From Dodger Insider magazine: Heavy mettle — the Dodgers bring their fight into the 2024 postseason
Editor’s Note: This story is from the pages of Dodger Insider magazine, 2024 Volume 12. Magazines are available at entry at parking stands at Dodger Stadium.
by Cary Osborne
The answer was definitive. So definitive that manager Dave Roberts responded before the question was even finished: “Do you recall a season that’s had this much individual adversity?”
“No, not at all,” Roberts said. “This is the top of the list.”
The Dodgers were supposed to be here.
Not that it’s their right.
They had to earn a 12th straight postseason berth. But they were supposed to be here because from the first day of Spring Training, they had one of baseball’s deepest, most talented rosters. So deep and so talented, that they could cover slumps, calamities and the unexpected.
All those happened.
But who would’ve predicted that all five members of their season-opening starting rotation would spend time on the injured list, that two of them would suffer season-ending injuries (Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone), one would end his season in the Minor Leagues (Bobby Miller), and another would be on another team (James Paxton).
That left Yoshinobu Yamamoto standing alone at regular season’s end. The most decorated Japanese League pitcher of the last half-decade and a historic free-agent signing in the offseason himself missed three months of the season with a rotator cuff injury. The injury created some doubt about Yamamoto’s ability to impact the Dodgers in October. Doubt from others. Not from the pitcher.
“Absolutely zero,” Yamamoto said of the doubt he had about returning.
The Dodgers withstood Mookie Betts and Max Muncy missing months of the season due to injury. They remained a winning club, despite lengthy slumps from others — in the lineup, in the rotation and in the bullpen.
“It’s quite the achievement,” Roberts says. “We’ve never run from it or made excuses. It’s been a challenging year. I do believe that after it’s all said and done, it’s going to make it that much sweeter. But to get the invitation to the postseason, it’s not a rite of passage. I really believe that, as much as some people think that if you wear this uniform it is. It takes a lot of work, and we overcame a lot this year.”
Each team, since Roberts took over as Dodger manager in 2016, has faced some sort of adversity — severe injuries, player departures, COVID — you name it.
The first Roberts team — the 2016 squad — lost veteran star Andre Ethier for nearly the entire season with a broken leg, and Clayton Kershaw, who was having a Cy Young Award-type season, for 2 1/2 months with a herniated disk in his back.
The most recent Roberts team before 2024 — last year’s unit — wasn’t at its strongest en route to the 2023 postseason on the starting pitching side. Options were down to an injured Clayton Kershaw, rookie Bobby Miller and trade deadline pickup Lance Lynn.
Yet each Roberts team in his nine seasons has been part of October baseball.
The 2024 season’s difference is that so few players have had a straight-line season from Opening Day in Korea on March 20 to Game 162 in Colorado on Sept. 29.
Even players who had outstanding seasons, like Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, experienced some sort of adversity.
Freeman, one of baseball’s few iron men, missed eight games while his son Maximus was hospitalized with an illness. He missed the final three games of the season with a sprained ankle.
Hernández had a scare when he was hit by a pitch in the ankle on Sept. 6. Fortunately, he missed just four games. Hernández ended the season as one of the top offensive outfielders in the Majors, posting a career high 33 home runs.
Freeman ended up being one of the National League’s most productive hitters, finishing fourth in on-base percentage and sixth in OPS.
Other players overcame difficult stretches to become integral members of the team. Gavin Lux, for example, had three home runs, a .213 batting average and one of the lowest OPSes in the Majors at .562 at the All-Star break.
By season’s end, he established career highs in home runs (10) and extra-base hits (36) and was one of the Dodgers’ top offensive players in the second half.
The Dodger used 40 different pitchers this season — a club record.
But the difficulties meant that the 2024 Dodgers were not the runaway train that won the division by double-digit games. They were the team that had to battle into the last week of the season with the Padres for the NL West crown.
That, many feel, bodes well for a team that has had recent disappointing endings in the postseason.
“I think we’ve been tested more this season, and our hope is that it pays off for us in the long run as we get healthy and look more and more like the team we planned for out of spring,” says reliever Evan Phillips. “We still have to perform. That test will still come on the field. But I think through the past few months, where we’ve been missing a guy here, missing a guy there, underperforming here, waiting on performance here, little things like that where it just hasn’t seemed like we’ve been able to click all together at once, our hope is that we continue to round into the form we expected.”
Much of that hope in the spring was built on the arrival of Shohei Ohtani.
Ohtani did have a straight line in 2024 — and it was vertical.
The Dodger designated hitter was an everyday presence in the lineup and had one of the greatest offensive seasons in Dodger history. He broke single-season franchise records for home runs (passing Shawn Green’s 49 in 2001) and extra-base hits (surpassing Babe Herman’s 94 in 1930), while becoming the first 50/50 player (50 homers and 50 stolen bases) in Major League history.
Ohtani also led the Major Leagues in the statistic win probability added.
“I’m just glad we have Shohei on our team,” says Mookie Betts. “It seems like every big spot he comes through.”
Ohtani is an obvious player to point to for leading the Dodgers to the postseason. Miguel Rojas, the Dodgers’ 2024 Roy Campanella Award winner (the prize given to the most inspirational Dodger), mentions Ohtani’s name among the players who have kept the ship steady. But he adds Lux, Kiké Hernández and Teoscar Hernández as those who have elevated the team during the difficulties because of their availability all season.
“They are kind of the main actors in this whole movie because they’ve been there every single day,” Rojas says.
Rojas even went through it this season. He missed 14 games with right forearm tightness. Then he missed the final four of the season with an adductor muscle tear. Yet his contributions — arguably the best offensive season of his career, another stellar defensive season, along with the immeasurable of his leadership — were vital.
This regular season was different for the Dodgers. And because of this, the hope is the 2024 postseason will be different than the last three.
“Every year is different. Every journey is different,” Rojas says. “Even though you still have the same core of guys — you added one extra amazing player who has been with us this year who is on a historical season — we went through a lot of injuries this year, a lot of personal stuff outside the field for really important players. It’s a little bit of a different mindset that we have this year.
“I can talk to the experience of last year. Everything came to us kind of easy during the regular season. But this year, everything that’s happening in September, and knowing how hard we have to fight for every win kind of prepares us for what’s next. I don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but I’m pretty sure the fight is going to be there.”
From Dodger Insider magazine: Heavy mettle — the Dodgers bring their fight into the 2024 postseason was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.