Bring it in five! The Dodgers are the World Series champions.

New York – The 2024 world series Is over: shohei ohtani and this Los Angeles Dodgers Champions in five games, the first title for them and the eighth title in franchise history for the team.

There were heroes and goats, as there is in every Fall Classic, but there was no storybook Shohei Ohtani vs. aaron judgeThere were dramatic grand slams, amazing comebacks and terrible defensive mistakes. The New York Yankees’ title drought reached 15 years, and their captain, Aaron Judge, faced struggles that sometimes reached nightmare levels.

In the end, what we got was a pure baseball matchup decided by baseball factors, and mostly by the fact that the Dodgers had more good players than their opponent. They earned it – as a group.

This championship, and the way Los Angeles achieved it, is less about the names on the marquee and more about the attire. It belongs to all of them, as much as the supporting cast teoscar hernandez, Gavin Lux And max munsey About Ohtani and fellow stars freddy freeman And mookie betsAnonymous relievers as well as more announced starters such as yoshinobu yamamoto And jack flahertyNone of this is accidental. The Dodgers won that way because they were meant to win that way.

Every season, the Dodgers rank at the top of the majors in categories such as rookie WAR and total attendance on the transaction wire. Think about it: With all the resources poured into the L.A. payroll — the Dodgers spent more than $1 billion last offseason — the Andrew Friedman-led front office never stops making changes to the roster mix, immediate and hypothetical. Addresses both needs. The Dodgers excel at turning other teams’ excesses into gold, such as with the trippers. Ryan Brasier, Brent Honeywell And anthony banda Are becoming important contributors in the bullpen. The bottom 10 spots on the 40-man roster receive just as much attention as the top three.

“It’s about getting the right players, the right guys,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “There’s a lot of talent, but it’s not everything. You still have to stay cohesive. I think we do a great job of bringing the right players into our clubhouse.”

The Dodgers have as much star power as any team we’ve seen in recent years, but they can never be accused of adopting a star-and-scrub approach, or building a top-heavy roster. Depth or stars? We’ll have both, thanks.

“We have a culture here at the big league level,” Roberts said. “But the scouting and player development is second to none.”

After their second title in five years, the Dodgers are, from top to bottom, Roberts says — second to none.

it was believed that Ohtani-Judge World Series to happen.

Just look at the cover of the official program. On the left is Ohtani, a look of focus and hard work on his face, his arms pointed behind him in a backswing action that completes one of his powerful hacks.

Judge is on the right, his mouth open amid the sound of shouting, his head turned as he looks into the bedlam in the dugout following his missile-like blasts into what is probably the farthest expanse of Yankee Stadium.

It’ll be Ohtani vs. Judge, In the final version of a baseball hero’s journeyIn which there is no antagonist, but two heroes on a parallel journey to slay the same dragon: the first career championship.

Thus was the hook to relive baseball’s most epic Fall Classic matchup, Yankees-Dodgers, the dream matchup between two of baseball’s most famous franchises.

This publicity was not without justification. It was truly an unprecedented clash between perhaps the best players in the game, starring for marquee franchises in the glitziest markets and on the biggest stages. During the regular season, Judge and Ohtani hit .315/.423/.672 with 112 homers, 274 RBI, 256 runs and 69 stolen bases. That’s from two players.

This pairing of the game’s two best players hasn’t happened very often in World Series history. It’s easy to lose yourself in the debate over who was considered the best in the game at any given time, but clear examples are few: Ty Cobb vs. Honus Wagner in 1909. Ted Williams vs. Stan Musial in 1946. George Brett vs. Mike Schmidt in 1980.

Let’s imagine the Platonic ideal as the climactic scene of “The Natural”, when Roy Hobbs – “the best ever” – catapults Homer, another Knights of the Dead, into the stratosphere into an instant pennant. We never got that reward – a championship-winning, come-from-behind home run by the best player in the game.

None of the superstar matchups we highlighted had the kind of payoffs we could have dreamed of, and most of them completely disappointed. At the recently concluded 2024 Showdown, while Ohtani performed well as a veteran at the top of the lineup, his series was most newsworthy as he tore his shoulder on a slide, bringing the term “subluxation” into the mainstream. . And the judge was homeless until the clinching game stunning to look at for most of the series, following a season in which they recorded one of the best offensive campaigns in history.

“He’s a great player,” said a sympathetic Roberts after Game 4.

However, this is baseball, right? When we focus on star matchups like Ohtani against Judge, we are teasing this very possibility, even though we know the very nature of the game makes that dream scenario so unlikely to come true.

In fact, the most cinematic moment of the series wasn’t produced by Ohtani, Judge — or even each team’s next best player, Betts or. juan sotoHe was another star of Freeman’s in the postseason, when his injuries threatened to keep him out of the lineup. His two-out, game-ending Game 1 grand slam evoked instant images of Kirk Gibson of 1988 and inspired Joe Davis’s epic, impromptu Vin Scully tribute.

It contains a lesson about both baseball and the Dodgers. No matter what we focus on, it’s never just about one person. Anyone can be the embodiment of a childhood dream.

“Things like this, when you’re 5 years old with your two older brothers and you’re playing whiffle ball in the backyard,” Freeman said, “these are the scenarios you dream about.” “A World Series game with two outs, bases loaded.”

consider that 29 Various Dodgers saw action this October. Almost everyone played meaningful roles throughout, including a bright-eyed newbie ben caspariusWho began October with all three big league appearances. He started in the opener in Game 4.

This is as characteristic of this era of Dodgers baseball as the presence of household names Ohtani, Bates, Freeman and Clayton Kershaw.

Since the start of the 2021 season, the Dodgers have 68 instances of a player recording at least one bWAR. Only the Brewers and Rays (69 each) have more. But the Dodgers have 17 instances when a player reached the All-Star level with four bWAR, second only to the Astros (18). LA’s success is based on stars and depth.

During the 12 full seasons since Guggenheim Baseball Management Group took control of the Dodgers, they have won 99.2 of every 162 regular-season games played. During the wild-card era, no team has done better over such a long period of time, including 11 first-place finishes, 12-for-12 appearances in the postseason bracket, four pennants and now, two World Series titles . And there’s no doubt that the Dodgers’ economics could play a role in their staying power. According to Cots contracts, the Dodgers have sported a top-five payroll in all of those seasons. Yet other teams spend heavily on payroll – including the last two teams they defeated, the Yankees in the World Series and the Mets in the National League Championship Series – and the Dodgers are sometimes outclassed by one or two competitors.

The level of investment measuring in the billions sets a clear expectation for everyone wearing Dodger blue: To do what they did on Wednesday – win everything. That’s the expectation not just of Ohtani, Bates and Freeman, but of everyone who steps into the clubhouse. They will have no other option.

“You’ve got a lot of good guys that care about winning and want to win,” second baseman Gavin Lux said. “None of them have an ego.”

The Dodgers’ stars, including Ohtani, outperformed their New York counterparts, especially Judge, in the Series, but this was largely due to Freeman’s heavy production as World Series MVP. It certainly played a role in LA’s victory.

But in terms of headliner matchups, at no point did it feel like an Ohtani-versus-Judge World Series. If anything, it was the Freeman series, but he’s certainly not going to claim that title.

“We’ve dealt with a lot since (the start of the season) in Korea,” Freeman said. “We have fought and pushed back against adversity. It’s a credit to our people, our employees and everyone in this organization.”

no team lost The Dodgers will have more players injured in 2024 than the Dodgers. Even as they sprayed champagne and serenaded him in the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, the Dodgers still had more than their entire upper-level starting rotation on the injured list.

That’s why Roberts — whose postseason decisions have been maligned by Dodgers fans and opponents alike over the years — deserves so much credit for this run. Not that Roberts, along with pitching coach Mark Pryor, were able to deal with the loss of the pitching staff. It is also that the captain, as usual, has transformed into a rookie outfielder. andy pages, landon neckCasparius and even Yamamoto, not a traditional newbie but a newbie nonetheless. That’s also when the Dodgers splurged, adding Flaherty at the trade deadline. tommy adman And Michael KopechThey all fit in so seamlessly on and off the field that it’s easy to forget they didn’t join the team until late July.

No game showed this more acutely than the Dodgers’ Game 5 win against San Diego in the NL Division Series, when the Big Three combined to go 1-for-10, but four relievers pitched a two-hit shutout. Yamamoto and Teoscar Hernandez and enrique hernandez Hit a solo homer for the only run of the game.

“He lets you be the player you’ll always be,” Teoscar said of Roberts. “He lets you have fun. His communication with his players is one of the best communications I’ve had in my career. I think that’s why he’s so special to this team and the players.”

Through it all, Roberts continually deflects the credit away from himself.

“You never imagine having a season like the one we’ve gone through, but you still have guys that are honest and are talented,” Roberts said. “We’ve taken a hit, so it’s an organizational type of thing. The front office, Andrew (Friedman) is fantastic.”

If Roberts needed validation that perhaps the team’s shortened season doesn’t deliver a 2020 title — he has it. He may be another high-profile cog in the Dodgers’ vast apparatus, but he’s an important one. He is also the manager of a dynasty.

This championship – after a grueling marathon of 162 games and a month of playoffs, cannot be reduced. It took all of the Dodgers until the end to accomplish this.

When the Dodgers emerged from the third base dugout after the final out, Ohtani, Bates and Freeman were in the middle of the pile. Casparius and Knack were also like this. Baseball’s latest championship belongs not to any one of them, but to all of them, under one banner, painted a rich Dodger blue, just the way it was always designed.