LOS ANGELES — It’s no secret that the World Series-bound Dodgers are loaded with superstars.
But there’s also manager Dave Roberts. The Dodgers skipper has put together quite the résumé of his own over the past decade.
Roberts won the 2016 National League Manager of the Year Award in his first season at the helm — and he’s received a share of MOY votes every year since.
Something else Roberts has done in each of his 10 full seasons as a big league manager? Make the postseason.
With the Dodgers’ consistent success, Roberts has quickly risen up the all-time postseason wins leaderboard. This October alone, he’s passed both Bruce Bochy and Dusty Baker.
Overall, Roberts sits at fourth all time with 65 postseason wins, trailing only a trio of Hall of Famers: Joe Torre (84), Tony La Russa (71) and Bobby Cox (67).
“Dave has done a really great job out there,” Torre said recently.
Roberts’ Dodgers are four wins away from repeating as World Series champions — something that hasn’t been done since Torre guided the Yankees to three straight titles from 1998-2000.
“When you’ve won before, you know what it takes to win,” Torre said. “You can’t stop to admire, ‘Look what I did,’ because you’ll lose it quick.”
Told of Torre’s take on the matter, Roberts confirmed that’s exactly how the Dodgers have approached this season.
“Absolutely,” Roberts said. “I don’t think what we did last year has any bearing on this year. There’s a lot of guys in that room that weren’t a part of last year’s team.
“We want to win this year. We want to win for the 2025 team.”
Those Yankees teams had a rotation led by Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, and an offense anchored by the likes of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill, among others.
Needless to say, Torre knows talent — and he likes what he sees when he looks at the Dodgers.
“They have some quality players,” Torre said. “They have, really, an offense that’s scary. They have an offense that is better than our offense was — without question.”
While the vast majority of Torre’s postseason wins came with the Yankees, the final eight came with the Dodgers. Torre wrapped up his legendary managerial career with three seasons at the helm in L.A. from 2008-10.
Overall, he qualified for the postseason 15 times. That time of year never got old for Torre — even now.
“It was exciting when I was a manager because you go into this thing and it was never boring,” Torre said. “It always felt brand new to me. I’m looking forward to it now as a spectator, because I do more pulling for people than I do for teams now.”
Safe to say it hasn’t gotten old for Roberts yet either.
“I want to win this year as much as I wanted to last year,” Roberts said. “I don’t know why that is, but I think that the players feel the same way. I don’t know if it’s easier or harder that we won last year, but honestly, all we care about is winning this year.”
The path this season, however, required a couple more wins than in the past few years.
After having a first-round bye in 2022, ’23 and ’24, the Dodgers participated in the best-of-three NL Wild Card Series this season for the first time. They made quick work of that, however, sweeping the Reds to kick off a stretch in which they’d win nine of 10 games on their way to clinching the NL pennant.
“The other part of it that’s hard is getting guys to play their best baseball at the right time,” Roberts said. “And to keep guys playing at a high level for 162 [games] just to get to the postseason, to then give yourselves a chance to win 11 — or, this year, 13 — more games in October.”
