Over the last decade the Los Angeles Dodgers have essentially built a super team, winning eight consecutive National League West titles while also maintaining a top-five farm system in baseball.
Up until this season they had nothing to show for it as their last World Series win came in 1988. The team reached the Fall Classic in 2017 and 2018 and had the best record in the NL, but ultimately fell short all three times.
That prompted Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman to make a big move, acquiring Mookie Betts in a blockbuster trade with the Boston Red Sox before the start of the 2020 season.
He ended up being the missing piece for the Dodgers as they finally overcoming all obstacles to end the franchise’s championship drought.
While the title still counts the same as any other, it’s impossible not to note that it came under unusual circumstances due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The regular season was only 60 games, while the postseason was expanded and played in bubbles to limit travel.
Despite that, the best team in baseball won it all as the Dodgers’ 43-17 regular-season record was tops in the sport.
When reflecting on the 2020 Dodgers, legendary Spanish-language broadcaster Jaime Jarrín put them up there as the best team he has ever seen, via Maria Torres of the L.A. Times:
“This year, everybody picked the Dodgers to win,” he said. “Everybody said they should win. Everybody said they have the best team. And that was true. I think we had the best team ever. We had power, we had pitching, to point that we won 43 games out of 60 games. The best.”
Jarrín has been broadcasting games for the Dodgers since 1959, so he has seen plenty of great teams throughout the course of his career.
It will be hard for the 2020 Dodgers to be viewed historically the way that Jarrín views them due to the shortened season. Only playing 60 games likely hurts the Dodgers more than it helped them in that respect as they were on a historical pace and could have easily eclipsed 100 regular-season wins if they played a full season.
L.A. will gladly settle for a championship in a shortened season regardless of what pundits have to say about it, and now the focus shifts to repeating in 2021, where the season will likely be close to a full 162 games.
Betts, Seager and Kershaw among nominees for 2020 All-MLB Team
It’s no secret that the Dodgers’ 2020 roster was star-studded, and now a number of players like Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Clayton Kershaw all had a chance to be named to the All-MLB Team as voted on by the fans.
This was the second annual voting for the honor, with voting taking place through the past week. The All-MLB Team will be announced on MLB Network on Dec. 7.
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