LOS ANGELES — In the retelling of the Dodgers’ 2024 World Series championship, their National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres is cast as their biggest hurdle, made even more dramatic after the Dodgers fell behind two games to one in that best-of-five series.
Getting past the Padres, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts would say later on Mookie Betts’ podcast, “I felt, from my perspective, that was the World Series.” He wasn’t alone in believing the Padres were the best team the Dodgers would face during their postseason run.
“I’ll just pick one player but it was more than one,” Dodgers owner Mark Walter said during one of the beer-and-champagne drenched celebrations on the way to the World Series. “San Diego is a very good team. … After we beat them, (Clayton) Kershaw came over and said to me, ‘We’re going to win the World Series.’”
Walter was nowhere to be seen in the beer-and-drenched batting cage where the Dodgers celebrated their victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday night – the newly-renovated clubhouse features too many touchy electronics (including a rectangular bank of TVs hanging from the ceiling) for the Dodgers to celebrate in there. If there is a 2025 championship story to be told in retrospect, the NLDS against the Philadelphia Phillies might play the same role as the NLDS triumph over the Padres – this might prove to be the Dodgers’ biggest hurdle on the road to repeating as World Series champions.
“Yes and no, man,” Dodgers veteran Kiké Hernandez said to that premise. “They’re a really good team. They’ve been really good for a while. But when you look at the Cubs, they’ve been playing good baseball all year long. And you look at the Brewers – I mean there’s no way we can overlook any of those teams. We went 0-6 against the Brewers. I think the Cubs might have won the season series against us, I’m not sure (they did, 4-3). But we’re not playing any small team in the playoffs. Every team has earned the right to be here and is playing as good a baseball as anybody in the league.
“Yes, it feels great to get past the Phillies, but we know we still have a lot of work to do. And it doesn’t really matter who we play – they’re not gonna let down because they’re playing the Dodgers. They’re gonna believe in themselves. And that’s two very hungry teams on that other side (of the NL bracket). It feels great, but we know we have a lot of baseball to be played. Our goal is to win the World Series. The goal is not to win the NLDS. We have to get past whoever we need to get past.”
The Dodgers will not know the identity of their National League Championship Series opponent until the Cubs and Brewers play Game 5 in their NLDS on Saturday night (5 p.m. PT). But the Dodgers team that lost four of seven to the Cubs all played in the first month of the season (including two March games in Tokyo) and lost six times to the Brewers in mid-July does not appear to be the same team that has come to life for the most important time of the year.
The six losses to the Brewers were part of a 10-14 meander through July and a 22-32 stretch from July 4 into early September.
Something changed after their back-to-back walk-off losses in Baltimore on Sept. 5-6. Since then, the Dodgers are 20-6, including five wins in their first six postseason games.
“I think it’s more of – this is just the time that we have just kind of locked in together and just kind of been on the same page, moving the same direction,” Betts said during the NLDS. “It’s hard to do during a regular season. It’s really hard to just focus on only winning when stats do matter, especially for some guys.
“So I think now, throwing those stats out the window, you really get to see some good, just fun baseball, some good backyard baseball. I think that’s what is making us good right now.”
Against the Phillies, they were just good enough. Their three wins were decided by four runs and really three pivotal plays – Teoscar Hernandez’s three-run home run in Game 1, the game-saving bunt defense in Game 2 and the wild throwing error that ended Game 4.
“I think this series was long overdue,” Kiké Hernandez said of facing the Phillies. “I thought it was gonna happen last year, but obviously the Mets got the better of them in the NLDS, and here we were, a year later, overdue.
“We knew going into it it was gonna be a dogfight. It proved to be that way. All four games, the team that came out victorious had to earn it every step of the way. It was really good baseball played throughout, really good pitching. Two powerful lineups that didn’t necessarily show up for it, but good pitching always beats good hitting.”
The Dodgers have shown both already in the postseason. Their OPS in the two-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds was the highest ever for a team’s first two games in a postseason. Their pitching held the Phillies to a .212 batting average, including holding the power trio at the top of their lineup – NL batting champ Trea Turner, NL home run champ Kyle Schwarber and former MVP Bryce Harper – to a 9-for-48 series (.188).
If the Phillies are not the best team the Dodgers will face this postseason – they believe they will be up for it.
“I think there’s another gear,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “I mean, look at Shohei (Ohtani). He didn’t do much this series (1 for 18 with nine strikeouts). I expect he’ll come out next series and hit five homers. That’s just who he is. He dominated Game 1 on the mound, gave us a chance to win.
“Who knows who’s going to step up?”
Max Muncy agreed.
“I still think there’s another gear in there,” Muncy said. “I don’t think we fully reached where we can be at. And that’s not saying we are, and that’s not saying we aren’t. But I still think there’s a whole other level in there we haven’t reached yet.”