Considering their sustained success, you might already consider these Dodgers a dynasty. They’ve made the playoffs 13 straight seasons, won their division 12 of the last 13 years, captured World Series titles in two of the last five seasons and are about to play in the Fall Classic for the fifth time in nine years.
But on the precipice of making history, Kiké Hernández isn’t ready to make that declaration just yet.
At least, not until the Dodgers finish what they set out to do this spring after walloping the Yankees in five games in last year’s World Series and returning a group with even more talent.
“You don’t really talk about dynasties when teams lose the World Series,” Hernández said in the aftermath of sweeping the Brewers last Friday. “To do that, we’ve got to win it. If we do win it, and we go back-to-back like I think we can, we can potentially talk about a dynasty.”
No Major League Baseball team has repeated as a champion since the 1998-2000 Yankees took home hardware in three straight seasons.
The Dodgers, on paper, looked capable of breaking that drought after another offseason of exorbitant spending that restocked their already stacked roster. They entered this year as the favorites to win it all again after adding the top starting pitcher on the market in Blake Snell, the top reliever on the market in Tanner Scott (in addition to Kirby Yates) and the most sought-after international free agent in Roki Sasaki, among a litany of moves. They also brought back Teoscar Hernandez, Kiké Hernández and Blake Treinen, key cogs from last year’s run.
(Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Back in February, manager Dave Roberts laid out the potential history ahead for the group and how special it would be to accomplish something that hadn’t been done in 25 years.
“I brought it up I think on the first day of spring training,” Roberts said, “and haven’t talked about it since. I think it’s one of those added pressures that I don’t think I want to take on, that I don’t think our players need to take on.”
Especially with the way the unexpected slog of a summer unfolded in Los Angeles.
The Dodgers, a team many expected to challenge for the all-time wins record, went 25-27 in July and August, at one point losing their grasp on the NL West lead in the process. They were 35-30 after the break. Injuries decimated their rotation. Their bullpen was in shambles. Scott, Yates and Treinen all had ERAs well north of 4.00. Mookie Betts was mired in his worst offensive season. Teoscar Hernández regressed from last season’s bounceback. After starting the season 8-0, the Dodgers were 70-64 over their next 134 games. It was a team that at times looked disinterested in the marathon, despite always recognizing the potential.
(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Sometimes, they would address those possibilities in their group chat. In the low points, it served as motivation. “We got a really good opportunity to do something really big,” Miguel Rojas recalled one text reading. “Not just for us, but for the city, and for the organization, for baseball.”
Even if Roberts didn’t address the history again, the players knew the expectation.
“Our goal is to win the World Series,” said Max Muncy. “That’s what we expect. Anything less than that is a failure. For us, showing up to spring this year it was, ‘Hey, we need to repeat.’ It wasn’t like we wanted to repeat. It was like, ‘Hey, we need to repeat.’ Obviously, the season went the way it went. It’s a long season. It’s a lot of games. We dealt with a lot. But we always knew what we had in the clubhouse. We always knew what we had on the field. Now, you’re starting to see it.”
It took a late-season surge — during which they won 15 of their final 20 games, shortly after Roberts held a team meeting in Baltimore in an attempt to strike some positivity into a scuffling group — for the Dodgers to get to 93 wins.
Through it all, they expressed confidence that they still had the pieces to get where they envisioned. They ultimately held off the Padres to win the NL West by three games, despite compiling their lowest win total over a full season since 2018.
“We talked about it in September when there were a lot of questions about whether us winning 93 games was a disappointment,” said president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. “Our strong feeling was that we were going to be going into October with the most talented team we’ve ever had.”
It has played out that way.
(Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
The Dodgers entered the postseason hot, sparked by a return to form from Betts and a return to health across the roster, particularly in a rotation that has been the best in baseball since getting whole again in August.
In October, they’ve trampled every foe in their way, looking every bit the juggernaut everyone expected to see back in February. The Dodgers have now won 24 of their last 30 games dating back to Sept. 7, including a 9-1 mark in the playoffs, as they get set to see the Blue Jays in the World Series.
“I think as a group, when you go through what we’ve gone through, especially coming down from behind against San Diego last year — that series, it was only five games, but it felt like a 162-game season — you get this feeling of like, ‘Nothing can go wrong. We’re not losing,’” said Kiké Hernández. “Yoshinobu [Yamamoto] dijo una gran frase antes de su último partido: “Perder no es una opción”. Es similar a la mentalidad que tenemos como equipo”.
Esa mentalidad los ha devuelto al escenario más importante del deporte. Son los primeros campeones de la Serie Mundial en regresar al Clásico de Otoño la temporada siguiente desde la temporada 2008-09. Filis.
Con eso, resurgió el discurso sobre “dinastía”.
Mientras que algunos jugadores lo definen por la cantidad de títulos ganados, otros se centran más en la capacidad de un equipo para competir año tras año, algo que los Dodgers han hecho mejor que casi cualquier franquicia.
“No me voy a basar en cuántos campeonatos vas a ganar”, me dijo Rojas. “Me baso en lo consistente que has sido hasta este momento. Pero siento que eso no importa. Ahora mismo, todo lo que queremos hacer es ganar la Serie Mundial. Ese es el único buen resultado que obtendremos después de este año”.
“Creo que sólo porque estuve en esto, sé lo difícil que es. Realmente no pienso en dinastías”, dijo Betts. “Realmente no sé lo que implica. Pero supongo que si estás pensando en ir a la postemporada, obviamente tener la oportunidad de ganar la Serie Mundial año tras año, supongo que eso calificaría como una especie de dinastía. Pero no sé cómo llamarlo. Así que simplemente voy a disfrutar cualquier modo en el que estemos”.
Los 13 viajes consecutivos de los Dodgers a la postemporada empataron a los Yankees de 1995-07 y sólo estuvieron detrás de los de 1991-05. corajudo (14 consecutivos) para la racha más larga en Grandes Ligas historia. Esos equipos de los Bravos ganaron sólo un título de Serie Mundial durante ese lapso. Mientras tanto, los Dodgers tienen la oportunidad de ganar su segundo y tercer triunfo consecutivo en seis temporadas, un logro que, según Roberts, los colocaría en el “Monte Rushmore de las organizaciones deportivas”.
“Simplemente ganar un juego es difícil”, dijo Freddie Freeman. “Entonces, la dinastía, creo que si puedes conseguir tres en cinco o seis años, supongo que se podría decir que es una. Pero creo que es una victoria sostenida que los Dodgers han tenido durante un largo período de tiempo y luego la solidificaron con un par de campeonatos, sí, supongo que se podría llamar a esto, si lo hacemos, una dinastía moderna”.
Ha habido otras carreras dinásticas por equipos durante el último cuarto de siglo. el astros Ganó dos Series Mundiales y ganó otras dos entre 2017 y 2022. el Gigante Ganaron la Serie Mundial tres veces en un lapso de cinco años a principios de la década de 2010, aunque se perdieron los playoffs en las otras dos temporadas durante ese lapso. el Medias Rojas Ganó dos Series Mundiales en un lapso de cuatro años entre 2004 y 2007.
Pero ninguno de esos equipos repitió como campeón, y ninguno de ellos experimentó el mismo tipo de éxito permanente que estos Dodgers, quienes ahora se encontraron de nuevo donde esperaban estar: en la cima del deporte, con la oportunidad de cimentar su estatus dinástico.
““El legado, la charla sobre la dinastía, mucho de eso, creo, es para los otros muchachos que no están jugando y para que debatan. Nuestro trabajo es traer esos temas a la mesa y tenemos la oportunidad de hacerlo”, dijo Roberts.
Rowan Kavner es un escritor de MLB para FOX Sports. Anteriormente cubrió a los LA Dodgers, LA Clippers y Dallas Cowboys. Rowan, graduado de LSU, nació en California, se crió en Texas y luego regresó a la costa oeste en 2014. Síguelo en X en @RowanKavner.
