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Dodgers show they are more than just Shohei Ohtani in NLDS win

Vaseline October 12, 2024

LOS ANGELES – It may have seemed like just a small stepping stone for the Los Angeles Dodgers, just a win in the National League Division Series Friday night – but this win felt different.

This one was special.

This was the Dodgers’ biggest win in three years, and one of their biggest in 36 years, a win that could lead to their first World Series run since 1988.

This is the one that slayed the dragon in the south, the team that ruined their season two years ago, the team that had them on the brink of elimination, and the team that, quite frankly, frustrated the daylights out of them.

The Dodgers finally quieted the San Diego Padres by winning 2-0 in the decisive Game 5 to advance to the National League Championship Series and a date with the New York Mets Sunday night at Dodger Stadium.

Don’t try to tell Dodgers manager Dave Roberts that this was just a Division Series win.

“It’s relief, it’s redemption,” Roberts said. “I wanted to beat those guys. We all really wanted to beat those guys.

“This is the most stress I’ve felt in a long time.”

Yes, you could see that in the Dodgers’ festive clubhouse. They didn’t just have a beer shower and a few bottles of champagne. It was a party. They ran around without shirts, cigar smoke filling the air and music blaring from the ceiling.

“This is big,” Dodgers outfielder Kevin Kiermaier said. “I believe the rivalry has calmed down over the years. Everyone is buddy-buddy. We have a lot of respect for each other. But we don’t love them, and they don’t love us.”

It was such a big win, Roberts says, that it might have even surpassed his emotions as a player when he was part of the Boston Red Sox team that overcame a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 ALCS.

“I can tell you this is a rivalry with 2004, when we beat the Yankees,” said Roberts, whose stolen base in Game 4 of the ALCS jump-started the Red Sox comeback. “It rivals beating the Braves in 2020 to get to the World Series. This is part of it.

“You’re talking about one of the best baseball teams out there. It was a dogfight.”

The Dodgers wouldn’t provide message board material, but privately they believe the Padres are better than the Mets. They might also be better than the New York Yankees and anyone still alive in the American League.

Now that they’ve overcome the Padres and finally advanced out of the Division Series for the first time since 2021, they believe no one can stop them.

“We’ve got a lot of F-you in us,” said Dodgers center fielder Enrique Hernandez, who continued his October magic with a home run in the second inning. “We’re a bunch of 26 guys who are all here together for one reason, and that’s to win the World Series.

“On paper we have the best club in baseball. But we have a lot of grown men who want to win at all costs, no matter what it looks like.”

The Dodgers have always believed they had the best team, but they have also learned painfully over the years that the best teams don’t always win. Sometimes it takes more than just talent and money.

“This year, man, whether it was free agency or trade or waiver claims, it seemed like we just kept adding the right piece, after the right piece, after the right piece,” Hernandez said. “This is a ball club that is not just a complete ball club, but that has the character it takes to get through a 162-game season.

“Then we come here and play that team; they are stacked bro. They’re a tough team to beat in October.”

The Padres certainly had the Dodgers on the ropes, leading this series 2-1, with Game 4 at Petco Park in San Diego. But the Dodgers’ pitching staff became silent killers.

They shut out the Padres for 24 straight innings, retired the last 19 batters on Friday and never gave the Padres a chance to catch their breath.

Yep, the same pitching staff that has been plagued all season, with ten pitchers currently on the injured list, leaving them with just three healthy starters.

But oh, they had a bullpen that stopped the Padres’ high-powered offense.

“When you talk about a series MVP,” Roberts said, “it’s obviously our bullpen. It was a test and we fought. We didn’t give in, not once.”

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, their $325 million man, performed as the highest-paid pitcher in history with five shutout innings while giving up just two hits. The bullpen came in in the sixth inning, and after pitching nine shutout innings in Game 4, he didn’t even allow a baserunner in the final four innings tonight.

This Dodgers team is so complete that Shohei Ohtani, who will be awarded the MVP award in November, was a complete non-factor in the final four games of the series. He went just 3-for-18 (.167) with one RBI and 10 strikeouts after hitting a second-inning homer in Game 1. He went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts on Friday and never stole a base in the series. after stealing a career-high 59 bases in the regular season.

It doesn’t matter.

“That’s why you have 26 guys,” Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts said. “We are not just one man. We are a whole team.”

The Dodgers proved that as everyone played a crucial role in this series, making Ohtani’s struggles almost irrelevant.

“We rightly have plenty of superstars, but we also have a lot of other quality players,” Kiermaier said. “We may not be as household names as Ohtani, Mookie (Betts), Freddie (Freeman), but with a great team, with so much depth, you never know who the hero will be on any given night.

“And those are the most dangerous teams.”

Kiermaier, who was told by Hernandez before the game that if Yu Darvish threw him a fastball on the first pitch he would homer, watched in disbelief as Hernandez delivered the ball. “I was so excited,” Kiermaier said.

Hernandez told Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations, and Roberts that he would personally ensure they won the game. And just in case the Padres had any idea of a comeback, Teoscar Hernandez homered off Darvish in the seventh inning.

“I kept telling myself, ‘They brought you here for a reason,’” Enrique Hernandez said. “They brought you here to play in October. I wanted to come back and make a run with this team because I really like a pageant.

“I was going to find a way to win this game for us.”

Friedman said, “He said before the game that he was going to win this game for us tonight. He supported it.”

Dodgers owner Mark Walter, standing to the side of the clubhouse watching the celebration, wiped his eyes and still found it hard to believe what he just saw.

“That’s incredible,” Walter said. “That’s a great hitting team right there. But look at us.”

Friedman, the architect of the Dodgers machine, is certainly used to these celebrations. This is a team that has been to the postseason for 12 straight seasons, with seven NLCS appearances, three pennants and a World Series title.

Still, for all their epic postseason failures the past two years, this one tasted sweeter than the champagne dripping down their faces.

“Every time you stave off elimination,” Friedman said, “it feels as big as it can be, because the downside of that is you’re going home.

“We’ve been in a bit of a DS (Division Series) funk. The guys who have been here could feel that after we were 2-1 down. The new guys didn’t want to hear about that.”

Now there they are, with the red-hot Mets coming to town, the only team standing in the way of the Dodgers’ first trip to the World Series in a non-Covid season since 2018.

“We know the job isn’t done yet,” Dodgers reliever Evan Phillips said. “New York is a great team. They had to fight to get into the postseason. But what happened here is pretty wild. It’s not like we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to shut them out the next two games. They will never score another point again.’

“But we are a great team.

“I think we prove that.”

Follow Bob Nightengale on X: @BNightengale