Ahead of the 2024 season, what’s become a perennial offseason question popped up again. Would this finally be the year the Dodgers decided to cut ties with Dave Roberts?
Despite the fact that Roberts is one of the franchise’s winningest managers ever, with more playoff appearances than any of them even if you don’t count this season, he has his detractors, many of whom have pointed to LA’s penchant for flaming out in the postseason (excluding 2020, of course
If the Dodgers had dropped the NLDS (again) to the Padres this year, calls for his head actually might not have fallen on completely deaf ears in the front office. Regular season wins, even when they’re at franchise-setting highs, are of little use if the Dodgers can’t bring the Commissioner’s Trophy back home to LA.
Roberts’ current contract expires at the end of 2025, but he made it clear this year that the Dodgers should keep him around for much longer. At the GM Meetings, Brandon Gomes said that the team planned to do just that, and would be negotiating another extension this winter.
After the Dodgers beat the Mets for the NL pennant and advanced to the World Series, Roberts tied Bruce Bochy for the most pennants of active manager at four, and the writing was on the wall: Roberts wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.
His bullpen management throughout the season, but most certainly in October, was perhaps one of the biggest contributors in the Dodgers’ last push across the finish line. Although it was risky to basically waste World Series Game 4 by turning to the bottom of the bullpen barrel (apologies to Landon Knack and Brent Honeywell Jr.), and to keep Blake Treinen in for his longest appearance of the season during Game 5, and to put Walker Buehler in for the final inning of that game, the Dodgers still walked away with the championship.
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