LOS ANGELES — Max Muncy stood near the edge of the Dodgers’ batting cage, which by late Friday had plunged into chaos. Plastic sheets hung on the walls and covered the ground, catching champagne corks and empty beer bottles. By the time Muncy stopped to speak about an hour after the Dodgers clinched their second consecutive National League pennant, a slurry of liquid had pooled over much of the floor.
Above Muncy hung a series of placards depicting the Dodgers’ retired numbers. They loomed like sentries, imbuing the scene with a silent weight of history.
“That’s the whole reason you put on the Dodger uniform is you expect to go out and win a World Series,” Muncy said.
The Dodgers are now four wins away from not only achieving that goal, but becoming the first team in a quarter century to win consecutive titles. Another piece snapped into place during NL Championship Series Game 4 on Friday, when Shohei Ohtani hit three majestic homers, pitched six scoreless innings and won the NLCS MVP award, almost singlehandedly carrying the Dodgers to a 5-1, pennant-clinching win over the Brewers.
“That was probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
It wasn’t just what Ohtani did, but how he did it and the context in which he did it. Fully unleashed as a two-way player, Ohtani struck out three consecutive batters in the top of the first inning, then led off the bottom half with a Statcast-projected 446-foot homer.
The Dodgers never lost that lead, scoring twice more in the first inning and again in the fourth, when Ohtani launched a second, this one a 469-foot shot that exited Dodger Stadium entirely. Ohtani became the first Dodgers pitcher to go deep in the postseason and the first pitcher in MLB history to lead off a game — any game, regular season or playoffs — with a homer.
He was not done. In the seventh, as fans stood in their seats and leveled their cell phone cameras, Ohtani responded with a third home run to ice the victory.
“At that point, we weren’t even in shock,” Muncy said. “We knew he was going to hit a home run. He hit it, and everyone was just like, ‘Yep. There it is.’”
“This time around,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, referencing his much-documented slump, “it was my turn to be able to perform.”
Less than an hour after Ohtani’s third home run exited the field, the Dodgers rushed onto it to celebrate their pennant, having swatted aside MLB’s regular-season wins leader in a four-game sweep. Ohtani stood front-and-center on a hastily constructed stage, his hands clasped behind his back. Roberts spoke of the dominance his team exhibited this postseason, winning nine of its first 10 October games. The Dodgers, who will play either the Blue Jays or Mariners in the World Series, which begins next Friday, hope to become the first back-to-back champions since the Yankees won three in a row from 1998-2000.
This was always their expectation when they arrived at Spring Training with four MVPs on their payroll, a revamped pitching staff and one of the most expensive rosters in Major League history. For more than a decade, the Dodgers had earned a reputation as perennial contenders who could never win the big one. Even when that changed during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, something rang hollow. A grander breakthrough came last year, when Los Angeles won its first full-season title since 1988.
Now, the Dodgers have a chance to assert even more dominance. To prove they are as big and bad as their reputation says they are.
“Showing up to spring this year, it was like, ‘Hey, we need to repeat,’” Muncy said. “It wasn’t like, ‘We want to repeat.’ It’s like, ‘Hey, we need to repeat.’”
Over a challenging summer that tested their resolve, that task proved surprisingly difficult. Injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell gutted the rotation. Ohtani did not throw a pitch until June. The bullpen became a point of weakness. Mookie Betts slumped. All the while, opposing teams poked and prodded, searching for signs of fatal weakness.
None of it lasted. Instead, like a storm, the Dodgers gathered strength over the second half of the season. They entered October looking more formidable than at any point this year.
“They came for us, man,” Brewers pitcher Freddy Peralta said. “They came for us really hard. They didn’t let us even breathe.”
Despite those successes, Betts cautioned, the job is not finished. Even for the streaking Dodgers, winning the World Series may not prove as straightforward as winning the NLCS, which saw Snell, Glasnow, Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto combine to allow two runs over 28 2/3 innings. On Friday, they recognized the work ahead of them even while celebrating their accomplishments.
Hours after NLCS Game 4, as the party inside the batting cage cooled, various Dodgers and their families lingered on the field, soaking in the last memories of a pennant. Off in the distance, a stray firework detonated beyond the right-field fence. Ohtani eventually emerged from an interview room, clutching his NLCS MVP trophy as he walked back to his clubhouse.
Next week, stress will begin anew for the Dodgers; none of this matters much if they can’t win four more games. For many of them, doing that is not something they want. It’s something they need. It’s also something they very much intend to have.
“Our goal is to win the World Series,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “Need? Want? It all bleeds together for me. It is very clear that that is our goal — our ultimate goal. And to all of our coaches’, players’, front office’s credit, everyone had their eye on that the entire time. We’re going to really enjoy tonight and then get back to work tomorrow, because we’ve got four more games to win.”