On the darkest night time of their season final week, the Dodgers didn’t linger of their hushed house clubhouse.
The crew had simply been blown out in Sport 2 of the Nationwide League Division Sequence. They’d misplaced their cool (and watched their house crowd do the identical) in a 10-2 rout to the San Diego Padres. However quite than dwell on the catastrophe, they shortly packed team-branded duffel luggage and boarded a constitution bus ready out within the car parking zone.
With their season on the road, they had been headed to San Diego.
And, this time, they determined as a crew to all journey collectively.
Dodgers Max Muncy and Kiké Hernández rejoice after the crew beat the Padres and received the NLDS collection on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions)
“For as long as I’ve been here, we’ve never taken a team bus to San Diego, ever,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy mentioned. “And that’s not a bad thing by any means. But us saying, ‘We’re all gonna ride a bus down there, no families, nothing else, just us on a bus,’ It was great.”
And because the Dodgers ready to open their NL Championship Sequence in opposition to the New York Mets on Sunday, it served as one of many many little examples that finally helped them advance.
Getting into the playoffs, the Dodgers tried to be completely different of their postseason course of, with a player-driven emphasis on cliche traits like togetherness and crew unity producing a extra resilient, combative mindset.
In the course of the previous few seasons, the Dodgers have lacked such components as soon as they’ve reached October. In NLDS eliminations in 2022 and 2023, their incapacity to conjure a heightened stage of depth seemingly contributed to stunningly early exits.
“We haven’t had that edge,” Muncy mentioned. “We haven’t had that attitude.”
So, as they launched into a third-straight postseason that started with an ungainly first-round bye week, gamers brainstormed methods to keep away from that pitfall once more.
The method began throughout the closing week of the common season, when Muncy, catcher Will Smith and shortstop Miguel Rojas concocted a plan to carry crew watch events at Dodger Stadium throughout the wild-card spherical; aiming to not solely scout potential NLDS opponents as a bunch, but in addition spend extra of their week off in each other’s presence.
“I think just talking with some of the other guys, the leaders, it was, ‘How can we stay in a rhythm?’ ” Smith mentioned. “It’s hard to come out of a rhythm in baseball. We’re playing every day and all of a sudden we get a week off. So how can we stay in rhythm? Be at the field for a decent amount of time like we do in the season.”
It additionally bled into the best way the Dodgers dealt with their crew exercises throughout the five-day break, with gamers agreeing to remain on the ballpark till the top of every session.
“I think a lot of guys maybe got a little bit complacent with the bye week the last couple years,” Hudson mentioned, utilizing the phrase “informal” to explain the temper of their 2022 and 2023 preparation. “We came in this year and tried to make sure we didn’t do that again.”
Concepts for change, Muncy mentioned, not solely originated within the clubhouse, however had been introduced by gamers to front-office officers.
“What we did for the five days off, everything was constructed by the players,” Muncy mentioned. “Instead of us saying, ‘What does the organization want us to do? What are we going to do for that?’ It was the players saying, ‘No, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re going to do things as a team.’ That’s been 100% player-driven.”
The bus trip to San Diego grew to become one other prime instance.
Usually, when the Dodgers head south for highway video games in opposition to the Padres, most gamers drive down Interstate 5 themselves with their households. Whereas the crew does supply a bus for these cautious of battling site visitors, “not a lot of people take it,” Kiké Hernández mentioned.
However, in a postseason all about doing issues in another way, even one thing as small as a extra unified journey schedule proved to have profound team-wide results.
Fairly than stew on the Sport 2 loss individually, the Dodgers’ trip final week reworked into “a party bus for two hours,” Hernández recalled with amusing.
Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy (13) celebrates on second base after hitting a 3rd inning double in Sport 4 of the NLDS at Petco Park.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
“Especially,” he added, “when the driver is hauling ass and we make it to San Diego in an hour, 40 [minutes].”
To Muncy, it grew to become one thing of a turning level within the collection.
“We needed that,” he mentioned, “to help us get over that shellacking we took in Game 2.”
The Dodgers didn’t win Sport 3, however their near-comeback from an early five-run deficit showcased some struggle they’d been lacking up to now.
Earlier than Sport 4, their new method was summed up in a blunt rallying cry delivered by Hernández.
“F— them all,” the 33-year-old repeatedly instructed his teammates.
“That’s the attitude we’ve had here,” Muncy added. “It’s just kind of who we’ve been this year.”
Two shutout wins later, the Dodgers clinched their first NLCS look since 2021. And because the crew celebrated with a Champagne bathe within the clubhouse, their internally stoked fireplace was evident in a string of expletive-filled solutions.
“We have a lot of ‘F U’ in us,” Hernández mentioned. “We’re all here together for one reason and one thing and one thing only. And that’s to win the World Series.”
To do this, the Dodgers might want to maintain these flames burning of their collection in opposition to the Mets.
In contrast to the NLDS, when the Padres had been the favored choose amongst on-line and tv pundits, the Dodgers at the moment are the consensus — or, a minimum of, betting — favorites to win the league championship collection and advance to the Fall Traditional.
In previous years, it’s the sort of scenario during which they’ve failed to satisfy the second. This time, nevertheless, they’re hoping their newfound edge can fight an analogous collapse.
“We remember the last two early exits,” Hudson mentioned. “And we want to put that behind us.”
“Usually, when people are in it together,” Hernández added, “good things tend to happen.”
