TORONTO — Dave Roberts said it to the crowd after the Dodgers had swept Milwaukee in the National League Championship Series:
“Before this season they were saying the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”
Saturday night, this ruining baseball business was tough, time-consuming and tense. But evidently, in light of their 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series, the National Pastime will never be the same.
Kidding.
But if you want to refer to these Dodgers as a dynasty, as the first repeat World Series champions in 25 years, winners of three in six years and participants in five World Series over the last decade … who on earth can argue at this point?
And for all of their offensive woes over the last week, especially with men in scoring position, the way they stole this one was classic in itself.
The Jays were five outs away from their first championship in 32 years. The fans’ pent up emotions were spilling over, with a 4-2 lead and the giddy anticipation of a parade of their very own.
Then Max Muncy hit a solo home run in the eighth to make it a one-run game. And the unlikeliest of souls, Miguel Rojas, hit his first of the postseason with one out in the ninth to tie the game, and the champagne in the Toronto clubhouse remained on ice.
“Miggy Ro – I talk about the game honors you, and right there the game honored him,” Roberts said. “He does things the right way and he deserved that moment. … We were going to play 27 outs. Obviously, it doesn’t look great in that moment, but I trust him to take the at-bat, and he got a pitch that he could handle and hit the biggest hit he’s ever had in his life.”
And then Will Smith put himself in the pantheon of World Series heroes. His second home run of the postseason, with two outs in the 11th inning, was a shot down the left field line that officially traveled 366 feet but undoubtedly reverberated three time zones away, and probably was felt throughout baseball.
(Consider the symmetry. Smith wears No. 16. He broke the hearts of people throughout Canada Saturday night in much the same way that another No. 16, current Dodger broadcaster and former outfielder Rick Monday, broke Canadian hearts with a ninth-inning home run in Montréal 44 years ago.)
The Dodgers won this one with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the World Series MVP, playing the part of 2024 Walker Buehler, a starter coming to the rescue with 2⅔ innings of scoreless relief after winning both of his starts in this series. Yamamoto finished his postseason 5-1 with a 1.45 ERA.
They won it despite going 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position on Saturday night, extending their output in such situations to 9 for 47 for the series, a .191 average. (That included a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the top of the 10th in which they failed to score.)
All of that, a continuation of offensive issues that cropped up periodically this season, and yet they won a World Series. We can’t say it was improbable – after all, they were cast as Goliath, like it or not – but there were times during this series when it seemed they might not solve the Blue Jays. Toronto was that good, and that tough and gritty and efficient.
The narrative all along, and the reference to which Roberts was referring, was the notion that the Dodgers’ payroll, $350,024,106 and first in the majors according to Spotrac, gave them a humongous edge over everybody else. (The New York Mets, of course, had almost as high a payroll and missed the postseason altogether. And, for what it’s worth, the Blue Jays’ payroll of $255,230,405 American, according to Spotrac, was No. 7 in the big leagues – and it converts to $358,317,658 in Canadian dollars, which is what their players spend when they’re at home.)
Remember, too, that the Blue Jays are owned by Canadian heavyweight Rogers Communications. That corporation was among those taking out ads imploring the Blue Jays to “bring it home.”
Instead, the Commissioner’s Trophy is again headed to Southern California, and instead of a parade down Yonge Street, one of Toronto’s major thoroughfares, the double-decker buses will again be rumbling down Broadway in the next few days.
And if you want to joke that the supposed best team money could buy couldn’t buy a hit with runners in scoring position when they needed it most … well, in this case solo home runs count as clutch hitting, too.
Maybe we need to get beyond the payroll narrative, and the dynasty narrative would be a fitting substitute.
“We’ve put together something pretty special, I do know that,” Roberts said afterward in the interview, stil smelling of champagne. “… To do what we’ve done in this span of time is pretty remarkable. I guess let the pundits and all the fans talk about if it’s a dynasty or not, but I’m pretty happy with where we’re at.”
Roberts was asked about the payroll narrative in his briefing before Saturday’s game. The Dodgers aren’t the only ones who spend large sums on payroll, obviously. But there are other ways to create an advantage beyond payroll, and this franchise uses many of them.
“I think that people just overlook the fact that every year we probably have the top-five farm system in baseball,” he said. “This year I think we probably have the No. 1 or No. 2. We pick at the bottom of the draft every year, towards the bottom, and we still have young guys, whether by way of trade or development, that continue to help contribute.”
Player development, in other words, matters a lot. Skill at putting together a roster does, as well – and for all of the grief This Space has given President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman and General Manager Brandon Gomes for the moves they didn’t make to add relief pitching help at the July 31 trade deadline, obviously it worked out.
“So on the business side,” Roberts continued, “I think that we do a great job of marketing our organization. So it’s pretty buttoned up. I think we have great people and obviously great ownership too.”
The Dodgers – who began their regular season in Tokyo in mid-March and finished it as the last team standing on Nov. 1, 230 days later, were a streaky team all season. They had a nine-game division lead in early July but went through a 17-25 stretch that brought them back to the pack, and streakiness offensively and a sometimes dysfunctional bullpen had their fan base on the edge of their seats from midseason on.
After storming through the first three rounds of the postseason – going 9-1 against the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and the Brewers – they struggled against a Toronto team that was fundamentally sound with a consistent offensive approach.
But there was some grit in the L.A. guys, too. The Dodgers regrouped after losing Games 4 and 5 at home, they became the ninth team to win Games 6 and 7 on the road and the championship, and they flipped the script Saturday when they were five outs away from being dethroned.
So they’ve made history, they’ve earned the right to be a dynasty … and if you want to start talking three-peat, go ahead. I suspect Pat Riley, credited with trademarking that term, won’t mind.
jalexander@scng.com