WASHINGTON – A few hours before the Los Angeles Dodgers concluded their three-game series at Nationals Park Wednesday, a stadium TV tuned to Major League Baseball’s official network displayed two hosts running through a series of burning questions.
Between discussions of torpedo bats and sustainable starts came a question that might have startled the casual viewer.
“Are the Dodgers not a superteam?”
The hot topic seemed to affirm that the most expensive team in baseball history exists not as one of 30 big league franchises but rather as a vessel created to produce discourse, which will then be met with further discourse. That a superteam could exist in a sport that required the Dodgers to use 60 players to win the 2024 World Series – yet perhaps it actually isn’t the 2025 Dodgers since they’d lost four out of five games, dropping their record to 9-4.
Which is still a 112-win pace.
Such is life with roughly $390 million in salary commitments, a World Series title to defend and spring rumblings that this squad of Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and nine or so viable starting pitchers would be the ones to break the major league record of 116 regular-season wins, perhaps threaten 120.
Yet this early season has already hatched a series of suboptimal events, from a freak aggravation of first baseman Freddie Freeman’s ankle injury, to $182 million lefty Blake Snell’s shoulder irritation sending him to the injured list, conjuring visions that come playoff time, this nearly half-billion dollar commitment to excellence will once again be trotting out bullpen games or fringe starters.
And after the squad dropped its first two games in D.C., with a trip to the White House followed by dismal performances in 45-degree temperatures, the great expectations breeded not panic but rather one of the mini-bursts of urgency that sustain great teams through long seasons.
So the Dodgers greeted their road trip finale with both urgency and pluck, snagging a four-run lead before the Washington Nationals could record an out, giving it right back as fill-in starter Landon Knack struggled, and finally cobbling together a two-run, go-ahead rally in the seventh inning for a 6-5 victory that salvaged the final game of the series.
The Dodgers are 10-4 now, technically tied for second in the National League West even as the standings are secondary this time of year. Yet even hiccups can look calamitous when near-perfection is the expectation.
“It comes with the character of the group,” says longtime utilityman Kiké Hernández, who finished his caretaking of first base while Freeman mends with a game-saving play in the ninth inning. “You have a lot of very seasoned people in this locker room. It’s realizing we have another 148 to go.
“And you know when you’re expected to win 162 games in a season, and you lose four in a week, then it could feel like the world is ending. But at the end of the day, we have 148 more. At some point, we were going to play (lousy) baseball, and it seemed like this was the week we did that.”
Wednesday, the temperature topped the 50-degree mark, practically balmy after 46- and 45-degree nights here, along with a rain-drenched slog in losing their final game at Philadelphia. And it only gets sunnier: The Dodgers are headed home, and Freeman – who tweaked his surgically-repaired ankle slipping in the shower – will be back in the lineup Friday against the Chicago Cubs.
Yet the club learned a lot about itself in this detour toward mediocrity.
Foot up on the gas
It’s been a quarter-century since the New York Yankees became the last club to repeat as World Series champions. The Dodgers seem about as primed as any club since to do so, what with Snell, Japanese pitching phenom Rōki Sasaki and All-Star relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates refreshing the mix over the winter.
But personnel, despite the superteam expectations, only goes so far. And after the Dodgers began this trip unbeaten only to lose series to both the Phillies and Nationals while breaking down in every phase of the game, manager Dave Roberts was not having any complacency.
“We don’t want to get swept by these guys,” Roberts said before Wednesday’s series finale. “That wouldn’t be a good thing. I think our guys have a good look today. There’s a sense of pride, right? To not only win a series but potentially get swept by anyone isn’t a good feeling.
“I expect us to perform today.”
It’s almost like they heard him: Ohtani and Betts reached base ahead of Tommy Edman’s two-run triple, and Teoscar Hernández’s two-run homer created a 4-0 lead.
Knack gave it all back – plus one more – which forced the Dodgers to scrape together their winning rally, with Teoscar Hernández providing the winning margin with a soft single to right in the seventh.
Did they feel Roberts’ urgency?
“Not really,” says Teoscar Hernández.
Hey, no shade toward the manager. It’s just that the Dodgers know what they need.
“Those are the at-bats you want to win games,” he says. “It’s not always gonna be the big swings that are going to score runs. We’re going to score a lot of runs by the walks, by not getting into double plays, by getting the lucky hits I get in that situation.”
Run prevention doesn’t hurt, either. Kiké Hernández was one of the Dodgers’ original utility heroes and in Freeman’s absence, took his 5-foot-10 frame to first base, an odd sight on an ostensibly bulletproof team. Hernández is hitting just .103 on the young season, but saved Wednesday’s game with a diving stop in the bottom of the ninth and two runners on, turning a potential game-tying hit into a forceout, thanks largely to his veteran infield instincts.
“I just can’t think of many who make that play right there,” says Roberts. “I think we’d probably still be playing if he didn’t make that play.”
Still, the Dodgers are seeking a higher gear.
‘We have a lot of things to clean up’
It had been about 15 hours since the Dodgers struck out 15 times against a casting call of Washington relievers and Roberts was still annoyed.
Looking back on the club’s 8-0 start, he mused that they didn’t strike out that many times in games against the reigning Cy Young Award winners, fanning six times in a start against the Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal and seven times against the Atlanta Braves and Chris Sale.
“I just don’t think 15 strikeouts with our ballclub should happen,” says Roberts, perhaps unaware that a pair of clubs had at least 18 strikeouts on Opening Day. “I don’t think we’ll see that again this year.”
Bad team at-bats, Roberts called them. The sentiment was not lost on the clubhouse.
“We have a lot of things to clean up,” says Kiké Hernández. “We’ve been having a lot of quick innings. I didn’t think we’ve really ran any starting pitchers out of the game early, which is something we pride ourselves in as a unit. We’ve gotten to some early, but we let them settle down and cruise through the rest of the game.
“There’s a lot of six-inning outings against us, and that’s got to change.”
Yeah, talk about high standards: They’re winning games but not kicking the opposing pitcher’s posterior quickly enough. Yet Hernández had a point: It was 4-0 before Nationals starter Jake Irvin could record an out. He somehow left with a 5-4 lead after six innings.
If style points are a concern, Freeman’s return should help significantly. The three starting pitchers on the IL – Snell, Tony Gonsolin and a fellow named Clayton Kershaw – will figure in at some point.
And despite all this, they’re still playing .714 ball – now on a 116-win pace. Hey, it’s not 162, but it’ll do.
And at the least, they survived the first cold spell of the season.
“Hopefully,” says Kiké Hernández, “L.A. is a little warmer than this.”