The Dodgers aren’t supposed to be making this look so easy.
From Day One in spring training, this was the season storyline: Can the Dodgers become the first major league team in 25 years to repeat as champions?
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Easy to understand. Hard to do.
But a deeper look reveals a degree of difficulty beneath the storyline.
The New York Yankees won the World Series in 2000 — their third consecutive championship — then lost the World Series in 2001.
Since then, only one champion has even returned to the World Series the following year.
Over half the time — 12 times in 23 years — the World Series champion did not even qualify for the postseason the following year.
Seven champions lost in the next year’s league championship series. Three lost in the next year’s division series.
Repeat? Easy to understand and hard to do, but the Dodgers are 7-1 in this postseason.
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As the National League Championship Series moves to Dodger Stadium on Thursday, the Dodgers are two victories from a return to the World Series.
That is a step toward the goal, not the goal itself, but it nonetheless would make them just the second team in 23 years to win a championship one year and return to the World Series the next.
The other: the 2008-09 Philadelphia Phillies, the team of Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins.
The historical record indicates winning the World Series is tough and winning the next is tougher, but Rollins would not concede that.
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“I don’t think it was harder than it was the first time,” said Rollins, working the NLCS as an analyst for TNT Sports. “I think the first time was the hardest.
“You haven’t gone there. You haven’t made it to the top and had that success. It was more about motivation: We’re the champs now, we’re just taking another step.”
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Recall what Mookie Betts said at the Dodgers’ fan festival last year, after the Dodgers had signed Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow but before they had even reported to spring training: “Every game is going to be the other team’s World Series.”
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The Dodgers took everyone’s best shot last year. They collect starting pitchers every year — your veterans, your kids, your waiver claims, your highly paid free agents, and your injured — with the aim that just enough will be healthy and effective come October.
This year, they have so many arms ready that Clayton Kershaw and Emmet Sheehan are relegated to the bullpen. Last year, they had so few that their postseason starters included four openers: Ryan Brasier twice, Michael Kopech and Ben Casparius.
“We did it the hard way last year,” utilityman Kiké Hernández said. “It’s really hard to win without starting pitching, and we found a way to do it.”
The Dodgers signed Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki for the rotation last winter, and Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates for the bullpen.
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Now? Snell is starting, Sasaki is closing, and Scott and Yates are not on the playoff roster. But, well, that was the plan after winning the World Series.
“Usually, if you’re the last team standing at the end of October, you’ve used a lot of your pitching very aggressively throughout the month to do it,” said Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. “And we really didn’t have that.
“Now, our bullpen did, but didn’t have it in the conventional way. So adding some fresh arms, we thought, would be helpful with that.”
Read more: Kiké Hernández and Will Smith talk NLCS Game 2 win, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s big night
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The October aces — the starting pitchers that can put their team on their back and carry it through the postseason — are few and far between. Snell, Yamamoto and Glasnow have been aces so far this October, but the Dodgers intend to keep playing for another two weeks.
In 1988, Orel Hershiser threw 300 innings, playoffs included. In 2013, Kershaw threw 259 — more than the combined total of Snell, Glasnow and Ohtani so far this year. Yamamoto has thrown 193 innings.
There is a concern for the Dodgers, just as there always used to be a concern for the Lakers, about the long-term toll of playing another month every year.
For pitchers, however, the workloads for the best starters have gone down even as the number of playoff rounds have gone up. On the other hand, those new rounds are shorter ones, and even the best teams can lose two of three games, or three of five, to be eliminated long before a World Series.
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“The playoff format doesn’t lend itself to just getting into the championship series and getting to the World Series,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “So that in itself makes it more difficult.”
The Dodgers have won the World Series one season and returned the next season twice: in 1955-56 and 1965-66, when each league champion advanced directly to the World Series.
In those years, the postseason field was two teams, and four wins won the championship trophy. The field is up to 12 teams now, and the Dodgers will need four rounds and 13 postseason wins to repeat.
“It’s hard getting guys to play their best baseball at the right time and to keep guys playing at a high level for 162 [games] to get to the postseason,” Roberts said, “then to give yourself a chance to win 11 or, this year, 13 games in October.
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“What have I learned? I’ve learned that you’ve got to kind of give players grace at points during the season to appreciate the human side — it’s hard to play every game in April like it’s Game 7 — but know when to kind of turn it on.”
On July 3, the Dodgers had built a nine-game lead. On Aug. 13, after the Angels had swept them, the Dodgers fell into second place.
Said Rollins: “August? You’ve got a whole other month. July? It’s hot, let’s get to the All-Star break. In the playoffs, it’s just win the series.”
The Dodgers finished the regular season with the third-best record in the NL, but they have beaten the team with the second-best record (the Philadelphia Phillies) and appear poised to beat the team with the best record (the Brewers). They have won 22 of their last 28 games.
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The one concern Friedman said he did not have about building a repeat winner was complacency. He said he always believed the players would be “focused on and driven by legacy, and doing something that’s so incredibly difficult.”
They are already more than halfway there. They need 13 wins. They have seven. Rollins believes they will get the other six.
“I thought, if the Phillies had beaten the Dodgers, no one could stop them,” Rollins said. “And vice versa: If the Dodgers beat the Phillies, no one could stop them.
“If you look at the way the teams match up — power for power, star power, great pitching — they presented basically a mirror image of themselves. Obviously, no one else has Shohei. But the style of game: they can score in many ways, they can bop, they’re clutch. They’ve proven it.”
Six to get, and history to make.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
