Dodgers win World Series after wild Game 5 comeback

NEW YORK – The 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers were star-studded but plagued by injuries. They had spent an entire season overcoming adversity.

And in the end, when it came time to win the championship, they did it again, erasing a five-run deficit and using seven relievers – including starting pitcher Walker Buehler – to get 23 outs in a 7-6 Result Cover – Come from behind victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night.

In doing so, the Dodgers won their eighth title in franchise history, their first since the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and their first in a full season since 1988. The Dodgers became the first team to use more than seven pitchers to win a championship.

“We're obviously resilient, but there's so much love in the clubhouse for winning this game today,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “That was it. It was love, it was courage. I mean, it was just a beautiful thing. I’m just proud of us and happy for us.”

Their comeback was the result of the multitude of opportunities presented to them in the fifth inning. Aaron Judge was hit directly by a flare that bounced off his glove. Anthony Volpe threw past third base on an attempted force out. Anthony Rizzo pitched a slow roller but had no one to jump to at first base. With two outs and the bases loaded, Freddie Freeman followed with a two-run single and Teoscar Hernandez added a two-run double, tying the score at 5-5.

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole pitched the first four innings, holding the Dodgers hitless but throwing only 49 pitches. He then threw 38 pitches in the fifth inning, which required six outs.

“We’re just taking advantage of every mistake they made in this inning,” Teoscar Hernandez said. “We put together some good at-bats. We put the ball in play.”

The Yankees retook the lead on Giancarlo Stanton's sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth and held it when Clay Holmes came on to replace Cole and struck out Max Muncy with two on and two out in the bottom of the seventh. But the Dodgers had another breakthrough in the eighth.

Enrique Hernandez and Tommy Edman led off with consecutive singles and Will Smith walked on four straight pitches, prompting Yankees manager Aaron Boone to replace Tommy Kahnle with Luke Weaver, who recorded four outs in Game 4. Gavin Lux and Betts followed with sacrifice flies, giving the Dodgers their first lead – one they refused to relinquish.

The Yankees threatened in the bottom half with two ons and one out against a tiring Blake Treinen. Daniel Hudson and Buehler, the Game 3 starter who has struggled to get out of the bullpen throughout his career, were warming up. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stopped by for a quick chat with Treinen, who then got Stanton to fly out, striking out Rizzo and ending the threat.

Buehler checked in for the ninth time and finished dead last in the Yankees lineup. He spread his arms wide and looked over at his dugout, then was promptly mobbed.

“There’s just a lot of ways we can win baseball games,” Buehler said. “Of course the superstars we have on our team and the discipline fit together.”

It was a fitting capstone to a dominant run. According to ESPN Research, the 2020-'24 Dodgers became the first team since the 1953-'57 Yankees with multiple World Series titles and a winning percentage of .640 or better over five seasons.

This era's Dodgers broke through to the World Series in 2017, suffering a disheartening seven-game loss to the Houston Astros, a team that was later revealed to have illegally stolen signs. The Dodgers returned to the World Series in 2018, but were overwhelmed by the Boston Red Sox and suffered a heartbreaking late loss to the underdog Washington Nationals in the deciding game of the 2019 National League Division Series.

In the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, the Dodgers finally broke through, rallying from a 3-1 series deficit against the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series and then defeating the Tampa Bay Rays in six games in the World Series and won the title for the first time in 32 years. The next three years were marked by further heartbreak – outlasted by the Braves in the 2021 NLCS, then demoralized by the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2022 and 2023 NLDS, respectively.

The following offseason, the Dodgers spent more than $1 billion on two generational players, two-way star Shohei Ohtani and young starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Tyler Glasnow was acquired via trade and received a lucrative contract extension. Teoscar Hernandez received a big one-year contract.

But injuries occurred the following regular season. Yamamoto, Betts, Muncy, Treinen and Brusdar Graterol all missed overtime; Several key members of their team – Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone and Emmet Sheehan – were sidelined due to season-ending injuries. On the night they won their 11th NL West title in 12 years, Freeman sprained his right ankle. On the night they took a 2-1 lead in that World Series, Ohtani suffered a subluxation of his left shoulder.

But the Dodgers kept going. They used a bullpen game to knock out the Padres with their season on the line while on the road in Game 4 of the NLDS, then returned to Dodger Stadium and shut them out to advance to the next round. They then used an overwhelming offensive attack to defeat the surging New York Mets, scoring an NLCS record 46 runs. The first three games of the World Series demonstrated their consistent dominance.

Trailing by one, two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in Game 1, Freeman delivered a thrilling win with a Kirk Gibson-style walk-off grand slam. But it was the start of the pitching that propelled the Dodgers forward through the first three games, with Jack Flaherty, Buehler and Yamamoto the only three members of a vicious rotation, allowing just three runs in 16 2/3 innings.

The Dodgers dealt with an eventual loss by primarily using low-leverage relievers in Game 4. Although they trailed by just one run after five innings and Jatwo runs entering the eighth inning, the idea was to save their best relievers for Game 5. These relievers started taking into account as early as the second inning, as by that point Flaherty had allowed four runs on consecutive home runs by Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. and an RBI single by Alex Verdugo.

Anthony Banda, Ryan Brasier, Michael Kopech, Alex Vesia, Graterol and Treinen – representatives of the team that has advanced so often this postseason – combined to ensure the Yankees scored just two runs on four hits in 6 2/3 innings and cemented a title.