In the ensuing months, the details have blurred. As the Dodgers recorded the final out, their manager remembers throwing up his arms and sprinting toward the field. He might have cried. He probably shouted. He definitely beamed.
You might have thought Dave Roberts had just won the World Series.
When he actually did, two weeks later—his second in five years—his reaction was similar. By then, he had put the finishing touches on a masterful postseason and all but posed for his plaque at Cooperstown. But in order to do all that, Los Angeles had to win the NLDS, three games to two, over the Padres, and when they did, Roberts felt relief—not just that his team would keep playing but that he would be there while they did.
On a warm day in January, Roberts, 52, leans forward in the dining room of his sprawling San Diego home and addresses the fear he tried not to let consume him that week. The Dodgers had won two pennants and a World Series since he arrived in Los Angeles before the 2016 season. But dating to a 2022 NLDS defeat to the Padres (after winning 111 regular-season games), they had lost six straight postseason games, all to less talented division rivals, all in games that Roberts later admitted the opponents had just wanted more. Now they had spent $1.2 billion in a single offseason to assemble perhaps the greatest collection of talent ever to jog onto a baseball field—and they were on the verge of crashing out of the Division Series yet again.
“I did feel that—right or wrong, truth or not truth, I don’t know that answer—but I felt my job was on the line if we didn’t win that series,” Roberts says. “That’s just my truth.”
He largely kept his worries to himself. Even bench coach Danny Lehmann says he did not know. Chris Woodward—then a senior adviser and now the team’s first base coach—had an idea, he says, mostly because he himself lost a managerial job when the Rangers moved on from him in 2022 after three and a half years in charge. “I knew,” Woodward says. “I know what that feels like.” But Roberts never said anything aloud.
Looking back on 2024, he says he feels good about the way he handled the most challenging season of his career: nearly unprecedented expectations coupled with nearly unprecedented injuries. Twenty-seven Dodgers combined to spend 2,361 days on the injured list, 38% more than league average and 19% more than the team with the next-highest total, the Red Sox. In September alone, L.A. was without eight different starting pitchers. In the middle of that month, Roberts called a rare team meeting and delivered a fiery speech, one that players still point to as the moment things turned. All that roster churn left him navigating four planned bullpen games in the playoffs. And he kept his focus on the team, not on his job security.
“I am proud of the fact that I didn’t let that angst [affect] how I managed and let the players feel that,” Roberts says.
He has had plenty of practice trying to ignore criticism. He still flashes back occasionally to two times he heard boos from home fans in the World Series: in 2018, when he removed Rich Hill with one out in the seventh inning of Game 4, up 4–0, and in ’20, when he pulled Clayton Kershaw with two outs in the sixth inning of Game 5, up 4–2. (The Dodgers blew the lead to the Red Sox in ’18 but held it in ’20 against the Rays.) In both cases, Roberts says, fans were operating with incomplete information. He was actually just going to deliver Hill a pep talk, but the starter misunderstood and handed his manager the ball, no longer in the right frame of mind to pitch; Kershaw and Roberts had agreed before the start of the inning that the pitcher would face only two more batters.
Roberts’s explanations have not quieted the gripes on social media and sports talk radio. Neither did the 2020 title, L.A.’s first in 32 years. At times it has been fair to wonder if his detractors include members of his own front office. Roberts did not merit a spot on the podium at Shohei Ohtani’s introductory press conference last offseason. He was also not listed in Ohtani’s contract as a “key man.” If either owner Mark Walter or president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman departs, the deal would be voided. And Roberts opened spring training as a lame duck, with one year remaining on his contract, before reports emerged Friday that he and the Dodgers were finally nearing an agreement on a record-setting extension. Team president Stan Kasten declined to even discuss Roberts while the sides were still negotiating weeks earlier. “It’s just too awkward a time,” he says, adding, “Maybe at a later date.”
Roberts hopes that the 2024 title will change everything. Over and over, his players use the word vindication to describe what they felt on his behalf when they raised the trophy. His career .627 winning percentage is the best ever among those who have managed 1,000 games. His teams have won 100 games in five of his eight full seasons, and never fewer than 91. And he has now won more World Series titles than nine of the 23 skippers in the Hall of Fame. “I really wanted this one in the worst way,” Roberts says. “I think when I look back, I didn’t appreciate how much I wanted to shut the haters up, I guess.”
It may take him even longer to appreciate that he didn’t shut them up at all.
Early in Roberts’s managerial career, he developed a reputation as a bit of a phony, in part because he always appears to be having fun in a job that does not always seem to be very much fun. He answers questions about decisions he did not make. He takes the blame for organizational processes. He drags himself out there every day and lets people scream at him. By the Dodgers’ media relations department’s count, Roberts addressed the press 537 times in 2024. (By my count, Walter spoke twice.)
And yet Roberts tries to shake hands with every player every day. He remembers reporters’ names—and thanks them for their time. When the national anthem plays, he whispers to his coaches, “This is the best part of the day.”
Eventually the people around Roberts came to understand that his optimism is self-fulfilling. “It’s nuts,” he acknowledges. “But I believe that we have the best culture, and players want to play for me.”
Entering his 10th year in Los Angeles, Roberts has gained confidence in his voice. In that fateful meeting last fall, he called upon the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves after yet another injury hit the club. He reminded them of the three former MVPs—right fielder Mookie Betts, first baseman Freddie Freeman and two-way star Shohei Ohtani—and nine All-Stars still on the roster. “We’re still the Dodgers,” he told them. “We still have a lot of great players.” He challenged them to act like it. They went 11–3 to close the regular season and then 11–5 in October.
At times, Roberts has become less gentle in the way he delivers information, which his players appreciate. No team offers less playing time for more talent than the Dodgers, which means no manager has more hard conversations than Roberts. At first he tried to soften the blow. “He’s a very likable guy, and sometimes when you have a tough conversation, people can stop liking you, and maybe he didn’t want to affect relationships early on,” says utility man Kiké Hernández. “He got to the point where he realized we’re all grown men.”
Now Roberts just tells them the plan. “We’re the Dodgers,” says Woodward. “We consider ourselves the best organization in baseball. To play on this team, you need to be one of the best—if not the best—or you do your part.” Often that means sitting based on platoon matchups. “[Roberts is] up-front with me about it, and I know what the situation is,” says third baseman Max Muncy, who has started only 55.4% of games against lefties since his 2018 call-up. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I understand it. And because he’s not beating around the bush, it’s easier to take.”
It helps that the players know he cares about them as people. In May, when reliever Yohan Ramírez hit two straight Reds players, Roberts trotted to the mound not to give him the hook but to give him a hug. The afternoon of righty Ben Casparius’s debut, the pitcher admitted he’d idolized Roberts as a childhood Red Sox fan. Two months later, Roberts referenced the conversation with Casparius’s father, Phil. And Freeman chokes up as he calls Roberts “more than a manager”: When Freeman’s son Max, then 3, battled the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome last season, he says Roberts seemed to know implicitly when to reach out and when to give him space.
Freeman adds, “There’s a reason why so many people will play injured and hurt for him and this organization. He’s the leader of this team, and there’s a reason Sho, [shortstop Miguel Rojas] and I—all of us who were hanging on by a thread last year— will do anything for that man.”
Muncy says, “There should never be anybody that’s wearing a No. 30 Dodgers jersey ever again. I never want to play for another manager.”
The way Roberts describes his role, it’s hard to imagine why anyone else would want the job. “The manager is essentially the CEO,” he says. “You’ve got global, domestic sponsorships, corporate sponsors, you’ve got owners, you’ve got TV, you’ve got media, you’ve got fans, then you’ve got the baseball side, right? And so you’re dealing with all of it, and you have to understand that everything you do or say is a reflection of this huge engine, and that’s a big undertaking. And it’s something that I really value. I feel a big responsibility, and I love it, but I always have to keep that front of mind.”
That’s all even more true now that the Dodgers have all but captured the Japanese market, after signing Ohtani and righties Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki in the last two offseasons. The World Series had better TV ratings in Japan than in the U.S. Almost no one else in baseball can relate to the scrutiny Roberts faces.
“Aaron [Boone] is the only person,” Roberts says of the Yankees’ manager. “There’s other [high-payroll] teams that I don’t need to name that go up and down. The Yankees have to win. And when Aaron wins 100 games and they don’t win the World Series, his job is being called for in the same way.”
Boone attended USC, Roberts UCLA; they played against each other in the majors in the aughts; they share a handful of close local friends. Both carved out good playing careers for themselves but are remembered mostly for one spectacular playoff moment: Boone’s walk-off homer against Boston in the 2003 ALCS and Roberts’s steal of second in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. Now they helm the two most historic franchises in the sport. They have compared notes over dinners, in ballpark hallways, while walking 18 holes. “In a lot of ways,” Boone says, “We’re looking in the mirror at each other.”
And both have come to understand that they are not entirely in control of their legacies.
“So much of the narrative is an outcome-based one,” says Friedman. “If someone would have gotten a big hit, then [Roberts] would have managed great. There’s just so much more nuance in it than I think is factored into the public narrative. And so I feel like he’s unfairly worn a lot of the different things that have happened in different Octobers.”
If the manager is the CEO, then any fan who’s ever donned a Dodgers cap is on the board of directors.
It’s a beautiful day at Camelback Ranch in Arizona, and the hundreds of fans lining the pathways trodden by their heroes are delighted when Roberts speeds by in his golf cart, headed for the back fields. “Dave!” they scream, along with a cacophony of encouragement. He slows down and beams.
He is wise to enjoy the adulation while it lasts. It will fade the minute he pulls a cruising starter or uses a lineup fans dislike. “I hate even [talking about the haters], because you’re giving them too much power,” Roberts says. “But you feel it and you hear it, and you do the best you can, but people are always going to have their opinions, right? There’s people that still feel that I shouldn’t manage this club.”
He has given some thought to why. Some people believe he is too wedded to the numbers, he says. “I can make a decision 100% on my eyes and my gut, and there are people that say, ‘What are you doing making an analytical decision?’ ” he says. “That narrative, it just hasn’t stopped.”
But he fears the disconnect runs deeper. It’s not just that fans don’t connect with his choices. They often don’t connect with him personally.
“I’m certainly very stoic in my job,” he says. “I want it to reflect a six- or seven-billion-dollar machine in the Dodgers, and I’m trying to represent the brand in a way that is very classic. I can’t be Tommy Lasorda. I don’t want to be Tommy Lasorda in the sense that you’re going up and down, riding the wave, because I feel that the consistency of my demeanor means a lot. [Fans] want me to freak out with them.”
He laughs. “I am freaking out!” he says. “But I’m freaking out inside. They want me to curse and get thrown out 10 times and get on social media and call out the players.” (Those fans might be encouraged if they read his comments a little more closely. During the postseason alone, Roberts openly speculated that Betts was letting “the pressure of past performances … kind of bleed in” and lamented that Ohtani’s “chasing hasn’t been good.” That said, he’s been thrown out of 12 games in nine years; Boone has been tossed 39 times in seven.)
Roberts continues, “I think that if you are ownership, you’re [Andrew Friedman], and you see a manager who is moving with the weather like a flag in the wind, you can’t depend on him. And so my job is to be a stalwart in the organization. And so as we’ve gone through ups and downs of a season, I think it’s very important to be consistent, and that’s what I try to do. And fans just don’t like that.”
Their opinion is not likely to change just because Roberts managed the 2024 postseason beautifully. It certainly didn’t after he did so in ’20. That came as a surprise to him.
“I did think it was going to change after we won the World Series,” he says. But even after the Dodgers went 13–2 to open the 2021 season, two weeks later, the Los Angeles Times printed four letters to the editor calling for his head. And outside Los Angeles, he realized, people discounted that ’20 title because it came in the COVID-shortened 60-game season. “I would still to my grave say it was harder,” he says, but it grated on him that so many fans disagreed. Between that and the fact that the city was still locked down in the aftermath and never celebrated fully, that championship did not quite bring him the approval he sought.
But he has it now. The criticism has annoyed him, but it has also motivated him. So what will he use now?
He does not pause to think. He tried to repurpose the asterisk some fans assigned the 2020 title by encouraging his players to focus on earning a parade, which L.A. did not get amid COVID. “That’s the way I spun that narrative,” he says. “Going forward, I think the dynasty, the legacy is gonna have to be our mantra; we’re trying to do something that no one has done since the [mid-1990s].”
Sure, but even that is an organizational answer. What about for Dave Roberts?
Now he does take a breath. “My job is essentially to try to protect them from any outside noise or pressure and let them focus on their job,” he says. Trying to validate or prove people wrong is just adding to pressure, so just kind of letting our guys just focus on the job at hand [is important].”
Besides, “After two championships in [five] years, it’s just—I don’t—it’s not going to bother me,” he says with a smile.
The trick will not be proving people wrong. It will be accepting that he has—and it doesn’t matter.
Now, you may think that you too could manage a roster of that talent to a championship. But could you shuffle through 40 different pitchers over six months, second only to the Marlins, who lost 100 games? Could you find the intestinal fortitude to collaborate with your staff to punt a World Series game to give yourself a more favorable matchup in the next one, knowing that if your bet fails, you alone will face the criticism? Could you do it all while your every grimace is dissected in three languages, while you navigate 26 egos, while you wonder where you will live next year?
“I love it,” Roberts says. “I freaking love baseball. I love coaching players. I love the Dodgers.”
Friedman bristles at the question of whether it was fair for Roberts to worry about his job in October.
“Is it fair for him to feel that way?” Friedman says. “I don’t know. Ask him. You can’t ask me if it’s fair for him to feel a certain way. [Were we] going to [fire him]? No, it wasn’t even a consideration. That’s all I can answer.” He adds, “I feel like one competitive advantage that we’ve had is our organizational continuity. We make mistakes, but it allows us to learn from them and grow from evil and keep iterating.”
Roberts has learned that he can ask nearly as much of his players as he does of himself. After Game 4 of the NLDS, Woodward told Roberts that the team was starting to resemble its leader. “The grit, the grind,” Woodward says. “I played against him. He was a grinder at heart. He loved the game. I told him, ‘We’re getting pushed a little bit, and I think this group can handle it. If this team takes on who you are, we’ll get through.’ And we did.”
It was the hardest season of Roberts’s career. “And the thing is,” says Lehmann, “The next one’s gonna be harder.”
A dozen yards away, Roberts watches extra infield drills for a while and then strides toward the throngs of fans lining the pathway toward the facility. The crowd clamors for him, and he spends nearly 10 minutes signing autographs and smiling as they tell him how much 2024 meant to them. Eventually he waves and heads inside to focus on 2025. The cheers recede.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dave Roberts Is Finally at Ease With the Dodgers’ Demanding Terms of Endearment.
