Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES — When Justin Turner fielded the hot shot off the bat of Arizona’s Christian Walker and whipped it across the diamond for the last out of Tuesday’s win against the Diamondbacks, the Dodgers clinched their ninth consecutive postseason appearance. Though the celebration on the field and in the locker room was muted, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of just how epic this Dodger team of the last decade has been.
Put it this way, when the Dodgers clinched their first postseason birth in this run, Gavin Lux was in middle school. There have been a lot of players to come and go in this era of success, but it has all led to the Dodgers playing baseball in October.
“It’s a special moment, to be able to get to the postseason for, what is it, nine years in a row now?” said Max Muncy in a post-game interview. “It’s quite an accomplishment. You can’t take the postseason for granted. It’s a special moment, and everyone’s excited about it.”
Let’s give it some historical context. With their ninth straight postseason appearance the Dodgers are in third place all time, trailing only the mighty Braves of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, who had fourteen consecutive playoff runs, and the Jeter-era Yankees, who played October baseball from every year from 1995 to 2007. Of course this doesn’t mean as much when we think that before we went to expanded playoffs and wild cards, there were some very good teams who might have had similar runs under the current format. However, in this Wild Card era, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
“We did a little champagne toast, said a few words and acknowledged the fact that this is a big accomplishment and you don’t ever want to get jaded and not appreciate getting to the postseason because it’s not a rite of passage,” skipper Dave Roberts said. “We acknowledged that. We also acknowledged that we have a lot of work to do and this is just the beginning.”
Quite a different reaction from the first time this happened in this streak, the infamous swimming party in Arizona in 2013. But for the Dodgers, a postseason birth is just the beginning of a long list of things that are still left to accomplish. Hopefully, there will be much bigger celebrations in the days to come, especially in October…
