Game 3 Win Puts Dodgers On Edge Of A Championship Coronation

Dave Roberts could manage the Dodgers to 10 championships and he’d still be best-known for the stolen base that began the Red Sox’s comeback from a three games to none deficit against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.

So nobody had to remind Roberts it was too early to celebrate Monday night, when the Dodgers moved within a win of their second title under Roberts and took a three games to none World Series lead with a 4-2 victory over the Yankees.

“There’s just got to be urgency,” Roberts said late Monday night. “I just don’t want to let these guys up for air.”

But even with his players echoing Roberts’ words, there was a certain inevitability about the imminence of the Dodgers’ title and the beginning of an appreciation of the scope of their accomplishments.

The Dodgers led the majors with 98 wins despite an injury-ravaged rotation. Their two most experienced starters, Gavin Stone and Tyler Glasnow, haven’t pitched since August due to season-ending injuries. Nor has the Hall of Fame-bound Clayton Kershaw, who didn’t debut until July 25 while recovering from off-season shoulder surgery but made just seven starts before suffering a toe injury.

The Dodgers have utilized three bullpen games so far this month and are planning to roll with another one tonight. Counting the bullpen games, relievers have accounted for 71 2/3 of the 125 innings thrown by Los Angeles in the playoffs.

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“We went through some ups and downs — it’s still kind of funny that we feel that way and we still had 98 wins,” infielder Gavin Lux said. “But we’ve had a lot of injuries that we’ve had to deal with.

“How many starters do we have out? It’s crazy.”

In the first season of a 10-year, $700 million deal, Shohei Ohtani proved worthy of every heavily deferred cent (just a reminder he’ll be getting $2 million a year through 2034 and then $68 million annually for the subsequent 10 years) by putting together the first 50 homer/50 steal campaign in baseball history.

But Ohtani’s latest MVP season began in unexpectedly dramatic fashion March 20, when his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara was fired following a 5-2 win over the Padres in Korea after ESPN reported Mizuhara paid off gambling debts by wiring money from Ohtani’s account. Mizuhara pled guilty to tax and bank fraud charges June 4.

“I think we’ve dealt with a lot from the moment we were in Korea this year,” Freddie Freeman said. “We’ve battled, we’ve faced adversity and we just keep coming back and punching back.”

The Dodgers’ lineup wasn’t as decimated as their rotation, but Ohtani and Teoscar Hernandez were the only everyday players to appear in at least 150 games. Mookie Betts missed almost two months with a broken left hand while Max Muncy was sidelined more than three months with a strained right oblique.

Will Smith set career-lows with a .248 average and a .760 OPS. Freeman missed eight games in late July and early August after his son was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. The potential Hall of Famer was batting .282 with an .854 OPS — his lowest figures since 2015 — before suffering a badly sprained right ankle during the final week of the regular season.

Freeman sat out three of the Dodgers’ 11 games in the NLDS and NLCS but has homered in each of the first three games of the World Series — including, of course, the walk-off grand slam in Friday night’s Game 1 that likely turned a potential clash of the titans into an anticlimactic coronation for the Dodgers.

“We went to Freddie several times and said ‘Hey, we got you’ the last two series,” Muncy said after Freeman’s two-run first-inning homer quieted a raucous Yankee Stadium crowd of 49,368. “This is Freddie telling us ‘Hey, I got you this time.’”

Even without a peak version of Freeman, the Dodgers were impressively relentless in the NLCS, when they scored 46 runs — the most ever by an NL team in a playoff series — while dispatching of the Mets in six games. With Freeman resembling his usual self in the World Series, the Dodgers have been retired in order in just eight of their 27 innings — including four times in Game 1, when Yankees ace Gerrit Cole did it three times before closer Luke Weaver tossed a perfect ninth.

The Dodgers even left some meat on the bone Monday, when they stranded seven baserunners — one fewer than they left on in the first two games combined.

“To be honest, we’re still missing a couple big hits here and there,” Muncy said. “We’ve had some good situations. We keep being relentless and that’s tough for the opposing team when every single inning there’s a little traffic, a little chaos.”

Now the Dodgers are one win away from the chaotic celebration they’ve been chasing for more than eight months. And while they said all the right things Monday night, the idea of the Dodgers ending their season with their first four-game losing streak since July 7-11 and Roberts experiencing life on the other end of a three games to none comeback was far more inconceivable than the idea of already beginning to appreciate the team that is likely to become the next World Series champion.

“Last one’s the hardest to get,” Lux said.

“Couldn’t ask for a better start in these three games,” Freeman said. “One more to go, though.”