LOS ANGELES — Mess around and find out.
MLB started offering a five-day break to the top two teams in each league before the 2022 postseason. The first two years, the Dodgers had one of those breaks and then flamed out in the first round, losing 3-1 to the San Diego Padres in 2022 and 3-0 to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The debate became whether a five-day break before the most important games of the season was a benefit or a challenge to be overcome – especially if that team wasn’t exactly pushed to the finish (as the Dodgers weren’t in 2022 or 2023).
The Dodgers brainstormed different ways to handle the bye break in 2024 and obviously overcame it to win the World Series title – but only after falling behind two games to one in the National League Division Series against the Padres.
The Dodgers are going to try it the other way this season. They will open a best-of-three Wild Card Series on Tuesday night against the Cincinnati Reds with just one day off to prepare.
“I guess when this team lost back-to-back DS’s against the Padres and D-backs, that was the narrative – that the bye week cooled us, them off,” said utility man Kiké Hernandez, who was with the Boston Red Sox in 2022. “Now, we don’t have an excuse.
“We did it to ourselves. We were very inconsistent throughout the year, and here we are.”
Indeed they did.
“Every season is not gonna go how you think it’s gonna go in spring training,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said.
In the past, teams have benefitted from not getting that five-day break and just rolling into the postseason. The Dodgers would be fine with that. They won 15 of their last 20 games during the regular season after going 22-32 over the two months before.
It was almost as if they had flipped a switch.
“I think so,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “Just understanding how much of the season was left, raising the level of play, the heightened focus. It’s stark. I guess I have a little more grace for the long baseball season. But yeah, you can just see – there’s no denying the way that we’re playing, understanding what’s at stake and the timing of it.”
It is one of the symptoms of a ‘World Series hangover’ – one of the factors that has led to no team repeating since the New York Yankees won three titles in a row from 1998-2000. Those games in April through August just don’t seem as important after you’ve tasted World Series champagne.
“Yeah, I think so,” Roberts said. “Just honestly speaking, guys get to a certain place of adrenaline and intensity that most don’t experience when you’re talking about the postseason and winning the World Series. It’s hard to simulate that any time outside of the stretch, stretch run or the postseason.
“That’s completely fair. At the end of the day, these guys are human beings. To try to manufacture that is just hard to do.”
Turning it on and off over the course of the season isn’t easy either. The Dodgers found that out in those past Octobers.
“You would kind of hope that we’ve flipped that switch earlier versus having to try to flip a switch in the middle of a series,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “I think we’ve dealt with that in the past where you try to flip that switch against a team that’s already been through the fire of a Wild Card Series. It’s really tough to do. Hopefully for us, we’ve been able to flip that switch in the last week or two and just carry that momentum into this series.”
Biding their time before slipping into postseason mode left the Dodgers far short of the “super team” projections of the spring. Several players fell short of their individual expectations. Talking about one of the most prominent players on that list – relief pitcher Tanner Scott – Roberts said “he potentially has the opportunity to make it all go away by showing his best in the postseason.”
Scott is not alone in that.
“I could spit out six or seven names pretty easily, and that’s the great thing about the postseason. Moments and opportunities present themselves and how you perform,” Roberts said.
“People remember those moments. And so we’ve got guys like that in our clubhouse right now. So, yeah, that’s kind of the hope and the messaging from me that nothing that these guys have done prior matters. It’s kind of the next four weeks and how we’re prepared mentally, physically, and to go out there and play our best baseball, individually, collectively.”