by Cary Osborne
This feel of this past National League Division Series wasn’t all that unfamiliar.
Division rival, heavy pressure, palpable tension — 2021 was like that, too.
Then, the Dodgers beat the San Francisco Giants in an emotionally and physically taxing five games — just like they did against the Padres in the 2024 NLDS.
That Dodger team — the 2021 squad — ran out of gas against the eventual World Series champion Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series.
Max Muncy watched the ’21 postseason from the Dodger dugout, unable to compete after the UCL in his left elbow was torn on the last day of the regular season.
“That was something that I saw — that you beat the division rival, you’re really, really high up and you almost let your guard down, and it gets taken out from underneath your feet,” Muncy said. “That’s something we’re going to reiterate today and this whole series. We have to make sure we maintain our intensity and maintain our focus, and I think that goes back to the group we have in this clubhouse and the fire that we have and just the chemistry we’ve had.”
The Dodgers meet the Mets in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday two days after beating the Padres in five games.
The ’21 series with the Braves ended two days after the Dodgers beat the Giants. The Dodgers went right into a bullpen game for Game 1 of that series and a tired Max Scherzer in Game 2 on the mound. They lost to Atlanta in six.
This 2024 Dodger postseason team has talked often about adversity, fight and confidence and how this team has experienced more character-building moments than most — 2021 team included.
“I think with all things, you learn from past experiences. And I think the takeaway is you can’t let down your guard or get off the gas,” said manager Dave Roberts. “It was an exhausting series, going back to ’21 to kind of beat the Giants and then to get on and play against the Braves. So I don’t really know where our head space was at that time. But I do know that we’ve got to push on and keep the momentum, play with that same urgency and not get caught up in it’s a seven-game series. That just can’t happen. So I think that’s one thing that we’re very mindful of.”
The Dodgers will play this series with Freddie Freeman still toughing it out with a sprained ankle. They will play it without shortstop Miguel Rojas (adductor muscle tear) and Alex Vesia (intercostal injury), who are both off the NLCS roster. They will play it with Jack Flaherty at the front of the rotation, likely a bullpen game or maybe two, and Walker Buehler and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in line somewhere to start.
“We believe in each other and we’re going to do whatever it takes to win a ball game, to win tonight,” said Kiké Hernández on Friday. “And it doesn’t have to be pretty.”
Roberts believes the Dodgers’ fire didn’t start in the NLDS, which leads him and his team to believe that the NLDS didn’t create nor will it extinguish the feeling.
The Dodgers played meaningful games in the last week of the season, with a three-game series against the Padres with the National League West Division title still up for grabs.
The Padres beat the Dodgers on Sept. 24, ending the game on a stunning triple play. Then the Dodgers won the next two in come-from behind fashion to win the NL West.
But the NLDS helped stoke the fire.
“I think the clubhouse kind of found out about each other. It’s something that we knew kind of who we were the whole season. But you get into the fire like that in that kind of atmosphere you learn who you are as a team,” Muncy said. “I think everyone really liked what they saw. And you just find out there’s no quit, there’s no give-up, there’s no letting down on anything. And that’s what you need this time of year.”
NLCS: The Dodgers go from highly charged DS into the fire of the Championship Series was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.