Notes: Dave Roberts, Freddie Freeman, Brent Honeywell
Today at 10:04 AM
We'll have more on Friday's Dodgers championship parade through Los Angeles and celebration at Dodger Stadium, but first here are a few other team-related stories to open your weekend.
Dave Roberts now has two championships under his belt to go with winning at a 102-win pace every 162 games during his nine years with the Dodgers. He's one of only nine managers in the divisional era (since 1969) and just five managers in the wild card era (since 1995) to have won four pennants. Everyone else in that group is in the Hall of Fame save for the still-active Roberts and Bruce Bochy.
Alden González at ESPN wrote about this postseason being a validation for Roberts:
"To be honest, Dave is the real reason why we're here," Mookie Betts said amid a raucous champagne celebration inside Yankee Stadium's visiting clubhouse. "I know there's a lot of talk about Doc, but Doc is the best, man. Doc loves each and every person in here, Doc has confidence in each and every person in here, Doc never lost confidence in anybody in here. And no matter what we went through, he was always positive."
Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus nicely summarized the Dodgers October run to a title, noting the team didn't necessarily follow one guiding philosophy but rather several of them, which helped the team adapt at various points.
"There's no one path to success, but where there is a path to success in baseball, you're likely to find the Dodgers pretty far down the road," Goldstein wrote.
Sam Miller at his Pebble Hunting newsletter dove deep into Freddie Freeman's walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series compared to Kirk Gibson's famous 1988 home run, and why the two were different.
From Miller:
It might seem pedantic, or even uncharitable, to say that Freeman wasn't limping as badly as Gibson. But what I mean isn't that Freeman's home run was in any way lesser, but rather, that it was heroic—in the narrative sense—in a completely different way. Gibson's home run was that of a protagonist dying, and managing in his final gasp to do one last brave thing to save the world. Freeman's home run was that of a protagonist who, having traveled a long and harrowing journey, has finally arrived at the final battle. To save the world.
Jake Mintz at Yahoo Sports had some great anecdotes from the Dodgers' championship celebration after Game 5 of the World Series, including a very touching story of Brent Honeywell Jr.
An excerpt:
Brent Honeywell Jr., whose once-promising starting pitching career was derailed by an avalanche of arm injuries, joined the Dodgers in July as a reliever on a flier. He brought with him a screwball, enough f*** you to fill Yankee Stadium and the experiences of a man who'd seen the bottom and crawled out.
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