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The Dodgers are establishing themselves as the best team in baseball

The Dodgers are establishing themselves as the best team in baseball

NEW YORK – You guessed it, right?

An improbable season in which the Dodgers posted the best record in baseball even as the injured list grew, ended with an improbable victory Wednesday night in the Big Apple.

According to the people who look up such things on Fox Sports, no team has ever overcome a five-inning deficit to earn a decisive berth in the World Series. By the end of the second inning of Game 5, the Dodgers had a 5-0 deficit, starter Jack Flaherty was tired in the evening after facing just nine batters, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was probably already mentally preparing to pitch Game 6 against the Yankees on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

Step aside, Yoshinobu. Your next duty will be Friday, OK, but it will be a parade through the streets of Los Angeles

Yes, The Dodgers are World Series champions. Or perhaps they could be described as world champions, a team consisting of representatives from Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. (Kiké Hernández literally wrapped himself in the Puerto Rican flag during the on-field celebration.) And if you want to consider representing the World Baseball Classic, you can add Canada, even though Freddie Freeman was born and raised in Orange County.

They got here even by using 40 pitchers during the season, having pitchers on the injured list for two full starting rotations, and losing Max Muncy and Mookie Betts to injury for significant periods of the season while Freeman was hobbled by an ankle injury in the first two postseason series and Shohei Ohtani, who dealt with a partially dislocated shoulder in the final three games of the match.

(This, after Ohtani – allegedly distracted by an investigation into his gambling activities and an eventual embezzlement involving former translator Ippei Mizuhara that was revealed during the opening series in Seoul – ignored the distraction and had one of the greatest individual seasons in baseball history, becomes a founding member of the 50-50 club.)

In some ways, this championship story was implausible due to recent history, two straight first-round losses made fans a bit intimidated, and the slight rotation in the early pitching also dampened expectations.

As it turned out, one of those starters, Walker Buehler, channeled his inner Orel Hershiser and ended Wednesday’s ninth inning, and the Dodgers used all of their leverage-decreasing resources to hold on for a 7-6 victory at Yankee Stadium that ended this World Series game in five matches.

What did the late Vin Scully say after the out-of-nowhere home run in 1988 that led the Dodgers to their last full championship season before that event? “In a year that was so unlikely, the impossible happened.”

Can we suggest that maybe there is an invisible hand that guides these things? In 1988, the Game 1 victory was decided by Kirk Gibson’s limping home run, his only advantage in the World Series, and the Dodgers defeated the mighty Oakland A’s in five games. In ’24, The first game was decided by Freeman’s grand slam in the 10th inningand while this is not an exact comparison, it was a similar lightning bolt, as anyone who was in the stadium for both home runs can attest.

And yes, the Dodgers defeated the Yankees in five games, and perhaps, in retrospect, the ending of Game 1 had a deflationary effect as well.

One more similarity between the two full-season titles: In 1988, the Dodgers were short of players due to injuries and had an urgent need to win the World Series title in five innings before anyone else got injured. In 1924, a cane seemingly held together by chewing gum and ironing wire somehow made it to the end. It hasn’t always been pretty, and there have been times in the postseason – including Tuesday’s Game 4 – when manager Dave Roberts has had to marshal his resources, choosing to sacrifice the present in pursuit of his ultimate goal.

It worked.

But as improbable as one may count, the Dodgers are truly the best team in baseball, and in 1988, it couldn’t be proven until the very end. This team finished the regular season with the best record in the game. They fought for first-round elimination against San Diego – which, as it turned out, was the toughest team they faced in the postseason and could very easily have been a contender for the second-best team in baseball (but, sorry, Padre fans, no parade).

Then they rolled through New York eliminating the Mets in six and the Yankees in five.

“There are a lot of fingerprints all over this victory,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said during a postgame on-field ceremony. “The scouting department, player development… there are a lot of people. This is a special group.”

Game 5 showcased several reasons why the Dodgers are the best team in the game. They are relentless on offense and take full advantage of every moment the Yankees open the door. Two errors and a failure by Yankees starter Gerrit Cole to cover first base on Betts’ pitch in right field contributed to a five-run fifth inning that ended in a tie, and catcher interference helped lead to a two-run eighth inning that ended with the Yankees leading 6:5 and they decided the match.

And when closing time came, after Blake Treinen, the last reliever Roberts had at his disposal, had given him 2⅓ innings, Buehler went 1-2-3 in the ninth, punctuating the evening by striking out former teammate Alex Verdugo.

“In the seventh round, he just said he was going to be available,” Roberts said. “No… I saw it even coming into the game, but obviously as the game went on we had to maintain the level of play. Our guys were fighting, so I felt like I was all-in at that point.

Perhaps the things that happened along the way – from the first series in Seoul to Mizuhara’s discoveries – strengthened the spines of these players and contributed to the cohesion that made it all possible.

“I think sometimes when things like this happen, there’s just a group of guys that come together,” Freeman said. who was named World Series MVP. “When you start supporting a teammate in his first year like we did, for (Ohtani) to go out there and have the greatest season ever, (it was) pretty special.

“It seems like we’ve hit every possible speed bump this year. To overcome what we did as a group of guys is special. This is what we start every spring training with to win the championship. I think that’s the hardest thing in sports because you never know what’s going to happen. I mean, we were down 2-1 in the NLDS and could have easily gotten away with it. To come back and win those two games and continue to play the way we did, it’s just a special group of guys.

During Wednesday’s pregame briefing, Roberts noted that this was an incredibly cohesive team and “when you’re around people that you care about and believe in, you’re just better together.”

He later clarified.

“We’ve been through a lot, but I have to say we still have the best record in the entire baseball league this year,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, but our guys fought every day and played the right way, played to win.

“There was a lot of talent shortage due to injuries. A lot of young players get their teeth cut, which is good. But one thing is, we just kept going. I don’t think that even after the season, no one chose us… to get out of the first series. The fact that we’re going to go out there, fight, scratch, claw and win 11 games in October is a credit to our guys.

And yes, The long-awaited parade will take place on Friday. Perhaps they will be able to invite some of the boys from the champions from 2020 and even 1988.

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