LOS ANGELES — During the Dodgers’ repeat as World Series champions the past two years, Andrew Friedman pointed out more than once that there are different ways to go about winning a championship.
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In 2024, the Dodgers leaned heavily on their bullpen, turning their postseason around with an eight-reliever ‘bullpen game’ shutout with their backs to the wall in the National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres.
In 2025, they rode their four starting pitchers to the championship, getting historic performances from World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, NL Championship Series MVP Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow.
There might be another way.
“It would be nice to slug our way to a World Series one of these years,” third baseman Max Muncy joked on the eve of another postseason run. “We can’t keep letting the pitchers take all the credit, right?”
The offense actually did lead the way to their 2020 ‘bubble’ championship. That lineup hit .254 as a group in the four postseason rounds, averaging 5.6 runs per game and slugging .465 with 30 home runs in their 18 games.
The 2024 championship team was actually even more offensive, averaging 5.9 runs per game while slugging .409 with 27 home runs in 16 games.
Last year, though, the pitchers did indeed carry the hitters to the title. The Dodgers hit just .233 as a team last postseason, averaging 4.0 runs per game with 24 home runs in 18 games. But those modest numbers were inflated by their two-game domination of the Cincinnati Reds in the Wild Card Series. In the three rounds that followed (against the Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers and Toronto Blue Jays), the Dodgers hit .213 as a team (.203 in the World Series), averaged 3.38 runs per game and slugged just .358.
“Ultimately when you get to October that is what’s going to carry you, is your starting pitching,” Muncy acknowledged. “It doesn’t matter how good an offense you have. You can have the best offense in the history of the game. If you don’t have any starting pitching, for whatever reason the way baseball works in October, you’re not going to be able to outslug everyone. For whatever reason, whether it’s the preparation, teams scouting for a month and a half in advance to figure out how to beat you – it just never works that way.
“The way it generally works, your starting pitching carries you, you get one guy who gets extremely hot and you get the timely hits. You’re just not going to go out there and get 15 hits a game. That’s just the way October works.”
With the Dodgers’ offense struggling in August, first baseman Freddie Freeman said the hitters had been talking about not wanting the team’s pitchers – as good as they are – to have to carry them in October.
“They’ve subsided because it’s been much better,” Freeman said as the regular season concluded. “We don’t have to pump each other up right now. Having Andy (Pages) back, he looks great. Shohei took some nice swings the past few days. Mookie looks great. Teo (Hernandez), Kyle (Tucker) has been swinging the bat better. It’s my turn to join.”
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With the notable exceptions of Freeman (.184 in September with just one extra-base hit in 85 plate appearances) and four-time league MVP Shohei Ohtani (sidelined for most of September and just a .157 hitter in his last 18 games), the Dodgers’ offense was much more productive in the final month of the regular season. Even with a slow final week, the Dodgers scored 131 runs in September, fourth in MLB, and were near the top in on-base percentage (.355, first), slugging percentage (.438, third) and OPS (.793, second) in the month.
But most of those numbers were compiled against losing teams that ranked 23rd (San Francisco Giants), 26th (Washington Nationals) and 28th (Reds) in MLB in staff ERA. The Dodgers’ September schedule was the easiest in MLB. They only played three of their final 28 games against a team with a winning record – and they scored just 10 runs while losing that series to the Padres (seven in their lone victory).
“You hope that there’s a little bit of momentum there,” Muncy said of the offensive rebirth in September. “But I always hate when people say ‘lesser opponents.’ This is the big leagues. These are the best players in the world. I know that there’s teams that don’t have as good records as others. That doesn’t mean they’re bad players. They’re all still really, really good players. We’re still facing really, really good pitching.
“So for us, we throw those comments out the window because it doesn’t matter. You’re still facing big-league pitching. … For us to have a really good month and get the momentum going, obviously you hope that carries over and you can pick up where you left off.”
But even the Dodgers’ hitters know the best thing they have going for them this October is the quartet of Yamamoto, Snell, Tarik Skubal and Glasnow.
“Our pitching staff is pretty special, in my opinion,” said Freeman, not alone in that opinion. “We have four No. 1s rolling out there with Yama, Snell, Skubs, and Glasnow.
“So our pitching staff is most likely going to do it again like they did last year, and hopefully our offense can pick it up this year, unlike last year.”
Heading into October, Friedman said he was “very excited about the potential” stored within the Dodgers’ lineup. Even while saying, “I think this is arguably our most talented and deepest pitching staff we’ve ever gone into October with,” the team’s president of baseball operations said he expects to be “balanced” with neither the hitters nor those pitchers to have to carry more than their share of the load this postseason. But doing just enough to support that staff is all the offense should focus on, according to Mookie Betts.
“Now you’re facing all the best pitching,” Betts said.
“It’s kind of how you win. You have to be able to pitch, get some timely hits. Hitting is hard, especially in the playoffs. … Getting three, four, five hits in an inning is not really a thing, so you have to figure out a way to scratch a run across, get a walk, whatever it is. But definitely we’ll have their back.”
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