Dave Roberts has always been an unconditionally positive leader, but after years of playoff criticism, his finest work at the helm also demonstrated his evolution as a manager.
On May 26 last season, Yohan Ramirez was struggling to find the zone in the eighth inning when something happened that the journeyman reliever had never experienced in his five years in the big leagues.
Two days after hitting two batters and walking another in his first game of the series in Cincinnati. Ramirez looked erratic again. He plunked two batters to load the bases, prompting Dave Roberts out of the dugout.
Only, the Dodgers manager did not take the ball from Ramirez.
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Instead, Roberts wrapped his arms around the 29-year-old and pulled the pitcher's face close to his ear. He told Ramirez how much he believed in him, then he left him in the game. One pitch later, Ramirez extinguished the threat. Ramirez had been with the team for less than a week, yet he was already describing Roberts as more of a father figure than a coach.
Other Dodgers have issued similar refrains when describing what sets Roberts apart.
Two of his most distinctive traits are his ability to connect with players and his consistent positivity, both of which are vital when leading a club teeming with superstar talent. He has managed games, he has managed egos, and he has managed off-field turmoil, all the while keeping the train on the tracks, piling up both 100-win seasons and respect.
"It's just the confidence that he gives to the players," Teoscar Hernandez said after his first season with the club ended in a World Series championship. "He lets you have fun. His communication with his players … is one of the best that I had in my career. And I think that's why he's so special for this team."
Soon, it will be time for the Dodgers to demonstrate how special they believe he is.
Roberts and the Dodgers are reportedly closing in on a long-term extension as he prepares to enter the final year of his deal. The two sides have been in discussions for more than a month. It remains to be seen whether he will top Craig Counsell's five-year, $40 million pact with the Cubs, a deal that reset the market for the top managers in the sport.
But he should.
The Dodgers have made the playoffs all nine years with Roberts, who is one of five managers in MLB history with five 100-win seasons. And after his finest work with the Dodgers, a managing masterclass in which he learned from seasons past and pushed all the right buttons while guiding a depleted pitching staff to the finish line, Roberts deserves to be made the richest manager in the sport from a team that has spared no dollar in its quest to repeat as champions.
"The number of injuries we withstood during the year at different times, you could see where it was a little deflating to the clubhouse," president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said in the midst of Roberts' second championship run in the last five years.."And I think Doc's just relentless optimism helped keep things directionally positive and moving forward."
The Dodgers had used a franchise-record 40 pitchers throughout the 2024 season as an avalanche of injuries decimated the pitching staff and threatened to derail Shohei Ohtani's historic first season with the club. By the start of the postseason, only one member of their Opening Day rotation remained upright. To win in October, they needed a cavalcade of relievers and an expert manager who could meticulously deploy those arms — someone who knew when to push and when to throttle back.
Five months after his pep talk to Ramirez, Roberts took a similarly relaxed stroll to the mound that belied the magnitude of the decision that awaited.
Blake Treinen entered the deciding Game 5 of the World Series in the sixth inning. Two innings later, he was still on the mound protecting a one-run lead. The Dodgers had depleted their bullpen, using all of their available high-leverage arms while overcoming a five-run deficit. Treinen, who hadn't gone more than two innings in an outing in six years, had already faced seven batters and thrown 37 pitches when Roberts emerged from the dugout looking to slow the game down. He exuded a sense of calm, even as his heart beat out of his chest.
Rather than pull Treinen out, Roberts wanted to get a feel for what his reliever had left in the tank. Treinen expressed a desire to keep going. Roberts patted the veteran pitcher on the chest and granted that wish. Giancarlo Stanton was supposed to be his last batter, but when Treinen induced a first-pitch pop out, Roberts didn't budge. Treinen called it "an honor" that Roberts trusted him in such a vital moment. He rewarded his manager's faith, striking out Anthony Rizzo to end the threat.
The Dodgers, on the brink of winning a championship, still needed someone to pitch the ninth. Out of more traditional options, Roberts entrusted Walker Buehler to finish out the season. World Series MVP Freddie Freeman described it as one of the best games he had ever seen managed.
It was also representative of Roberts' growth and evolution, a triumph that culminated from years of lessons learned.
Roberts won NL Manager of the Year in 2016, his first season at the helm in Los Angeles. Over the next eight years, he proceeded to tally the highest winning percentage by any manager in MLB history (minimum 1,000 games).
And yet, considering the amount of money that Guggenheim Baseball Management poured into the club and the expert governance of Friedman and his adept baseball operations staff, Roberts often got overlooked for the team's successes, of which there were many for six months a year, and blamed for its failures, of which there were plenty once the calendar turned to October.
The most memorable and perplexing misfire came in the deciding Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS, when Roberts called on Clayton Kershaw out of the bullpen with two outs in the seventh inning. Kershaw recorded a strikeout to preserve a two-run lead, but his night wasn't over. With the heart of the Nationals order due up the following inning, Roberts sent Kershaw back out in a decision that infamously backfired.
Vindication would come in the form of a 2020 title that snapped the Dodgers' 32-year championship drought. But the pandemic-shortened achievement only briefly quieted the noise around the Dodgers manager, who had steered the club through unprecedented circumstances only to soon find himself in the hot seat again.
Using Julio Urîas in a hybrid role in the 2020 postseason, rotating the standout left-hander between starting and relief work, worked at the end of a 60-game season. Trying it again a year later, after Urîas had solidified himself as an ace while throwing more than three times as many innings, did not. More disappointment would follow that NLCS defeat.
A franchise-record 111-win 2022 season ended in a stunning first-round upset in San Diego. The deciding Game 4 of the NLDS included a series of questionable bullpen decisions in a seventh-inning meltdown. Padres hitters had seen plenty of relievers Tommy Kahnle and Yency Almonte, who were each pitching in their third straight game. Kahnle allowed each of the three batters he faced to reach. It didn't go much better for Almonte, who surrendered the game-tying hit. In the midst of the chaos, Almonte was given a pickoff sign from the dugout in an effort to give Alex Vesia more time to warm up. That sign failed to reach Almonte, who instead threw a first-pitch ball. In the middle of the at-bat, Roberts turned to Vesia, who surrendered the go-ahead hit.
As the season unraveled, Evan Phillips never participated in the implosion. The Dodgers were set on using their team's best reliever to finish the game. By the time Phillips eventually entered an inning later, there was nothing left to save.
Afterward, Roberts was critical of his team's intensity, especially when compared to the opposing dugout. His desire to inspire more urgency the following year fizzled out along with the health of his starters when the Dodgers were upset by another division rival in 2023, this time at the hands of the Diamondbacks. The defeat was not the result of a tactical error. Rather, it was a thorough thrashing. The Dodgers' most trusted bats were silenced and their depleted rotation got thwacked. Nonetheless, another 100-win season ended abruptly. Pressure was mounting, both on Roberts and his club, when the Dodgers spent more than $1 billion revamping their roster.
They traded for and extended Tyler Glasnow, made Yoshinobu Yamamoto the highest-paid pitcher in the sport and, most notably, added another franchise-altering talent. When Ohtani signed, he shared that the Dodgers' ownership group had considered the previous decade, years of sustained excellence that included just one World Series title, a failure.
Without those experiences, though, perhaps Roberts doesn't grow into the manager he became in 2024, operating with the deftness and precision required to help the Dodgers overcome a litany of injuries in a championship season.
Over the years, Roberts believes he has evolved.
During the NLCS, he referenced the "trust tree" he has with his high-leverage relievers, the faithful few he believes in most with everything on the line. Of course, there's a desire to use those players as often as possible in the most important games. But last year, needing bullpen games to survive the gauntlet of postseason baseball, Roberts also learned the value of restraint.
"Each moment you feel that that's always the best option, for fear that if you go somewhere else or with another player and it doesn't work out, you didn't deploy your best option in that moment," Roberts continued. "That's kind of the inner struggle that I think any manager has, and I've lived it. I think for me, experience, having gone down that road, having some successes but also failures, I think I've learned from that."
In other words, there can be benefits to saving those high-leverage bullpen arms, as Roberts did throughout the 2024 postseason in an effort both to keep those players fresh and avoid overexposing them to an opponent over the course of a length series. Down to three healthy starting pitchers for the postseason run, Roberts had to be judicious about the way he deployed his staff. When game scripts went south, that meant turning to low-leverage options and essentially punting, living to play another day.
Ultimately, Roberts' risky choices saved the Dodgers — and, possibly, his job. Had the Dodgers succumbed to their 2-1 deficit to the Padres in the NLDS, it would have marked a third straight first-round exit.
Over the final two games of the series, the Padres didn't score again. With the season on the line in Games 4 and 5, Friedman described Roberts' pitching decisions as "surgical." He extracted the best out of his group.
Just as important as his in-game decisions, he helped his players believe.
A month prior in Atlanta, with the Padres on the Dodgers' heels in the division race, Roberts sensed the group was down after learning they had lost Glasnow for the year. So he called a rare team meeting.
"I just got a feeling that there was a little, ‘Woe is me,' and that's just not who we are," Roberts said. "I knew Walker was throwing that night and felt for us to win 11 games in October, we need him. So I wanted a little bit to have that meeting with him on the mound that night and challenge him a little bit. The message was basically, ‘I can't believe in them more than they believe in each other.'"
Early in the year, Roberts' steadiness helped steer the Dodgers through a betting scandal involving Ohtani's former interpreter. As injuries piled up through the course of the season, his positivity helped keep the ship afloat. And with the season on the line, his decision-making was pristine.
"Continuing to instill the confidence in our group and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each guy to piece it together, I think that's as impressive of a job as we've seen," general manager Brandon Gomes said. "I know our expectations are high and we're expected to win, but the challenges that this team went through with Dave leading the helm is really impressive to come out the other side as champions."
Admittedly, that pressure of World Series or bust every year can take some of the joy of the job away, but it's a position he cherishes. Roberts began the postseason on the hot seat and finished it on the stage, dancing with Ice Cube at the end of the Dodgers' parade route, his place possibly cemented as a Hall of Fame manager.
Since then, two of the skippers he beat on his march to a championship — Padres manager Mike Shildt and Yankees manager Aaron Boone — both received extensions.
Soon, a record deal should follow for the winningest manager in Dodgers postseason history.
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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