Money helped Dodgers win World Series. But culture

With confetti at his toes, a drink in his hand and a smile of equal elements reduction and elation planted on his face, Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy gave the query of the night time only a cursory thought.

Had the Dodgers cemented a dynasty?

“I guess so,” he said.

Over the last six seasons, Muncy had been one of six Dodgers gamers to have a hand in all three of their latest World Series championships. He had turn out to be one of the faces of a crew that elevated itself to historic all-time heights.

But when the subject of the membership’s legacy got here up, as he stood on the sphere in the wake of the Dodgers’ Game 7 thrill experience in Toronto on Saturday night time, the 35-year-old veteran’s thoughts was occupied by another thought. The delight he felt emanated from a different source.

“The thing that I’m most proud of is the culture that we have created,” he said. “I hope that’s what’s talked about the most.”

In the public discourse, of course, it gained’t be.

These Dodgers, with their star-studded roster and record-setting $415 million payroll and long-established popularity as big-spending villains who may be ruining baseball, have only additional fueled debates about the financial inequities of the game.

With a labor battle looming next yr, they are going to be turned into a proxy — the prime instance, critics will argue, of what’s fallacious with the only major skilled sports activities league in North America without a onerous wage cap.

Some of those considerations will probably be justified (the Dodgers are spending at ranges MLB has never before seen, and properly past most of their competitors). Others will probably be exaggerated (they’re also spending within the league’s guidelines, and re-investing revenues back into their roster at a greater share than nearly all other franchises).

The gamers themselves, however, actually couldn’t care less.

Money, after all, might need given them the expertise to win back-to-back World Series. But it took one thing else to help them get to, and particularly conquer, the mental and bodily check they confronted in Saturday’s Game 7.

“When you come to the Dodgers, and you put on that Dodgers uniform, it’s all about, ‘How do you do what you need to do to win the game? How do you help the team win the game?’” Muncy said, his hoarse voice starting to crack. “I seriously can’t put into words how much it means to me that we’ve created something that’s that special. that everyone knows about now.”

Culture and camaraderie may be clichéd traits straightforward to level to in the wake of any World Series championship, but they have been nonetheless current in the Dodgers’ quest to repeat this yr.

Take the first big turning level of this postseason: The iconic “wheel play” the Dodgers ran to defend a bunt in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the National League Division Series.

That maneuver was instructed and executed by Mookie Betts — a participant the Dodgers signed for $365 million 5 years in the past to be a Gold Glove proper fielder, but who moved to shortstop out of roster necessity on a full-time foundation this season and reworked into a Gold Glove finalist.

Dollars may be the rationale Betts now performs in Los Angeles. But it was his tireless daily routine of taking infield grounders, and his skill to study from and overcome early-season growing pains, that made that second potential.

“For him to play that caliber of shortstop, I think, is underappreciated,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “I don’t think people are paying enough attention to how difficult that was.”

Clinching the NLDS required contributions from another star expertise serving in an surprising new function.

When rookie Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki signed with the Dodgers this offseason, it enflamed the exterior worries about their hoarding of expertise. Sasaki, however, struggled as a starter, missed most of the yr with a shoulder injury, then confronted a resolution forward of the playoffs about whether or not or not to transfer to the bullpen.

He accepted, despite having never been a reliever in his skilled profession before. And in the playoffs, he fulfilled the crew’s gaping gap at nearer, highlighted by the three excellent innings he pitched in their NLDS-clinching Game 4 win.

From left, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki rejoice after profitable the World Series.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“For Roki to come through in that spot after the year he’s had,” Muncy said at the time, “that was just so huge for us.”

The NL Championship Series was the one time the Dodgers clearly outclassed a playoff opponent, rolling past the overmatched Milwaukee Brewers behind historic beginning pitching performances from Blake Snell (a $182 million signing last offseason), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (a $365 million signing the winter before) and Tyler Glasnow (a $136.5 million acquisition), then an all-time two-way exhibiting in Game 4 from Shohei Ohtani (the $700 million man who has been at the middle of the consternation over the Dodgers’ spending).

The World Series, however, introduced an unexpectedly stiff problem from the Toronto Blue Jays — who have been heavy underdogs to the Dodgers despite their own top-five payroll of $278 million.

In the Fall Classic, the Dodgers’ sheen of invincibility was shattered. Their lineup struggled. Only Yamamoto maintained his earlier degree of dominance in the rotation. A long-suspect bullpen finally faltered. And in many aspects of the sequence (in which the Blue Jays outscored the Dodgers 34-26 and hit .269 to the Dodgers’ .203 crew average), the Dodgers regarded second-best.

“I mean, big picture-wise, we didn’t play very well,” Friedman said. “But those big pivotal moments is where our guys really showed up … Which I think gets at who they are, the compete, how much they care about each other, how much they care about bringing a championship back to LA in back-to-back years.”

There was Game 3, when the Dodgers prevailed in an 18-inning marathon by getting an unexpected increase from little-known reliever Will Klein, who was prepared to sacrifice his arm in a grueling four-inning outing despite spending most of this yr caught in the minors.

There was Game 6, when the crew survived a potential season-ending, ninth-inning jam thanks to the veteran defensive intuition Kiké Hernández (the high-energy October stalwart who began every sport of the playoffs after restricted enjoying time in the common season) and Miguel Rojas (who has turn out to be one of the emotional leaders of the crew since being acquired in a 2023 commerce for a minor-league prospect, despite also serving in a depth function for most of the summer season) flashed on a victory-sealing double play.

“That’s what makes us really tough,” Rojas said. “[We’re] competing every single day, and regardless of what the situation is, I think everybody [is able to] just kind of forget about the past and focus on the moment right now.”

Game 7 supplied the final word check.

The Dodgers trailed early, with Rogers Centre shaking after Bo Bichette’s third-inning three-run homer. They couldn’t lean on Ohtani, who regarded gassed while beginning the sport as a pitcher on short relaxation. They had to claw their method back instead, enjoying from behind all the best way into the ninth inning — when their season was two outs away from ending in failure.

“We just kept going and going and going,” Muncy said. “I’m just really proud of all the guys for not giving up hope.”

It would’ve been straightforward to do so. After two exhausting years — full of deep postseason runs and season-opening worldwide journeys and the daily strain that got here with their heavy offseason expenditures — the membership’s tank appeared to be teetering on empty. Sheer expertise, after all, can only maintain for so long.

“It’s been a long journey for the team, for the organization, for every player out here,” Rojas said before Game 6. “It’s been really stressful and everybody’s mentally tired.”

But this, Muncy declared, is where the Dodgers’ culture kicked in.

“It’s all about the team. It doesn’t matter about yourself,” he said. “When you’re coming in off the field and you have a whole group of guys in [the dugout] saying, ‘Hey, great inning. Let’s scrap something together. Let’s get a guy on base. Let’s get a run in,’ that kind of means everything.”

In the end, the Dodgers conjured their most heroic moments for when they needed them most.

With one out in the ninth, it was none other than Rojas — who was unsure to even play in Game 7 after aggravating an intercostal injury the night time before — who tied the rating with a miraculous home run swing.

“When you play the game right, treat people right, are the teammate like Miguel is, I think we said it in there, the game honors you,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “Just doing whatever he could to help this team win.”

From there, the Dodgers (turning to their fourth conventional starter out of the bullpen on the night time) summoned Yamamoto, who did one thing no record-breaking contract may have ever predicted by throwing 2 ⅔ scoreless innings on zero days’ relaxation after his 96-pitch start in Game 6.

“Can’t evaluate that,” Friedman said.

“That’s going to go down in history as one of the best championship performances in any sport,” pitching coach Mark Prior added.

Will Smith, one of the few homegrown abilities on a crew of employed weapons, delivered the profitable swing with his home run in the eleventh.

“To me, he kind of epitomizes a lot of the success that we’ve had looking back,” Friedman said. “In terms of our scouting process, our player development process, how well they work together, and then him coming through and having the impact he’s had at the Major League level.”

And fittingly, it was Betts who recorded the championship-clinching outs on a double-play chopper hit to him at short.

“A perfect bow on what was an incredible season for what he did at shortstop this year,” Friedman said.

All of it, Muncy proudly famous, exemplified what the Dodgers preserve was the ethos of their crew; the type of intangibles that gained’t show up on a stability sheet or payroll checklist, even with all the money they’ve spent.

“That’s what we’ve created here,” Muncy said. “And that’s what I’m most proud of.”

“We kept going, and we persevered,” supervisor Dave Roberts echoed. “And we’re the last team standing.”