Dodgers need WS title to enhance legacy
LA has come up short in past six postseasons
BALTIMORE — The Los Angeles Dodgers’ celebration of their National League West title started modestly Tuesday night, with a leisurely, unremarkable gathering on the infield at Camden Yards that looked like any post-win handshake-line. It gained steam as two carts arrived near the mound, and they all stripped to the waist to don commemorative T-shirts and caps — “October Reign,” they said — then posed for a group picture, the B&O Warehouse looming incongruously in the background.
And within an hour, the Dodgers had lain waste to the visitors’ clubhouse, its plastic-covered floor flooded with a half-inch of champagne and beer, everyone within sight now soaked to the bone.
By this point, the Dodgers are the unrivaled masters of the September champagne celebration.
Every September, almost without fail, these Dodgers celebrate the clinching of another division title as if it were their first. They have done so in every season since 2013 — the only exception being 2018, when they clinched on Oct. 1. Otherwise, October has been mostly unkind to the Dodgers, whose six previous trips to the playoffs have ended in two losses each in the World Series, the NL Championship Series and the Division Series.
But just getting to October with such consistency is an impressive feat on its own; the Dodgers’ run of seven straight division titles is the thirdlongest of all-time. In this decade, no other franchise comes close to matching it.
“You come into spring training, and you have that big goal to make it back to the World Series,” veteran third baseman Justin Turner said. “But you don’t just show up for the World Series — you’ve got to take the steps to get there, and this is the first step of being able to do that.”
If this one felt different, it was because it was the earliest clinch in this run of seven straight titles — coming after Game 146, with the Dodgers holding an NL-best 94-52 record. It came following a 7-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles, which featured right-hander Walker Buehler tossing seven shutout innings and the Dodgers bashing three homers, two of them by shortstop Corey Seager, to push their season total, already a league record, to 258.
“Everything we do going forward is to win 11 games in October,” said Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager for the past four division titles. “The question we’re all going to get asked is, are we going to let our guard down, lose our edge going into the postseason? That’s something I don’t expect from our team, and (Wednesday) we’re going to expect to win a baseball game.”
With the clincher behind them, the Dodgers now have some three weeks, ahead of Game 1 of the Division Series at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 3, in which to find answers to some of their pressing questions heading into the postseason:
Who, among candidates Hyun-Jin Ryu, Clayton Kershaw and Buehler, is their Game 1 starter? Should 21-year-old phenom shortstop/second baseman Gavin Lux, Baseball America’s minor league player of the year, make the postseason roster? Can converted starters Kenta Maeda, Julio Urias and Tony Gonsolin help build a dependable bridge to closer Kenley Jansen? And is Jansen, muddling through the worst season of his career, even the best choice to pitch the ninth inning?
And in the meantime, the Dodgers still have something to play for. They trail the New York Yankees by 1½ games and Houston by one game in the race for the majors’ best record and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. (On the NL side of the bracket, they led the Atlanta Braves by three games.) This is no small matter given the Dodgers’ 56-20 record at home.
“Just short of all-in,” Roberts said when asked how motivated the Dodgers would be to secure home-field advantage, over the opposite motivation to rest their regulars. “I think it’s certainly very important considering how we’ve played at home. But there’s still a cost in everything, and I think the main thing is keeping guys healthy, keeping guys sharp, and not trying to redline just to win by any means necessary.”
But those are all issues for another day. This moment is a perfect time to take a step back and appreciate what these Dodgers have accomplished.
Their seven straight division titles, assuming this year’s margin remains around its current 18½ games, will have come by an average of more than eight games over the second-place finisher. Only three players, Kershaw, Ryu and Jansen — have been with the franchise for all seven titles.
The glaring lack of a World Series title to validate this run, of course, looms large over this franchise, which hasn’t won it all since 1988. But this fall brings another opportunity, and it is worth pondering what a championship would do for the legacy of this group. With next month bringing the final World Series of the 2010s, the Dodgers are a championship away from inserting themselves into a team-of-the-decade debate.
There is a long way to go before the Dodgers can make their argument. But the only way to win the ultimate prize is to keep putting yourself in position to do so, and if the Dodgers keep spraying champagne in September, chances are they will eventually do so in the waning days of October.