The Dodgers gained essentially the most video games in franchise historical past in 2022, posting a outstanding 111-51 document that outpaced the next-best group by means of 5 video games, the next-best within the National League by means of 10, and the next-best within the NL West by means of 22. Every time they completed one thing value celebrating, the celebrations have been marked by means of the similar factor: each and every participant announcing one thing alongside the strains of, “This is nice, but it’s not our ultimate goal.”
Now, the Dodgers head into the NL Division Series starting on Tuesday towards that “next-best in the NL West” group, the San Diego Padres, who gained simply 89 video games within the common season however delivered a knockout punch to the Mets within the Wild Card Series in New York, defeating them two video games to 1.
If Los Angeles is going to win any other World Series championship, they’ll have to overcome San Diego, then both Atlanta or Philadelphia, after which whoever survives the American League aspect of items. There are extra playoff groups than ever prior to, rather than the one-year, pandemic-related growth to 16 playoff groups that created essentially the most grueling postseason in historical past, forcing the Dodgers to transform the first group ever to need to win 13 postseason video games on their approach to a championship. More groups approach extra randomness, extra alternatives for an inferior group to get scorching and win all of it.
In quick, the Dodgers have been the most productive group in baseball this 12 months, and that hasn’t ever mattered much less. Still, famous person first-baseman Freddie Freeman is now not permitting any nuance in his view of the significance of successful the World Series, as Jorge Castillo stories within the Los Angeles Times.
“Every season you don’t win is a failure in my eyes,” Freeman stated. “I’ve thought that from the moment I got here. We could win 140 games … it doesn’t matter how many wins you have once Oct. 11 starts. No one cares about how many wins. If you don’t win a World Series, then all 29 other teams should view that as failure.”
From a participant’s point of view, it sort of feels like learn how to stay that aggressive edge is to have that mindset. If you get started letting your self suppose you’ll be glad even supposing you don’t win all of it, you gained’t have that fireside going into the postseason.
Clayton Kershaw is extra philosophical concerning the query, as are Justin Turner and Andrew Friedman (all quoted in Castillo’s article). In truth, Kershaw necessarily simply refuses to respond to the query about whether or not the season is a failure in the event that they don’t win all of it.
“I guess the best way to answer that is everybody is going to have their own opinion,” Kershaw stated. “And so I think everybody is just going to have to define that for themselves. For me, personally, I’m just never going to define it. So it’ll be great.”
Let’s simply win it, boys, after which we gained’t need to grapple with the more difficult questions.
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