Dodgers’ narrative flips with 2024 World Series title, through past playoff failures and discounted 2020 win

NEW YORK — The Los Angeles Dodgers are World Series champions in a full season for the first time since 1988. We’ll get to that qualifier in a second, but these Dodgers wanted to emphasize how special this championship is. 

Sure, there will be many who focus on their monster payroll and that certainly helped, but this is a team that was bounced by a Wild Card in 2019, in the NLCS in 2021 by a Wild Card again in 2022 and by, yes, a Wild Card in 2023. They had to hear about how 2020 wasn’t a “real” title. Corey Seager — who was on the Dodgers in 2020 — reportedly got fired up about finally winning a “real” title with the Rangers in 2023.

On Wednesday night, surrounded by champagne and streamers, none of that should have mattered. But it did.

“It’s hard to win a championship regardless of what your team is like,” manager Dave Roberts said after Game 5. “It’s hard, and there’s a reason why there hasn’t been a repeat champion since the Yankees did it. It clearly speaks to the difficulty, the playoff format, all that stuff.

“I’m going to be in the moment, and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of this one. I’m sure there’s no asterisk on this one.”

Amid the hugging family members and screaming with delight and tears of joy, the Dodgers got a monkey off their back Wednesday night. It wasn’t easy, to the point that a team with a ton of starting pitching depth ended up having to piece together bullpen games in the playoffs. There were no snide remarks about COVID or a shortened season. There was no asterisk. They had done it.

“I don’t think baseball has ever seen a team that has bullpened its way like this. It had never happened in the playoffs,” Blake Treinen said after the game. “It’s a testament to the hard work, the time that [team president Andrew] Friedman put together. Look at the guys down there right now that weren’t even on the team to start the season and have huge roles for us. I would’ve been the one to tell you there will never be a bullpenning team to win the World Series. I am eating crow.” 

Remember, the Dodgers finished the season with a whopping seven starting pitchers on the injured list. It’s almost unfathomable that a team could survive that and still win the World Series. 

“We did go through a lot, but I’ll say we still had the best record in all of baseball this year,” Roberts said. “It wasn’t easy, but our guys fought and played every day the right way, played to win. There was a lot of back filling on talent because of injury, a lot of young players cut their teeth, which is good. But one thing is that we just kept going. Even in the postseason, I don’t think anyone had us picked. I don’t think they had us picked to get out of the first series.

“For us to go out there and fight and scratch and claw and win 11 games in October, that’s a credit to our guys.”

Due to the pitching injuries, yeah, many people did not predict them to win the World Series — though I’d push back on Roberts claiming no one picked them — allowing the Dodgers to declare that everyone counted them out, one of the favorite internal motivators of athletes everywhere. Roberts also said it while hoisting the World Series trophy. 

“A lot of people were trying to find ways to discredit us,” Treinen said. “It was fair analysis; our starters have been through the ringer.

“Freddie [Freeman] hurts his ankle last series of the year, he was phenomenal in the World Series for us. [Shohei] Ohtani hurts himself on second base sliding and ends up playing here.” 

On top of that, an enduring storyline for these Dodgers was how often they’d failed in the non-COVID year playoffs. And the COVID year title has been discounted again and again. It was a 60-game season! Teams didn’t leave their regions! There were seven-inning doubleheaders and no fans in the stands and neutral-site playoff games and everything else that came with that godforsaken season!

I’ve done plenty of it myself, somewhat dismissing it by using stats that say stuff like “in a full season” to leave 2020 out. It was just different. 

And when you pile that on top of the rest of their ledger, with winning the division 11 of the last 12 years and making the NLCS in the other one, what really stuck out to so many people was the playoff failures. Their legacy was choking, not winning.

The 2024 playoff run should change that, even if the Dodgers scoff at the notion. 

“I don’t care about legacies,” Clayton Kershaw said after the game. “We do our best to try to win games. When we lose, it’s not fun and when we win, it’s awesome. That’s the way baseball is. More than anything, you gotta understand how hard this is. Everybody just writes it off like we’re supposed to be here and that’s not the case. It takes a lot to get here, regardless of the talent level. Everybody just assumes we’re gonna show up and win 100 games and the World Series, but you saw tonight it takes every last guy.”

Kershaw is spot on there. The nonsensical focus on payroll totally ignores how many under-the-radar moves the Dodgers needed here and how many injuries they overcame. Through it all, they changed the narrative that they can’t win a title that counts.