New Core 4? Young Dodgers make the case
Mike Lupica
@MikeLupicaIt was 24 years ago that Joe Torre’s Yankees began their run as what Buster Olney called “The Last Yankee Dynasty” in his book about those 1996-2001 teams. The Yanks would eventually win four World Series in five years, and nearly five in six before things went south in the bottom of the 9th in Game 7 of the '01 World Series against the D-backs. And everybody who saw those teams know they were built around four talented young players now known in legend to Yankee fans as the Core Four:
Jeter, a rookie in 1996 when the Yankees won their first Series in 18 years, was 22 that season. Rivera was 26. So was Pettitte, and so was the catcher, Posada. They also had Bernie Williams in centerfield, still just 28 that year. Core Four, plus one.
No one would suggest that the 2020 Dodgers will have that kind or run, or that any baseball team will ever have that kind of run. But what we do know is that the Dodgers absolutely have the same kind of young Core Four now that Torre’s Yankees did then:
Betts, who won the American League MVP Award two years ago and was the star of Game 6 for the Dodgers on Tuesday night, is 28 years old. Bellinger, the 2019 National League MVP Award winner, is 25. Buehler, the ace of a staff that has Clayton Kershaw on it, is 26 and so is Seager, who just won MVP Awards of his own for the NL Championship Series and then the World Series.
And Kershaw, a former MVP and Cy Young Award winner himself, is still only 32 years old.
Of course there are no certainties in this world, in sports or anywhere else, not after what's happened in the world in 2020. No one could ever have known that when the Nationals were celebrating their World Series championship just one year ago, that we would ever have a season like this one.
But this one thing is certain:
The 2020 Dodgers are built around a core of young players every bit as talented as any World Series team has ever seen. The Yankees’ Core Four was built around a shortstop, a catcher, a starting pitcher and the greatest closer of them all. The Dodgers? They have Seager at short, Bellinger in centerfield and Mookie Betts, the best rightfielder on the planet and someone with a skill set that at least reminds you of Willie Mays. They have Buehler and of course, they still have Kershaw.
In a week when we all talked about how 32 years of waiting for the Dodgers ended when Julio Urias (he’s all of 24) struck out Willy Adames looking to end Game 6 and this Series, it is worth looking at the talent on the field and wondering if what really happened over the past month is just the beginning for the Los Angeles Dodgers. They aren’t the only team in the sport with young talent, all you have to do is look around. Nobody has a core as talented as the Dodgers do.
And as much as they all did to help their team win, it was Seager, who was already at Dodger Stadium before Bellinger and Buehler got there in 2017, who was the greatest star of all of them in one of the most entertaining baseball Octobers ever played.
Seager played 18 games this postseason. He had 22 hits, eight home runs and 20 RBIs. He even walked 11 times. He had a batting average of .328, an on-base percentage of .425 and an OPS of 1.171. He even came up big with the biggest fielder’s choice of his career on Tuesday night, when he got a groundball to the right side and Mookie was a streak of light coming home from third putting the Dodgers in the lead.
Late after Game 6 that night, manager Dave Roberts simply told me this from Texas: “It always comes down to players.”
It wasn’t just those four, of course. It was all of them, up and down Roberts’ batting order. Justin Turner was terrific for the Dodgers. Max Muncy was terrific, getting big hits around all those times when he kept grinding down Rays pitchers. Will Smith got a huge home run when the Dodgers were coming back against the Braves. And then there was the kid, Julio Urías, pitching the last three innings of Game 7 against Atlanta and then the last 2 1/3 innings against the Rays without giving up a single hit. You wonder sometimes if he ought to be the Dodgers closer going forward. And Roberts, by the way, managed two perfect games after the crazy, crushing loss his team suffered in Game 4.
The short season didn’t just produce a worthy champion in baseball. It produced a great champion. So many ways to look at the Dodgers. You have to start by looking at their very own Core Four, plus Clayton. They really did give their fans an ending the other night that feels like just the beginning. Like they used to say in Brooklyn, for a completely different reason: Wait ‘till next year.