After overcoming adversity by never giving up on themselves, the Dodgers defeat the New York Mets 10-5 in the NLCS to set up a showdown with the Yankees.
The low point came 34 days ago.
During a late-season series in Atlanta, the Dodgers lost two games as their division lead dwindled. They learned Tyler Glasnow would become the latest, and most important, pitcher lost for the season to injury. For a brief moment, the team felt that people were “panicking,” as outfielder Teoscar Hernández described it, about their season. For one of the few times in a year full of adversity and unforeseen setbacks, manager Dave Roberts noticed confidence in his clubhouse waning.
So, in an uncharacteristic move for a manager who describes himself as “not a big meeting guy,” Roberts decided to call one, gathering his players before a Sept. 18 game against the Braves to deliver a simple reminder.
“We’re still the Dodgers,” Roberts told the group, as Hernández recalled. “We can do special things.”
Five weeks later, the Dodgers made good on that prediction.
On Sunday night, they returned to the World Series.
With a 10-5 defeat of the New York Mets in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers won the 25th pennant in their storied franchise history. For the fourth time in the last eight years, they will play for a championship that, this season, few outside the team saw coming.
“There’s just a lot of unforeseen things that can happen in a long baseball season, and we have a lot of good players,” Roberts said this week, having been at the helm for each of the team’s past World Series trips.
“I just felt we have enough talent in the room to do that,” Roberts added. “But the most important thing was that those guys responded amongst themselves.”
Respond, the Dodgers have.
To the litany of starting pitching absences that left their October rotation unsettled. To an ever-changing cast of characters amid their injury-plagued season.
Even the playoffs have brought setbacks, from Freddie Freeman’s sprained ankle to inconsistent starting pitching to two elimination games in the NL Division Series, and a squandered chance to clinch the pennant in Game 5 of the NLCS on Friday.
Yet, the team managed to advance to the Fall Classic anyway — riding a wave of internal belief that hasn’t always been present in October disappointments of years past.
“It was just about how we were gonna get here,” outfielder Mookie Betts said. “The question was not if.”
Indeed, the Dodgers always planned to be in this position, trying to win their second championship since 2020 and first in a full season since 1988.
