This story was excerpted from Sonja Chen’s Dodgers Beat newsletter. This edition was written by Mike Lupica. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
The way it was for New York Knicks fans the last two months of the NBA season -- the way it felt -- that’s what it feels like for Dodgers fans every season. They don’t always win it all, even if they have done that the last two seasons running, and three out of the last six before this one. But they are always in first place -- the way they are now -- and often by a lot. Twelve first-place finishes in the last 13 seasons. And the time they finished second? It took 107 victories by the Giants to beat them in the National League West. By a game.
They are a big story this season because they are always a big story in baseball, one that is about more than the money they spend on baseball players. As talented as they are, and as big as their payroll is, the story is also about a consistent run of excellence, year after year, the likes of which baseball has so rarely seen over an extended period of time.
The only better run of first-place finishes, in a baseball world where if you won the most games you went to the World Series, came from the Yankees between 1949 and 1964, when they won 14 pennants in 16 years. It is different now in baseball. But so are the Dodgers. If they win again this season -- and raise a hand if you’re betting against them -- they will become the first team since Joe Torre’s Yankees of 1998, '99 and 2000 to win three World Series in a row. And Torre’s Yankees were the first to do that since the Oakland A’s of the 70s.
Even with the significant injuries they’ve had with their pitching – Blake Snell (loose bodies in elbow), Edwin Díaz (surgery for loose bodies in elbow), Tyler Glasnow (bad back) – the Dodgers somehow keep going along and getting along. And this in a season when Mookie Betts, one of their MVPs and one of the champion stars of the sport for such a long time, is still hitting just .218 entering Wednesday.
But Justin Wrobleski has pitched like an emerging star himself as one of the stars of Dave Roberts’ rotation, with an 9-2 record and an earned run average of 2.71. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who did such an amazing job starting and relieving in the last World Series, is 7-5, with a 2.65 ERA. Then, of course, there is Shohei Ohtani, clearly gunning for a Cy Young Award to add to all of his amazing accolades. He is 7-2, with a gaudy 1.47 earned run average of his own.
And because they are the Dodgers, there was Eric Lauer, ex-Blue Jay, coming out of the bullpen after the first inning the other night against the Twins and throwing six no-hit innings. The Dodgers' lead over the Padres in the NL West was nine games, which is where it stayed after they beat the Twins 12-3 Tuesday night.
When the Lauer game was over, we got another insight into the team culture -- the winning culture – that Dave Roberts, the best manager in the game, has created in Los Angeles. Lauer made news earlier in the season when he expressed displeasure about being used behind an opener in Toronto, and he did it again on Tuesday after Will Klein’s 32-pitch first inning.
“If you ask most starters in the league [about the opener],” Lauer said, “they would have the same response, that they don’t like it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to do it. It doesn’t mean that I’m not a team player.”
Here is what Roberts himself said:
“[Lauer is] all in. He’s all in on winning.”
They all are. The Dodgers continue to be as together as a baseball team as the Knicks really were as a basketball team starting at the end of April, and persisting through that finishing kick. Entering play Wednesday, Ohtani the hitter has 17 home runs and 45 RBIs. Max Muncy has 16 home runs. Andy Pages has 15 and the great Freddie Freeman has 13.
They are as tough as they are talented when they have to be. Two years ago they were down 2-1 to the Padres in their Division Series, and facing a bullpen game with their season on the line. Roberts threw eight different guys at the Padres in Game 4 and shut them out. The Dodgers shut them out again in Game 5, and kept going from there all the way to a parade.
Last year? All they did was come back from being down three games to two to the Blue Jays. The Dodgers won Game 6 and then they got up after being down to their last two outs in the 9th inning of Game 7, Miguel Rojas saving them with a home run that put him on the list of unlikely Series heroes. Will Smith finally hit the home run that won the Series in extras. All Yamamoto did that night was pitch 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief after having started Game 6 the night before.
Now here they are again. Best record in baseball, looking to do it again. There’s this idea out there that the Dodgers are somehow killing baseball. Nah. Just killing it, period. Again.