Dave Roberts has been praised for his postseason managerial skills while leading the Dodgers to three World Series championships in the past five years. But even as a 32-year-old pinch-runner in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS for the Red Sox, he already had a knack for making the right moves in big moments.
“Tito had the bunt sign on. I tell [first-base coach] Lynn Jones to take it off,” Roberts recounted to Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard on the latest episode of The 6-1-1 podcast. “Dale Sveum at third base takes it off. And Lynn goes, ‘All right, kid. Do what you do.’”
Seconds later, Roberts had recorded one of the clutchest stolen bases in baseball history.
“I dust off,” Roberts said, “and Derek [Jeter] goes, ‘How the heck did you just do that?’”
Roberts regaled Rollins and Howard with the stories behind key moments from his Fall Classic wins with the Dodgers, including the text exchange preceding Miguel Rojas’ Game 7 heroics, how a challenge led to Andy Pages’ game-saving catch, the time Freddie Freeman vetoed a pitching change and Walker Buehler’s reaction after sealing the 2024 World Series. The trio also discussed the different role analytics plays when managing in the postseason as opposed to the regular season.
“When you’re talking about winning 11 games in October, I couldn’t believe more [that] it’s about people, and players you can bet on,” Roberts said. “The heartbeat that the analytics doesn’t line up with. I think that early on, my mistake was I continued to use that same method of the regular season in the postseason.”
One of those players for Roberts to count on come October is four-time MVP Shohei Ohtani. While Roberts called Barry Bonds “the greatest position player I ever played with or saw,” he dubbed Ohtani by far “the greatest player I’ve ever seen,” pointing to Ohtani’s unfathomable three-homer, 10-strikeout performance in Game 4 of the NLCS last year.
Roberts went on to credit Ohtani and fellow Japanese star Yoshinobu Yamamoto for setting a high bar in the Dodgers’ clubhouse.
“Mookie [Betts] told me a couple of years ago, ‘Doc, we wouldn’t have won the World Series if it wasn’t for Shohei and Yamamoto,’” Roberts explained. “And his point was, the discipline that they had every single day, how they worked with intention every single day … it raised the level even higher for our guys.”
When asked to name a favorite postseason memory, Roberts selected the Dodgers' World Series victory over the Yankees in 2024, citing how it renewed one of baseball's most storied rivalries while silencing arguments that Los Angeles' 2020 championship came with an asterisk due to the shortened regular season.
As for Roberts’ favorite player? Rollins had some idea who that might be, as he remembered the first time the two players met on the field in 2002.
“You made your way to me and [said], ‘Man, I just wanted to come tell you, I love your game, I love everything that you’re doing, and you’re my favorite player,’” Rollins said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean? I just got here!'"