Since the start of 2013, the Dodgers have been the best team in baseball. Over that 12-season span, they’ve won the National League West 11 times, made it to the NLCS seven times, and made it to the World Series four times. Their 1,215 regular season wins are 95 more than the team in second place, and their 64 postseason wins are also the most in the game. Despite all that, until late Wednesday night, they’d only managed one championship. What deserves to go down as one of the most impressive dynasties in the history of the game has been consistently denied that sort of recognition because of the delightful, infuriating unpredictability of playoff baseball. During an absolutely wild World Series Game 5, that unpredictability finally worked in the Dodgers’ favor.
This paragraph is just a list of things that happened during Game 5, so hold on tight. There was a brief no-hit bid from one starter and a disastrous, abortive start from the other. There were monster home runs, broken bat singles, seeing-eye grounders, great defensive plays, calamitous errors, inexcusable mental mistakes, a five-run inning, a five-run comeback, unearned runs, nearly catastrophic baserunning decisions, a catcher’s interference, a disengagement penalty, a surprisingly high number of sacrifice flies, a starter coming in to get the save on one-day’s rest, and, I’m absolutely certain, a bunch of other stuff that I’m too fried to remember. The only thing that didn’t happen, thankfully, was two ding dongs grabbing Mookie Betts. In the end, the Dodgers were the team left standing, securing a 7-6 victory over the Yankees at Yankee Stadium for their eighth World Series title in franchise history and the second in the past five years.
During those past five years, the Dodgers have had to put up with a number of cranks who insisted that their 2020 title wasn’t legitimate, coming as it did during the pandemic-shortened season. This argument doesn’t hold water for any number of reasons, the most obvious being that although the regular season was short, the postseason wasn’t. In fact, at the time, it was the longest in MLB history, and the 2020 Dodgers hold the record with 13 postseason victories. Nobody who would lob that sort of accusation is too concerned with the facts, but another title makes the argument even flimsier. The Dodgers have also lamented the fact that, coming as it did in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, they couldn’t celebrate their title with a victory parade. Wednesday night’s action should solve both problems tidily.
Game 5 offered a rematch between Gerrit Cole and Jack Flaherty, who combined to allow just three runs in Game 1. But perhaps you remember the NLCS, in which Flaherty followed a flawless Game 1 performance by allowing eight earned runs over three innings in Game 5. Five just might not be his lucky number. The Yankees jumped all over Flaherty in the first inning. After retiring Gleyber Torres on a hard-hit grounder to second base, Flaherty walked Juan Soto. That brought to the plate Aaron Judge, who hadn’t homered since October 17. Flaherty started Judge off with a fastball, and I’m not sure that words can express just how over the middle this fastball truly was.
That kind of meatball could turn ordinary hitters into Aaron Judge, and it seemed to bring the actual Judge back to midseason form. He launched a line drive into the right field bleachers, and before you start wondering whether it was a short porch special, rest assured that it was no cheapie. The ball left Judge’s bat at 108.9 mph and traveled 403 feet. Jazz Chisholm Jr. had the courtesy to wait four pitches before launching his own no-doubter into the right field stands. After just 14 pitches, Flaherty was down, 3-0. The inning ended with a hard-hit lineout and a strikeout. The Yankees had put the ball in play four times, and all four were hard hit.
Anthony Volpe led off the bottom of the second by ripping a line drive down the left field line for a double. Austin Wells grounded out to first. It was the first ball the Yankees put in play that wasn’t hit hard, but it did move Volpe over to third, and Alex Verdugo brought him home with a line drive over the second baseman’s head. That gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead and ended Flaherty’s night. He recorded just four outs. The Yankees would tack on a fifth run in the third inning, when Giancarlo Stanton crushed a Ryan Brasier fastball deep into the right field bleachers. “Cancel your Friday plans,” I wrote, drafting what I figured would be the lede of this article. “The 2024 season will live for one more weekend, and the World Series will be winging its way back to California for Game 6.”
On the other side, it would be hard to overstate how effortlessly Cole cruised through the first four innings. He needed just seven pitches to get through the first and didn’t allow a baserunner until a two-out walk to Gavin Lux in the top of the third. Betts led off the fourth inning, and the crowd, somehow upset with him because two of their number had assaulted him the night before, booed him mercilessly. Betts worked a walk, which brought Freddie Freeman to the plate. The fans booed again, this time for the unforgivable crime of hitting a bunch of home runs. Freeman crushed a ball into deep left-center, but Judge chased it down and made an incredible leaping catch a moment before crashing into the plexiglass wall with a very loud bang. Manager Aaron Boone jumped out of the dugout in alarm, but Judge was unhurt, and millions of dads took to the internet to make jokes about their concern for the health of the wall. Freeman was just a few feet from hitting a homer in his seventh consecutive World Series game. After four innings, Cole’s no-hitter was still intact and the Yankees still led, 5-0.
The Dodgers decided to just get it all back in the fifth, though it might be fair to say that the Yankees decided to give it to them.
Enrique Hernández broke up the no-hitter with a single to lead off the inning. Cole didn’t seem to mind, inducing a lazy fly ball to center from Tommy Edman and a grounder to short from Will Smith. Oh, I forgot to mention that Judge dropped that lazy fly ball to center, and after fielding the grounder to short, Volpe tried to get the force at third, but he spiked the throw and Chisholm couldn’t dig it out. The play was ruled a fielder’s choice and an error, and the Dodgers had the bases loaded with no outs. Like so many aces before him, Cole seemingly decided to do it himself, and he nearly succeeded, striking out Lux and Shohei Ohtani swinging. That brought up Betts, who hit a cue shot to first base that should have ended the inning. Cole started toward first but stopped, assuming that Anthony Rizzo would finish the play unassisted. Instead, Rizzo pulled up to toss the ball and saw that no one was there. The Dodgers had their first run of the game, cutting the lead to 5-1, and the bases remained loaded.
That brought Freeman to the plate as the tying run. Cole jammed Freeman, but the hottest hitter of the Series managed to muscle the ball into center field, scoring Edman and Smith. Without a single hard-hit ball, the Dodgers had cut the lead to two runs. It was about to disappear entirely. Teoscar Hernández launched a high fly ball that landed on the warning track in center and nearly bounced over the wall. Betts scored from third, and because the ball stayed in play, Freeman was able score the tying run all the way from first. In the last 10 years, no World Series has featured more than five unearned runs from both teams combined. The Yankees matched that total in the fifth inning alone.
Amazingly, after all that, Cole returned to pitch a 1-2-3 sixth inning against the bottom of the Los Angeles lineup. Brusdar Graterol came in to pitch the sixth for the Dodgers – their sixth pitcher of the game – and promptly walked both Soto and Judge. Chisholm grounded into a fielder’s choice, bringing Stanton to the plate with runners on first and third with one out. Stanton pushed New York back into the lead, ripping a sacrifice fly into deep center. Soto scored to make it 6-5, and Chisholm tagged up as well, just beating the tag at second. It was an enormous risk. Had he gotten there a fraction of a second later, he would have been out and Soto’s run wouldn’t have counted.
With 98 pitches, Cole returned in the seventh to face the top of the Dodgers lineup for the third time. After retiring Ohtani and Betts, he walked Freeman, and that was the end of his night. Boone came out to take the ball, and the crowd rose to its feet to applaud one of the stranger quality starts in recent memory. Cole threw 6 2/3 innings and allowed five unearned runs on four hits and four walks. He became the fourth pitcher in World Series history to allow five unearned runs but no earned runs in a start. As Alex Speier noted, it was just the third World Series start of the century in which a starting pitcher went more than six innings and allowed at least five runs. The last pitcher to achieve the feat: Cole, in Game 1 of the 2019 World Series.
Tommy Kahnle came in to pitch the eighth, and Enrique Hernández greeted him by rifling a line drive single to left. Edman broke his bat on a perfectly placed grounder between short and third, and the Dodgers had runners on first and second with no outs. Pitching coach Matt Blake strolled out to caucus with Kahnle. Unless he told the right-hander to walk Smith on four pitches, his pep talk didn’t work.
Boone then came out to get Kahnle, bringing Luke Weaver in to pitch for the third day in a row, this time with the bases loaded, no outs, a one-run lead, and the World Series in the balance. Lux worked a full count before sending a sacrifice fly to center, scoring Enrique Hernández and tying the game at six. That brought up the injured Ohtani, who had looked overmatched on fastballs for most of the game. He fouled off a first-pitch changeup, but his bat just caught Wells’ glove during the swing, resulting in a catcher’s interference call. It was the third error of the game for the Yankees, and it reloaded the bases for Betts.
“I had a little talk with Freddie right before that because I didn’t know what to do,” said Betts after the game. “Freddie just said, ‘Trust your gut.’” Betts crushed a deep drive to center field and immediately pumped his fist; the second sacrifice fly of the inning had given the Dodgers a 7-6 lead. Weaver struck out Freeman looking to end the inning. Despite not allowing a hit, he’d surrendered two runs and the lead.
The Dodgers wouldn’t give it back. After playing low-leverage reliever roulette in Game 4, they were ready to make their stand with their best relievers. However, they weren’t exactly prepared for the full bullpen game required after Flaherty’s implosion. Roberts cobbled together 23 outs from Anthony Banda, Brasier, Michael Kopech, Alex Vesia, Graterol, Blake Treinen, and, finally and most surprisingly, Walker Buehler. That septet combined for eight strikeouts and allowed just two runs despite walking eight Yankees and allowing four hits.
In a way, it was fitting that Buehler earned the save with a clean ninth inning, just two days after going five scoreless innings in Game 3. For the second season in a row, the Dodgers had the best team that money could buy, paying for depth that any team would envy, only to end up with their starting rotation decimated by injuries anyway by the time the playoffs rolled around. Buehler, who struggled after starting the season on the IL due to his second Tommy John surgery and missing two months with hip inflammation, was by no means a lock to make the postseason roster at all, but he looked like a new pitcher in the playoffs. He closed things out easily, inducing a groundout to third, and then striking out Wells and Verdugo to seal the deal. “For our organization,” said Buehler after the game, “we deserve this. We’ve been playing really good baseball for years. Everybody talks shit about 2020 and whatever, but they can’t say a lot about it now.”
