A winning culture propels Dodgers to title

Yamamoto maintained his previous level of dominance in the rotation. A long-suspect bullpen finally faltered. And in many facets of the series (in which the Blue Jays outscored the Dodgers 34 to 26 and hit .269 to the Dodgers’ .203 team average), the Dodgers looked second-best.

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“I mean, big picture-wise, we didn’t play very well,” Friedman said. “But those big pivotal moments is where our guys really showed up. ... Which I think gets at who they are, the compete, how much they care about each other, howmuch they care about bringing a championship back to L.A. in back-to-back years.”

There was Game 3, when the Dodgers prevailed in an 18-inning marathon by getting an unforeseen boost from little-known reliever Will Klein, who was willing to sacrifice his arm in a grueling four-inning outing despite spending most ofthis year stuck in the minors.

There was Game 6, when the team survived a potential season-ending, ninth-inning jam thanks to the veteran defensive instinct Kiké Hernandez (the high-energy October stalwart who started every game of the playoffs after limited playing time in the regular season) and Miguel Rojas (whohasbecome one of the emotional leaders of the team since being acquired in a 2023 trade for a minor-league prospect, despite also serving in a depth role for most of the summer) flashed on avictory-sealing double play.

“That's what makes us really tough,” Rojas said. “[We’re] competing every single day, and regardless of what the situation is, Ithink everybody [is able to] just kind of forget about the past and focus on the moment right now.”

Game 7 provided the ultimate test.