation into account, you can add Canada, even though Freddie Freeman was born and raised in Orange County .

They got here even while using 40 pitchers over the course of the season, while having two full starting rotations of pitchers on the injured list, and while losing Max Muncy and Mookie Betts to injury for significant periods of time during the season, while Freeman staggered past. an ankle injury during the first two postseason series and Shohei Ohtani nursed a partially dislocated shoulder in the final three games of this one.

(This after Ohtani – supposedly distracted by the investigation into the gambling activities and eventual embezzlement, which involved former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara who showed up during the opening series in Seoul – ignored this distraction and had one of the greatest individual seasons in baseball history, become a co-founder of the 50-50 club.)

In some ways, this championship story was unlikely due to recent history, with two straight first-round losses leaving the fan base a little embarrassed and a lackluster pitching rotation dampening expectations.

As it turns out, one of those starters, Walker Buehler, channeled his inner Orel Hershiser and closed out the ninth inning Wednesday, with the Dodgers using all their leverage relievers, to secure the 7-6 victory at Yankee Stadium that capped this game was closed. World Series in five games.

What did the late Vin Scully say after a home run out of nowhere in 1988 put the Dodgers on the path to what was their last full season championship before that? “In a year that was so unlikely, the impossible happened.”

Can we suggest that perhaps there is an invisible hand guiding these things? In ’88, Game 1 was decided by the hobbled Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run, his only at-bat of the World Series, and the Dodgers defeated the mighty Oakland A’s in five games. In ’24, Game 1 was decided by Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the 10th inningand while it’s not an exact comparison, it was a similar bolt of lightning, as everyone in the stadium for both home runs can attest.

And yes, the Dodgers beat the Yankees in five games, and perhaps in retrospect Game 1 ending had a deflationary effect as well.

Another similarity between the two season titles: In ’88, the Dodgers were running low on position players due to injuries, and there was an urgency to get to the World Series in five before anyone else got hurt. In ’24, a pitching staff seemingly held together by bubble gum and baling wire somehow made it to the end. It wasn’t always pretty, and there were moments in the postseason – including Tuesday night’s Game 4 – when Manager Dave Roberts had to marshal his resources and choose to sacrifice the gift in pursuit of the main goal.

It worked.

But while you can count the improbabilities, these Dodgers really are the best team in baseball, and you couldn’t keep that going until the end in ’88. This team finished the regular season with the best record of the game. They fought off first-round elimination against San Diego – which, as it turns out, was the toughest team they faced in the postseason and could very easily lay claim as the second-best team in baseball (but sorry, Padre fans, you’re not getting a parade).

Then they passed through New York, eliminating the Mets in six and the Yankees in five.

“There are a number of fingerprints on this win,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said during the on-field ceremony after the game. “Scouting department, player development… there are a number of people. It is a special group.”

Game 5 showed some of the reasons why these Dodgers are the best team in the game. They are relentless offensively and took full advantage every time the Yankees opened the door. Two errors and a failure by Yankees starter Gerrit Cole to cover first base on Betts’ grounder to the right side contributed to the five-run fifth inning that tied the game, and a catcher’s interference call helped end the eighth of two runs, which wiped out a game. 6-5 Yankees led and decided the game.

And when closing time arrived, after Blake Treinen – the last lever Roberts had at his disposal – had given him 2⅓ innings, Buehler pitched a 1-2-3 ninth, punctuating the evening by striking out former teammate Alex Verdugo.

“In the seventh inning he just said he’s going to be available,” Roberts said. “I didn’t even see that coming to play, but as the game went on we obviously had to keep the game close. Our guys were fighting, so I just felt like I was going to be all in at that point.

Perhaps things that happened along the way – starting in the opening series in Seoul with the revelations about Mizuhara – hardened the spines of these players and contributed to a cohesion that made it all possible.

“I think sometimes when things like that happen, it brings a group of guys together,” Freeman said, who was named World Series MVP. “If you’re going to support a teammate in his freshman year, like we did, for (Ohtani) to go out and have the best season of all time, that was pretty special.

“It seems like we’ve hit every speed bump possible over the course of this year. And to overcome what we did as a group of guys, it’s special. This is what we start doing every spring training, to win a championship. I think this is the hardest thing you can do in sports because you just never know what’s going to happen. I mean, we were down 2-1 in the NLDS and it could have easily passed us by. And to come back and win those two games and keep it going the same way we did, it’s just a special group of guys.”

Roberts noted in his pregame briefing Wednesday night that this was an unusually cohesive team, and “when you’re around people that you care about, that you believe in, you’re just better collectively.”

Then he worked it out.

“We’ve been through a lot, but I will say we still had the best record in baseball this year,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, but our guys fought and played the right way every day, played to win.

“There was a lot of talent replenishment due to injury. A lot of young players are cutting their teeth, which is good. But one thing is that we just kept going. Even in the postseason, I don’t think anyone would have picked us… to come out of the first series. For us to go out there and fight, scratch and claw and win 11 games in October, that’s an honor for our guys.”

And yes, There will be that long-awaited parade on Friday. Maybe they can invite some guys from the 2020 (and even 1988) champions to join them.

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Originally published: October 30, 2024 at 10:02 PM PDT