Rojas

So far this postseason, whenever Dodgers fans heard “Báilalo Rocky” ring through the loudspeakers, that meant two things were coming — pitcher Roki Sasaki was about to throw some vicious splitters in relief, and a Dodgers win was likely just a few outs away.

Sasaki’s walkout music has taken on a life of its own, in part because of the only-in-L.A. culture clash that has a sensational Japanese pitcher embracing a Latin club hit as he dominates the postseason. It’s helped cement Sasaki’s appeal among the Latino Dodgers faithful, and given the song a huge global boost as the Dodgers prepare for the start of World Series today.

Here’s a primer on how Sasaki found his hype track, and how it’s become the breakout hit of L.A. this fall.

So who wrote “Báilalo Rocky?”

The version of the song Sasaki walks out to is by Dj Roderick and Dj Jose Gonzalez and vocalist Ariadne Arana (there’s another popular version by Arana, the Dominican MC Yoan Retro and GMBeats Degranalo).

The song is a super-infectious and chantable dembow-house track, and its Spanish hook — “¡Báilalo, Rocky! / Ta, ta, ta, ta / Suéltale, suéltale” — is an invitation for a guy to dance and cut loose. But here, it’s directed at the young phenom Sasaki to bedevil hitters when he comes out in relief. The way Arana pronounces the hook makes it sound like she’s singing right at the Dodgers’ Roki.

That’s a left-field choice for a 23-year-old pitcher from Japan in his first year in L.A.. How did Sasaki discover it?

Dodgers veteran second baseman Miguel Rojas turned him onto the song during spring training this year, where it became a dugout favorite. (The whole dugout is known to pound on the railing when the track comes on.) Sasaki started using it in April, before a four-month recovery from a right shoulder impingement.

The theme song “was actually MiggyRo’s idea,” Sasaki said to press in Japanese last week. “I’m really happy the fans are enjoying it.”

There’s a delightful incongruity to the modest, laser-focused young Japanese pitcher walking out to a lascivious Latin club banger. But as Sasaki has rebounded from an injury-plagued midseason to become the Dodgers’ lights-out reliever in the postseason, ”It’s been special,” Rojas told press last week. “I feel like it just fits him really well.”

For her part, Arana loves the song’s new life as a hit Dodger theme. “The Dodgers are my team,” she’s said.

Has Sasaki’s blessing boosted the track?

Definitely. The song was already popular in Latin music circles, and it’s become a go-to cover and source material for Latin artists like corridos tumbados singer Tito Doble P and Lomiiel. Even other athletes, like Spanish soccer superstar Lamine Yamal, have gotten in on the track as a meme. It’s racked up tens of millions in Spotify and YouTube plays, where nearly every comment is now Sasaki-related.

But naturally, the only place to really hear it is under a cotton candy sky in Elysian Park.

Has it helped Sasaki’s pitching?

In September, Sasaki was pitching for triple-A Oklahoma City and seemed unlikely to win a roster spot back in L.A. anytime soon. Two months later, however, after clutch saves and eye-popping velocity against the Reds, Phillies and Brewers en route to the World Series, he’s having “One of the great all-time appearances out of the ‘pen that I can remember,” as Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called it.

Sasaki’s not the only Dodger with an unexpected Latin walkout track — last year’s World Series hero Freddie Freeman takes the plate to Dayvi and Victor Cardenas’ “Baila Conmigo (ft. Kelly Ruiz).”

But if the Dodgers take home the title thanks to clutch Sasaki saves, Rojas hopes for a full “Báilalo Roki” edit. “I think he deserves a video and the lights go down and all that stuff,” Rojas told MLB.com. “I think that’s the next step for him.”

PHILADELPHIA — Even Dodgers fans steeped in the lore of Kirk Gibson might not remember the name of Mel Didier.

Didier was the scout who had issued this warning to the 1988 Dodgers: If you’re facing Dennis Eckersley, the mighty closer for the Oakland Athletics, and the count runs full, he’s going to throw a backdoor slider.

Eckersley threw it, Gibson hit it for a home run, and the Dodgers went on to win the World Series.

If these Dodgers go on to win the World Series, no one will struggle to remember the name of Mookie Betts, of course. On Monday, however, Betts pushed the Dodgers to within one win of the National League Championship Series — not with his bat and not with his glove, but with memory and aptitude to rival Didier.

“His mind is so far advanced,” Dodgers coach Dino Ebel said of Betts. “That was the ballgame right there.”

With the tying run at second base and none out in the ninth inning, he was the calm in a screaming madhouse. As the Dodgers infielders gathered at the mound and Alex Vesia entered from the bullpen, Betts thought back to a play he had participated in once, in an August game against the Angels. Miguel Rojas had taught him the so-called “wheel play.”

“All he had to do was tell me once,” Betts said. “To me, that was like a do-or-die situation. Them tying the game up turns all the momentum there. If we can find a way to stop it, that would be great.

“I just made a decision and rolled with it.”

On the mound, amid the bedlam, Betts put on the wheel play. It’s a bunt coverage: with a runner on second base, the third baseman and first baseman charge home, with the idea that one would field the bunt and throw out the runner at third.

In any previous decade, the Dodgers would have practiced this play in spring training, repeatedly.

“We don’t really even practice the wheel play, with pitchers not hitting any more,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “There’s very few times where you’re 100% sure that a guy is going to bunt.”

This was the time. The Phillies had opened the ninth with three consecutive hits, including a two-run double from Nick Castellanos.

The Dodgers led 4-3 with none out and Castellanos on second base. Phillies manager Rob Thomson said he wanted to play for the tie and take his chances to match his team’s bullpen against the Dodgers bullpen in extra innings.

And for the “never bunt” crowd: the chance to score one run is slightly higher with a runner on third base with one out than with a runner on second base and none out. The Phillies had the bottom of the order coming up — starting with infielder Bryson Stott, whom the Dodgers had evaluated as a good bunter.

Betts remembered how he had asked Rojas when to run the wheel play.

“In a do-or-die situation,” Rojas had told him.

So Betts took charge and put on the play.

“I don’t know if it was very comfortable, but somebody’s got to do it,” Betts said.

“I figured, if there was ever a good time to make a decision and roll with it, that was the time.”

Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy throws to third after fielding a bunt from Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott in the ninth inning in Game 2 of the NLDS on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Muncy would charge and, if the ball was bunted to him, would throw to Betts covering third base. First baseman Freddie Freeman then said he would charge and, if the ball was not bunted to him, would cover second base so Stott could not advance there, since second baseman Tommy Edman would be covering first. Later, on his PItchCom, Vesia said he heard an order to cover second base.

By the time Dodgers manager Dave Roberts got to the mound, the infielders said the play was on.

“When Doc came out and made the pitching change, we talked to him about it and he was all on board,” Muncy said. “I am going to credit Mook. It was his idea.”

Said Betts: “That was one of times where Doc called on us and said, you guys figure it out — in a very positive way. And we did.”

Rojas called Betts “an extension of the manager on the field.”

Said Rojas: “I’m happy that he called it right there on the field. Because it was the right play with the right runner, knowing the guy was going to bunt.”

All of this speaks well of Betts’ intuition and intelligence, but the postseason is not the time for “trust the process” blather. The postseason is the time when the right call is the one that actually works.

For Stott or anyone else, Thomson said, a batter that sees the wheel play in motion should forget about the bunt and swing away, given the holes left by two infielders charging the plate and the other two rushing to cover a base.

Stott bunted.

The first problem for the Phillies was that they had no one available to pinch-run for Castellanos. Aside from a backup catcher, they had two position players left: Harrison Bader, playing with a sore groin, and Weston Wilson, whom the Phillies had to save to run for Bader.

The second problem for the Phillies was that the Dodgers had only run the wheel play once this season, so even the best advance scouts could not have been warning the Phillies to beware.

“It’s something we have under our sleeve,” Rojas said.

The third and most critical problem for the Phillies was that Betts had lingered close to second base, shadowing Castellanos. By the time Stott could have seen Betts take off for third, it was too late.

“Mookie did a great job of disguising the wheel play,” Thomson said.

Muncy fielded the ball cleanly, and Betts beat Castellanos to the bag by so much that Betts had time to drop his knee and block the bag before tagging out Castellanos, holding onto the ball even as Castellanos upended him.

“Those guys executed it to perfection,” Roberts said. “It was a lot tougher — they made it look a lot easier than it was. And for me, that was our only chance, really, to win that game in that moment.”

If Muncy did not field the ball cleanly or did not make a good throw, or if Betts did not beat Castellanos to the bag or tag him out, the Phillies would have had the tying run at third base and the winning run at first base with none out.

But they did not, which meant the ensuing single did not tie the score. Two batters later, the Dodgers had won.

The play would be difficult enough for a lifelong shortstop. Betts is in his first season as a full-time shortstop.

“It shows his intuition in the game,” Muncy said. “It’s second to none out there. It doesn’t matter what position you put that guy at — he knows what’s going on. It’s honestly really impressive.”

Said Ebel: “He’s obsessed with being a great player. And he’s still learning. He’s still going to get better. That’s the scary thing about it.”

As the Dodgers headed for a happy flight back to Los Angeles, Betts offered this game a five-star review.

“I’ll take off my Dodgers hat and just put on a fan hat,” he said. “I think that was a really dope baseball game.”

For Kiké Hernández, the regular season is little more than a six-month warm-up. Real baseball is played when the evening air turns crisp and the leaves begin to change.

And when summer turns to fall few players have stepped up bigger than Hernández, who had two hits, scored two runs and drove in another Wednesday, spurring a Dodger comeback that ended in an 8-4 win over the Cincinnati Reds and a sweep of their National League wild-card series.

That sends the team on to the best-of-five Division Series with the Phillies, which begins Saturday in Philadelphia.

“October Kiké is something pretty special,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said. “And the track record speaks for itself. He’s one of the best throughout the history of the postseason.”

It’s a reputation he’s earned.

A .236 career hitter in the regular season, Hernández has hit .286 in 88 postseason games. He slashed .203/.255/.366 in an injury-marred regular season this year, but two games into the playoffs he’s hitting .500, leads the Dodgers with three runs scored and ranks second to Mookie Betts with four hits. He also made a splendid over-the-shoulder catch while racing to the warning track in the first inning Wednesday.

“Some guys are built for this moment. He’s definitely one of them,” said third baseman Max Muncy, standing in the middle of the Dodgers’ batting cage during the team’s postgame celebration, his blue T-shirt soaked in champagne as a teammate poured beer over his head.

Hernández, wearing goggles but not a shirt, made a brief appearance at the victory party but departed to celebrate with family before the champagne and beer began to puddle on the plastic sheeting that covered the floor.

His teammates were all too happy to speak about him in his absence.

“He’s a guy who is not shy from the from the moment,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “I feel like the regular season for him is not enough.”

Rojas said he learned that first hand after rejoining the Dodgers in 2023. Although the team’s playoff run was brief, Hernández led the team with two RBIs and was second in hits and average.

“I saw it on TV before. But when I got here I saw that it was real,” he said. “He always wanted the moment and he showed it tonight with a big double to tie the game.”

That came with one out in the fourth, when his line drive to center field scored Muncy from first to tie the score, 2-2. Four pitches later he scored on Rojas’ single, putting the Dodgers ahead to stay.

But Hernández wasn’t finished. Two innings later he led off with a squibber up the third-base line that was going foul before it hit the bag for a single, starting a four-run rally that put the game away. The bottom third of the Dodger lineup — Hernández, Rojas and catcher Ben Rortvedt — combined to go six for 12 with five runs and two RBIs.

“Kiké is Kiké,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said above the din of the celebration. “That’s the guy you get when October starts.”

Before that? Not so much. But for Hernández, the postseason has become redemption time.

“I know they brought me here for these types of moments,” he said before Wednesday’s game.

“The beautiful thing about the postseason is that once we get to the postseason, everything starts at zero. You can have a bad year and you flip the script and you start over in the postseason. You have a good postseason, help the team win, and nobody ever remembers what you did in the regular season.”

Hernández, 34, owes much of his fall heroics simply to the opportunity to play on the sport’s biggest stage. In a dozen big-league seasons, he’s made the playoffs 10 times, playing in 21 postseason series with the Dodgers and Boston Red Sox and winning two World Series rings.

“I’ve been blessed to be on the right team at the right time,” he said. “Being a good postseason player is kind of an individual thing, but not really. You’re on a team that doesn’t make the playoffs, you can’t be a postseason player.

“I just happen to be on a lot of really good teams, and I’ve been fortunate enough to get a lot of chances.”

With his performance Wednesday, he assured himself at least three more chances in the division series with the Phillies. And Rojas expects him to take full advantage.

“He always wants the moment and he wants to be out there,” he said. “I’m learning from him every single day. He’s the most prepared guy that I’ve ever played with.”

Especially in October.

A Southern California Roman Catholic bishop told his diocese of roughly one million parishioners this week that they can stay home on Sundays to avoid Mass while concerns about federal immigration sweeps still loom over the region.

Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino wrote in the decree Tuesday that many church-goers have shared “fears of attending mass due to potential immigration enforcement action” and that “such fear constitutes a grave inconvenience that may impede the spiritual good of the faithful.”

In lieu of Sunday service, Rojas encouraged his members to “maintain their spiritual communion” by praying the rosary or reading scripture and directed diocese ministers to offer support and compassion to the affected.

Since early June, countless Southern California families have been living in fear and gone underground amid an extraordinary federal immigration enforcement push by the Trump administration. Nearly 2,800 people have been caught up in the sweeps in the L.A. area alone, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of undocumented immigrants without any criminal record.

The threat of an immigration raid has rippled through all aspects of Southern California life, including church attendance, where some houses of worship say up to a third or half their congregants are no longer showing up in person.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, multiple people were arrested at or near diocese churches on June 20, including a man at Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair, which ICE officials dispute.

“The accusation that ICE entered a church to make an arrest [is] FALSE,” wrote Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in an email to The Times. “The illegal alien chose to pull into the church parking lot [and] officers then safely made the arrest.”

Days later, Rojas wrote a message to worshipers on Facebook.

He said that he respected and appreciated law enforcement’s role in keeping “communities safe from violent criminals,” but added that “authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God.”

As for his latest edict allowing worshipers to forgo Mass, Rojas said it will remain in effect until further notice or until the circumstances “necessitating this decree are sufficiently resolved.”

Times staff writers Andrew Castillo, Rachel Uranga and Queenie Wong contributed to this report.