Despite spending millions over the offseason, the Los Angeles Dodgers did not “break baseball” or have an “unfair” roster. Instead, they ended up as a flawed team with a poor bullpen, while the lineup — aside from the big names — was terribly inconsistent.
The Dodgers did not run away with the National League West; instead, the San Diego Padres fought for the division title till the bitter end. Los Angeles played decent baseball for the first two-thirds of the season, keeping themselves in the race for the NL West, though it was hardly dominant baseball.
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Things started clicking for the Dodgers in the final month of the regular season. On Sept. 7th, the Dodgers just lost two out of three games against the Baltimore Orioles on the road. After the series, Los Angeles was only one full game ahead of the Padres.
Despite the Dodgers losing the series against Baltimore, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts believes it was a turning point for the team’s season.
“I’ve learned that you’ve got to kind of give players grace at points during the season to appreciate the human side of it’s hard to play every game like it’s Game 7 in April, but know when to kind of turn it on,” Roberts said.
“I do think that in that series in Baltimore, we turned it on from that point on. Even losing that series two out of three to the Orioles, we still turned it on.”
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During the series against the O’s, Dodgers’ two-way star Shohei Ohtani pitched 3.2 shutout innings in a start, though the Dodgers ended up losing after reliever Tanner Scott — who struggled all season long — gave up a walk-off home run.
In the second game of the series, Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a no-hitter until his last batter, Jackson Holiday, hit a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
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Roberts pulled the Japanese pitcher, bringing in Blake Treinen and Scott, who coughed up three runs in relief, unable to get a single out and losing the game, which the Dodgers were winning 4-0 entering the bottom of the ninth.
The Dodgers won the third game of the series after Ohtani’s two-home run effort.
Despite how the series unfolded, Roberts believes he relayed a message during the series that turned the Dodgers’ season around.
“I think just giving everyone permission to let go of the prior, call it, five months of the year, the inconsistencies of play, offloading all that stuff, myself included, to then go from that point forward and to play like a team that’s going to the postseason, and how do we prepare to play like that,” he said.
“And it’s hard to do that when you carrying baggage of recency. And I think we were all guilty of the here-we-go type of thing in all facets of the game.”
After the Orioles series, the Dodgers won 14 out of 19 games in the regular season, 20 out of 26, including the postseason up to Game 1 of the NLCS.
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