off day

The Dodgers are not here for conventional wisdom. The Dodgers are here to win the World Series.

So what if an unforeseen hurdle appeared in front of their October path? The Dodgers are on the verge of turning that hurdle into an unexpected but well-planned advantage on their quest to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions in 25 years.

Conventional wisdom says the odds favor a team with a bye, because that team can set up its pitching rotation for the division series just the way it wants while its opponent burns through its best arms in the wild-card series. The Dodgers are one win away from storming through the wild-card series and setting up their pitching rotation for the division series just fine, thank you very much.

That, it turns out, is what you can do when your star-studded starting rotation is healthy and effective for the first time all season, at precisely the right time.

The Dodgers thoroughly outclassed the Cincinnati Reds, 10-5, in Tuesday’s opener of the best-of-three wild-card series. If the Dodgers win Wednesday, or if they win Thursday, they would advance to what would be the premier matchup in all the National League playoffs: the Dodgers vs. the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I think the biggest downside of playing in a wild-card series, obviously, if you’re able to advance, is what your pitching looks like after that,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “That’s the cost.

“And I think, with our depth, that’s really mitigated.”

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. If the Angels could go 6-0 against the Dodgers this season, the Reds could win the next two games.

However, the Reds used their best pitcher, Hunter Greene, in Game 1. The Dodgers have their best pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, ready to deploy in Game 2.

And, since the best-of-three wild card format was introduced in 2022, all 12 teams that have won Game 1 have gone on to win the series.

So let’s plan this out. If the Dodgers win Wednesday, Shohei Ohtani could start Game 1 of the division series Saturday. If the Reds force a decisive third game Thursday, Ohtani is the scheduled starter — and, if the Dodgers win, Tyler Glasnow, Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw all could be options for Game 1 of the division series.

Kershaw would be available for sure, as he is not on the wild-card roster and he would be pitching on regular rest.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw would be available to pitch Game 1 of the NLDS if the Dodgers advance.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“To have Clayton Kershaw standing there ready, no matter how we deploy our pitching this week, gets at the cost (of playing in the wild-card round) not being as great,” Friedman said.

And the division series includes an off day after each of the first two games, which would enable the Dodgers to use Snell on five days’ rest for Game 2 and Yamamoto on six days’ rest for Game 3.

The Dodgers have so much flexibility, in fact, that manager Dave Roberts declined to say that Ohtani would start Game 1 of the division series if the Dodgers close out the wild-card series Wednesday.

“You’re getting ahead,” Roberts said, “but one of the first two games, probably.”

It is important that Snell held the Reds to two runs in Tuesday’s victory, but it is more important that he pitched seven innings. The Dodgers asked their relievers to cover two innings with an eight-run lead, and it took four of them to do it.

The Dodgers’ road to success is clear: more of the starters, less of the erratic relievers, and less need to lean on Glasnow and Sheehan in an unfamiliar role.

“The deeper that the starters go in the game — one, it means that we’re pitching good; but, two, you’re giving the bullpen a break and a breather, and they get to be 100% every time they come out,” Snell said.

“That makes for a different game that favors us.”

The Dodgers improvised their way to a title last October, with three starting pitchers and four bullpen games. That was not conventional wisdom, either.

This time of year, however, most postseason teams have three or four reliable starters. The Dodgers have six. If they have to play in an extra round, well, what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger.

NEW YORK — In the interest of doing things differently last October, the Dodgers made a subtle, but profound, change in their travel plans.

In previous postseasons — many of which ended with disappointing early eliminations — the Dodgers would use one wide-body plane to shuttle players, coaches, executives, staff, broadcasters and other members of their bloated playoff traveling party from city to city.

Last year, they opted for a different flight pattern.

Players took one plane, as part of a larger effort to promote a sense of togetherness in pursuit of a World Series title.

Everyone else, meanwhile, flew on a second, separate chartered commercial jet.

“I think it’s just [a way for us to make sure] more of the time we spend is together,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said during last year’s postseason. “Making sure we stayed together as a group.”

Given the results, the Dodgers decided to keep the change in place for this season.

What started as a one-month experiment then, has become a permanent routine for the defending champions now.

This year, in a significant shift to the way they travel, the Dodgers are using two planes on a full-time basis for their regular-season road trips: One for players, just like they did last October; and another for everyone else, from manager Dave Roberts and the rest of his coaching staff to the dozens of other team personnel that make up each trip.

“It was driven by them,” Roberts said of the players, noting their interest in continuing the two-plane itinerary this year. “And we facilitated it.”

“It’s reimagining team travel,” added Scott Akasaki, who as the Dodgers’ senior director of travel has overseen the transition. “It’ll be interesting to see what the positive things that come out of it are.”

Indeed, as club officials looked ahead to their 2025 title defense this winter, they quickly warmed to the idea of making the two-plane system permanent.

Already, they had bought into the positive impacts it had on team chemistry during the playoffs, believing it to be a contributing factor to the heightened level of camaraderie players cited as a driving force behind their 2024 championship.

But as they mapped out ways to ease the burdens of a grueling 162-game season, they recognized other logistical benefits that could result from the added travel investment.

“Our ownership was incredibly supportive of the idea,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. “And yeah, it seems like it’s gone well so far.”

For starters, players now have more comfortable seating arrangements on flights, able to spread out on an aircraft that includes only a handful of additional clubhouse support staff.

“It’s providing an environment where our players are more apt to get rest and recovery, with just less people on the plane and more room to move around,” Akasaki said.

And after the team experienced several lengthy travel-day delays last year because of mechanical problems with their charter, they now have a “fail-safe” contingency plan, as Gomes described it; always having a second plane available to transport team members to their next city as scheduled.

“In theory, the players and critical staff can hop on the working plane and go,” Akasaki echoed, “while the remaining folks stay behind until the mechanical problem gets resolved.”

Four road trips into this year, however, no trickle-down effect has been as lauded as the changes the Dodgers have made to their actual travel schedule.

In the days of traditional single-plane travel, the Dodgers would typically wait to fly out of Los Angeles if they had an off day between the end of a homestand and the start of a road trip. It meant one extra night at home, but a later arrival into cities on the eve of an away series.

“When you’re spending your off day on the plane,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said, “you don’t ever feel like you’re as recovered.”

Using two planes for road trips has allowed the Dodgers players to leave right after the final game of a homestand, which so far this season has been followed by an off day. “When you’re spending your off day on the plane,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said, “you don’t ever feel like you’re as recovered.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

With the benefit of a second plane, the Dodgers can do things differently now.

Though each of the team’s first four homestands this year have been followed by an open date, the players’ plane has departed immediately after all four getaway-day games, getting them into road cities the same night (or, in the case of Wednesday’s flight to New York this week, early the next morning) before the rest of the traveling party arrives the following afternoon.

“I think it’s better,” Freeman said. “It gives us actually a whole day off.”

“It’s nice to just have the off day [without having to fly],” Muncy added. “You’re tired on the off day, but then you can get a full night’s sleep to rest and recover. That felt pretty good.”

Sometimes, that extra day affords players with rare additional personal time — giving someone like Muncy, a Dallas-area native, a full afternoon to see family before last month’s Easter weekend series in Texas.

But even for other guys, Muncy added, “it was, let me go lay out by the pool, or let me go grab some lunch somewhere, and then we’ll go get a nice dinner. It just gives you the whole day to kind of recover. I think it’ll be a better change for us.”

Accounting for a second plane, of course, does add complexities to the planning of each road trip. The truckloads of equipment the Dodgers travel with has to be specifically sorted and loaded onto the correct flight. The team has to coordinate between two airline partners, chartering a Boeing 757 from Delta and a Boeing 737-800 from United, to handle travel parties sometimes upwards of 100 in all. Akasaki now even has a bigger team of people who help with the planning process, too.

“From Andrew [Friedman, president of baseball operations] on down, it was like, ‘Hey, this is a big thing, and it’s a lot for one person to handle,” Akasaki said. “So [they asked], ‘What do you need to keep this all organized?’ That’s been very helpful.”

The team also had to account for potential other negatives. There were considerations made over the environmental impact of using a second plane, according to one person involved in the process but not authorized to speak publicly. There were more simple day-to-day changes to the rhythm of the team’s season as well.

“Like, you can’t have that organic conversation in the back of the plane between a staff member and a player like you used to,” Akasaki noted.

But, in the end, the pros outweighed the cons.

“You can still have that [conversation] in the clubhouse,” Akasaki noted.

Plus, for an organization that has long tried to maximize its monstrous financial resources to become a premier destination for star talent in baseball, being able to pitch prospective free agents on the luxury of using two planes certainly “doesn’t hurt” either, Gomes quipped.

With the Dodgers’ new travel system believed to be unique among MLB clubs, Roberts noted that “there’s a lot of other teams already asking about the two planes.”

And to this point, players said, the reviews have been positive.

“It’s still early,” Muncy noted. “I’ve only ever done it the one way since I’ve been here, so I don’t know what the other way is like” over the course of a full season.

But, Freeman joked with a grin, “I haven’t heard one complaint about it.”