TORONTO — They didn’t come charging out of the dugout. They didn’t mob each other with a dogpile by the mound.
When the Dodgers received the Nationwide League pennant final week, their on-field celebration hardly appeared any completely different than regular. What could be a frenzied second of accomplishment for others, they appeared to deal with as nearly routine.
“The celebration wasn’t even there,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas stated, “because everybody is consumed with winning a World Series.”
“That,” he added, “is the only celebration that we want to really have.”
This has been the Dodgers’ ethos all 12 months lengthy. They knew they had been on the precipice of historical past, attempting to develop into MLB’s first repeat champion in a quarter-century. They knew they had been enjoying for a bigger legacy, attempting to cement a modern-day dynasty with the franchise’s third title within the final six seasons. However they not often really vocalized it to at least one one other. They tried to maintain such historic stakes in perspective.
“The legacy, dynasty talk, a lot of that is meant for other people who aren’t playing,” supervisor Dave Roberts stated. “Let them have those debates.”
“Very few people have a chance to do something as great as this organization has a chance to do,” reliever Blake Treinen added. “But it’s not like we have a huge team huddle and are like, ‘This is what we’re doing. This is all we’re worried about.’ It’s just in our DNA.”
Treinen is one in every of six gamers who, if the Dodgers win this 12 months’s World Collection towards the Toronto Blue Jays, could have contributed to all three current titles (Will Smith, Max Muncy, Kiké Hernández, Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw are the others).
This week, through the staff’s six-day break between the tip of the NLCS final Friday and the World Collection opener this Friday, Treinen sat down at his locker at Dodger Stadium, took a second to mirror on the season, then had a considerably shocking epiphany.
“This doesn’t even feel like the season is almost over,” he thought to himself. “It feels like it’s just starting.”
It helps clarify why the Dodgers had been by no means crushed by the stress of chasing a dynasty this 12 months. How they adopted up an underwhelming common season with a dominant 9-1 postseason march again to the Fall Traditional.
Being right here, Treinen stated, “kinda feels natural.”
“When you’re a Dodger,” he famous, “it’s just part of what you expect.”
It has been lately, not less than, because the membership started amassing star expertise in a method the remainder of the game merely couldn’t match.
Betts grew to become the primary marquee exterior addition when the Dodgers acquired him in a commerce from the Boston Purple Sox in 2020 — again when the staff was nonetheless attempting to interrupt a three-decade title drought. At that time, they’d already constructed a juggernaut with largely homegrown expertise. They’d reached the World Collection twice within the earlier three years. They usually hoped an MVP-winning famous person of his caliber may assist take them excessive.
Betts did, enjoying a key position in that 2020 title staff.
And within the years that adopted, he felt the group’s urgency for extra solely continued to construct, as Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell additionally walked by the door.
“You go get guys [like that], I mean, that kind of lets you know where the team is,” Betts stated. “You can kind of look up and know that the window you’re in is really important, and you really need to win now.”
To take action, nonetheless, Betts famous a sure mindset that has enveloped the clubhouse, an understanding that “you have to take it one day at a time, you gotta just win one at a time.”
“Eventually, you look up at the end of that window and you’ve taken care of business,” Betts stated. “But if you don’t take care of one day at a time, then there’s no way to get to where you want to get to.”
That was key to the Dodgers’ second current championship final 12 months, after they navigated an arduous postseason path that included two early elimination video games towards the San Diego Padres and a patchwork pitching plan that threatened to implode at any time.
It was wanted once more this summer season, because the membership grinded by a 93-win marketing campaign (its fewest in a full season since 2018) that was marred by repeated accidents and roster-wide underperformances (together with from Betts himself throughout a first-half hitting hunch).
“For us, it’s being in the moment, taking care of business,” Roberts stated. “Then at the end of the season, you can look back.”
That doesn’t imply the Dodgers — who’re attempting to hitch the Yankees, Athletics, Purple Sox, Cardinals and Giants because the sixth MLB franchise to win three titles in a six-year span — didn’t acknowledge the chance in entrance of them this 12 months.
On the primary day of spring coaching, Roberts centered his message to the membership on the historic significance this season would maintain. In passing conversations over the course of the 12 months, gamers would typically remind one another “let’s win another one, let’s win another,” Treinen recalled. Muncy stated the staff’s inner perception was that “we need to repeat this year,” as a result of “that’s how good we felt like we were.”
And at low factors through the membership’s second-half slide, Rojas stated this week, the staff’s group textual content chat would sometimes embody messages alongside the strains of: “We got a really good opportunity to do something really big. Not just for us, but for the city, and for the organization, for baseball.”
“I think that’s one of the things that kept us going and motivated,” Rojas added. “It’s something we really want to accomplish.”
In fact, mileage varies on such a mentality.
Kershaw, essentially the most defining face of this period of Dodgers baseball, batted away a dynasty-related query Thursday by professing, “I don’t care about all that,” as a substitute selecting to concentrate on simply how far the group has are available in his 18-year profession.
“It’s a really impressive thing to be on one end of it,” he stated, reflecting again on a time playoff appearances had been sporadic and cash was scarce underneath former proprietor Frank McCourt, “and get to see where it is now,” when postseason journeys have develop into an annual prevalence and the membership’s present Guggenheim possession group has set payroll data.
“It’s come a very long way,” he added. “It’s built to last.”
Muncy supplied the same perspective, arguing that the staff’s success over the past 13 years (together with 12 division titles, 5 pennants and 5 100-win campaigns to go together with 13 consecutive playoff appearances) “has to count for something” in any discourse concerning the legacy of the staff.
“The culture we’ve created, to me that’s been everything,” Muncy stated. “I feel like that on its own is its own dynasty.”
Nonetheless, Muncy acknowledged {that a} true dynasty label will doubtless require a 3rd title.
“They always say in other sports you have to win three titles to be a dynasty,” he stated. “I don’t know if that’s true. But we have the chance to do it.”
Freeman echoed that for all of the “sustained winning the Dodgers have done for so long,” profitable a title this week would push them throughout the brink.
“Yeah, I guess you can call this, if we do do it, a modern-day dynasty,” he stated.
That doesn’t imply the Dodgers will probably be altering their mindset this week. As they’ve accomplished all 12 months, they’re embracing this chance for historical past with out fixating on the reward that awaits.
“The goal is to win as many as possible while this group is together,” Treinen stated. “So you just pinch yourself and consider yourself blessed that an organization put you on the roster to do it.”
