PHOENIX — 4 months later, it’s essentially the most grueling reminiscences which have additionally develop into essentially the most significant ones.
When the Dodgers gained the World Sequence final October, it set off a cathartic celebration all through the workforce and across the metropolis. Outdated postseason demons had been vanquished. A membership that had repeatedly fallen wanting expectations — the pandemic-shortened 2020 season apart — lastly returned to the top of the game. After a three-and-a-half decade look ahead to a full-season title, the Dodgers relished all the popularity that got here with their Fall Traditional defeat of the New York Yankees.
Trying again, nonetheless, essentially the most significant recollections for a lot of Dodger gamers and personnel have much less to do with the marketing campaign’s triumphant conclusion, and extra with the difficult highway they traversed to get there.
None extra so, maybe, than one storyline that didn’t develop into fully clear till after the mud had settled.
“We all wanted to win,” third baseman Max Muncy mentioned. “But we were all going through something.”
That one thing was a reference to the tenuous state of the workforce’s general well being — with giant swaths of the roster, gamers have famous in hindsight, taking part in at far lower than 100% through the membership’s run to a championship.
Accidents, after all, have been all the time a central theme within the Dodgers’ 2024 season.
The pitching workers was by no means totally wholesome, with absences wreaking havoc all year long and leaving the workforce shorthanded by the beginning of the postseason.
The arduous common season, which started per week early in South Korea and concluded with a division race that wasn’t settled till the final week of September, not often gave the lineup an opportunity to catch its breath.
And all through October, a number of extra health-related complications outlined the Dodgers’ run to a championship — most notably, Freddie Freeman’s well-documented battle with a severely sprained ankle and damaged rib cartilage, and the torn labrum Shohei Ohtani performed by on the finish of the World Sequence.
However behind the scenes, the Dodgers’ October damage issues have been much more pronounced than recognized on the time. Quietly, everybody from Muncy to Will Smith to Gavin Lux to Michael Kopech have been combating by their very own bodily limitations. And searching again, it has develop into one of many best factors of pleasure for members of final 12 months’s workforce.
Dodgers reliever Michael Kopech pitched in 10 playoff video games final October, tied for many on the workforce. However, he mentioned, he was coping with forearm irritation.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Instances)
“Baseball, it’s a battle of attrition,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned. “You lose players and guys are playing banged up. [Especially] when we started to then go through October, there are going to be things that are ailing and you’re dealing with. But I’m not surprised they found a way to get through it.”
One of many first shock revelations concerning the Dodgers’ October damage issues concerned Kopech, who recorded a few of the most necessary outs en path to the World Sequence title.
A midseason commerce deadline acquisition who instantly grew to become a trusted arm within the bullpen, Kopech’s 10 playoff appearances have been tied for many on the workforce. However, he mentioned final week, he was coping with forearm irritation that left him feeling “in the 60% range” health-wise.
“I think a lot of people look at the results of what you’re putting out there as how you feel,” mentioned Kopech, whose forearm problem solely grew to become public data as soon as stories surfaced in January that he possible wouldn’t begin the 2025 season on time due to its lingering results on his offseason.
“I was still able to throw 100 mph in the last days of the season, so that’s great,” Kopech added. “But it was a lot more effort to throw that hard, and it was a lot more intensity and masking things. I definitely wasn’t 100%. But … I was determined to figure it out.”
So, too, was Alex Vesia, one other high-leverage reliever who completed the playoffs lower than full power.
After feeling his facet cramp up within the Dodgers’ decisive Recreation 5 win over the San Diego Padres within the Nationwide League Division Sequence, medical doctors decided he had injured his intercostal muscle. An MRI examination confirmed there was no structural injury, however the issue was extreme sufficient that, had it been the common season, “I’m shut down for like 40 days or something,” he mentioned not too long ago.
As an alternative, Vesia and the membership’s medical workers created a plan to fast-track his return. The left-hander was left off the workforce’s NL Championship Sequence roster. However within the meantime, he went by intensive coaching room remedies, strengthening the areas round his damage sufficient to rejoin the workforce for the World Sequence; when he made 4 scoreless appearances and recorded a save in Recreation 2.
“We had a small window, but we made a plan, we stuck to it, and I think that’s why it worked out the way it did,” mentioned Vesia, who mentioned his facet had fully healed over the offseason.
One other prime bullpen arm, Brusdar Graterol, wasn’t as fortunate.
After pitching simply seven occasions within the common season due to shoulder and hamstring issues, Graterol was not accessible for the primary two rounds of the playoffs. He finally progressed sufficient to make the workforce’s World Sequence roster, pitching in three of the 5 video games to bolster the membership’s dwindling depth — which obtained even worse when yet one more reliever, Evan Phillips, sustained a tear in his rotator cuff through the NLCS that dominated him out for the Fall Traditional.
Weeks after the season, nonetheless, the Dodgers introduced that Graterol wanted labrum surgical procedure, one that can sideline him for at the least the primary half of this upcoming season.
“There were a lot of sacrifices,” Vesia mentioned.
The Dodgers’ lineup was no exception, even past Freeman’s ailing ankle and throbbing facet.
Lux, the workforce’s major second baseman, was restricted for a lot of the month by a hip flexor damage, but began in 11 playoff video games and delivered an important sacrifice fly within the Dodgers’ Recreation 5 World Sequence clincher at Yankee Stadium.
Shortstop Miguel Rojas performed in each the NLDS and World Sequence regardless of a tear in his adductor muscle. He not solely underwent surgical procedure within the offseason, but additionally developed an an infection that briefly delayed his winter coaching program.
Smith, who began all 16 postseason video games behind the plate, had been battling an undisclosed bone bruise on his ankle since June — a state of affairs that wasn’t publicly revealed till this spring, when continued ankle discomfort compelled him to overlook the opening week of Cactus League motion.
“You obviously trash your body,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy mentioned of the bodily toll the playoffs took on him and his teammates. “But we were all doing that.”
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Instances)
At third base, Muncy was yet one more well being query mark. Within the common season, he missed three months with a extreme indirect pressure and displaced rib. Whereas he was capable of return to motion by mid-August, he mentioned his facet continued to present him issues all through the postseason.
At the same time as he broke an MLB postseason file by reaching base 12 straight occasions within the NLCS, he mentioned merely taking the sector required day by day pregame doses of pain-relieving medicine. By the point the Dodgers gained the pennant, he reached some extent the place he couldn’t even take regular batting apply through the week off main as much as the World Sequence.
“You obviously trash your body,” Muncy mentioned. “But we were all doing that.”
Within the ultimate days of October, the Dodgers encountered one final medical saga.
In Recreation 2 of the World Sequence, Ohtani injured his shoulder sliding into second base. Although, on the time, the workforce solely publicly described the analysis as {a partially} dislocated shoulder, the NL MVP winner had additionally torn his left labrum. For a quick second, it appeared his season is likely to be executed.
However then, throughout a workforce exercise a day later, Ohtani not solely knowledgeable his teammates he’d be good to go for the remainder of the sequence, however displayed bodily perseverance that even Freeman — who was present process 4 hours of day by day therapy to push by his limitations — may hardly consider.
“When you pop your shoulder out like he did, you usually can’t raise your arm above your head,” Freeman mentioned. “And I watched him walk in on workout day in New York and raise his arm completely over his head.”
With amusing, Freeman added: “I had to touch him before Game 3 to make sure he was real … I was like, ‘How is this man doing this?’”
In hindsight, such vignettes are what have made the Dodgers’ World Sequence triumph so rewarding; serving to forge eternal bonds between the gamers from final 12 months’s workforce, and infuse their reminiscences of final 12 months’s October run with an additional layer of significant significance.
“You’ve gone through the wears and tears of a full season already, you’re feeling it, and then you have another month where you’re competing to win while you’re banged up,” Kopech mentioned. “Everything is a little risk versus reward. But the higher the risk, usually the higher the reward.”
