DODGERS TAKE FIFTH
Latest NL West title isn’t the ultimate goal, but it’s still something to celebrate
The Dodgers finally popped the champagne corks on their National League West title Friday. And not a moment too soon for manager Dave Roberts, who has looked like a man who needed a stiff drink for a couple of weeks now.
Roberts’ team is limping toward the postseason with a battered bullpen, a couple of banged-up players in the middle of his batting order and the league’s worst record in September. But the celebration after the clinching 4-2 win over the San Francisco Giants was anything but subdued, with the jubilant Dodgers bouncing atop one another in the center of the Dodger Stadium diamond.
The Dodgers have been here before, of course. This year’s division title is their fifth in as many seasons and their seventh since 2008. No other team has won as many over that span.
The Dodgers are the first team to win five consecutive NL West titles and the first MLB team to win five straight division titles since the Philadelphia Phillies in
the NL East from 2007-11.
But none of those Dodgers titles have led to a World Series appearance, so the real challenge for Roberts’ team was beginning about at the same time the team was bouncing on the field.
“It’s a special group of guys,” Roberts said. “They never wavered, stayed focused. There are certain victories that you have to celebrate. And we’re going to celebrate tonight.
“We have a lot of work to do. This is only the beginning.”
The last time the Dodgers went to (and won) the World Series, in 1988, four of the players in Friday’s lineup —including Cody Bellinger, whose tiebreaking three-run home run in the third inning set an NL record — hadn’t even been born. And Roberts was still in high school.
Before the game the Dodgers and the announced crowd of 51,159 held a birthday celebration for the team’s last World Series manager; Tommy Lasorda is 90.
The Giants had a 1-0 lead before the candles on Lasorda cake had gone out, with leadoff hitter Gorkys Hernandez bunting for a single, stealing second and scoring on Buster Posey’s one-out single to center.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, didn’t get their first baserunner against San Francisco starter Jeff Samardzija (9-15) until Logan Forsythe doubled with one out in the third. One pitch later Rich Hill drove Forsythe in with a double, his first extra-base hit since 2007, to tie the score.
The tie didn’t last long, though, with Bellinger blasting a mammoth three-run shot, his 39th of the year, into the right-field pavilion later in the inning. The blast also broke a tie in the record book with Wally Berger and Frank Robinson for home runs by an NL rookie.
Hill (11-8) wobbled a bit with the lead, giving up two hits and walking a batter over the next two innings. But a double play got him out of a jam in the fourth, allowing him to turn a threerun advantage over to his relievers in the seventh.
Tony Watson, Josh Fields and Kenley Jansen took it from there, with Jansen allowing a solo home run to Pablo Sandoval to start the ninth before striking out the next three hitters.
Roberts said the next goal is to finish the season with baseball’s best regularseason record, which would guarantee it home-field advantage in the postseason.
“We’ve had a great season,” said Roberts who, as a player, had a key role in helping the Boston Red Sox break an 86-year World Series drought in 2004. “We still have a good opportunity to get some momentum going in the postseason. But to be quite honest, the regular season and the postseason, there’s no parallel.
“The numbers speak to it. Every year’s different, every team’s different.”