The Los Angeles Dodgers have the third-longest postseason streak in MLB history at 12 consecutive seasons and are closing in on the 1991-2005 Atlanta Braves for the all-time record.
While the Dodgers are early into a new era in of franchise history, it will not be an end of the previous stretch but instead an evolution as they plan to take their success of the 2010s and early 2020s to a whole new level.
While nothing in the sport is guaranteed, the Dodgers have set themselves up in a way where it is difficult to imagine their postseason streak coming to an end anytime soon. And it only figures to get easier for them going forward as the checkbook has opened up considerably in 2023 and 2024.
While the Dodgers are no strangers to operating with one of the highest payrolls in baseball, there has been a clear escalation in the free agency strategy as the front office senses an opportunity to capitalize on their current championship window.
“From our standpoint, each and every year we’re trying to win. It’s hard. What’s really difficult is to win, and what’s even harder to do is to repeat. And to a man, all the guys we’ve talked to of our players, coaching staff, everyone is of the mind of, let’s run it back and do everything we can to be in position to win,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman recently said.
“We feel like we’ve got a really talented team in place, so everything for us was centered around what can we do, what can we add to put ourselves in the best position to do that? We’ve talked about from a big-picture standpoint, a goal being that we want to look back on this period of time as the golden era of Dodgers baseball.
“That’s a high bar, and for us to continue to do everything we can to win, is really important.
In some ways the 2024 World Series title serves as a transition between eras of Dodgers history, which has included two championships in the last five years amid the stretch of 12 consecutive postseason berths.
It marked the Dodgers’ first World Series with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and the core has since been added onto with the likes of Blake Snell and Tanner Scott, among others.
How to define golden era for Dodgers
While the aforemtnioed era contained an extraordinary amount of regular season success, there was also a plethora of what-ifs and missed opportunities that kept the Dodgers from being truly dominant. While one particular year was outside of their control, the rest fall squarely on their shoulders.
It is changing the disproportionate level of postseason success that Friedman hopes could help define his career with the Dodgers.
“I have no idea. I don’t know,” Friedman initially answered when asked how to define what would be a golden era for the Dodgers.
“I think it’s more just when we look back on it, that is how it’s generally regarded. I don’t know what that means, so for us, it’s just do everything we can to win as many times as we can.”
Friedman’s ability to spend over a $1 billion last offseason and still have the capability to sign Snell to a five-year, $182 million contract highlights the unique financial situation afforded to the Dodgers organization.
Friedman explained that it is made possible because of Guggenheim Baseball Management’s commitment to winning at any cost.
“As long as I’ve been here — now going into year 11 — the commitment from our ownership group to do everything we can to win, has been there time and time again. Last offseason, very clear direction: let’s continue with what we’ve built, let’s be aggressive,” he said.
“That message has continued. It’s easy for people to say, but I think you can go back and look at the demonstrated commitment that our ownership group has made and is going to continue to make for us to do everything we can to win as many championships as we possibly can,.”
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