urgency

At this time last year, the pressure was palpable.

Up until last October, the Dodgers had a reputation as postseason failures.

It wasn’t an unwarranted distinction. In each of the previous two seasons, the team had been upset in the National League Division Series by lesser opponents in the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks. The fall before that, their title defense flamed out against the underdog Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series. Yes, they won a World Series in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But outside of that, it’d been more than three decades since they last triumphed under typical circumstances.

That checkered history weighed on them. Their urgency to change it in last year’s playoffs was fervent.

“That kind of sour taste that you have when you make an early exit from the postseason, our guys are tired of it,” manager Dave Roberts said on the eve of last year’s postseason. “So this is another opportunity. I do sense that edge.”

This week, of course, the Dodgers face a different kind of dynamic.

After their memorable run to a championship last year, the team has gotten the monkey of its full-season title drought off its back. And while expectations are still high, with the Dodgers and their record-setting $400-million roster set to begin the playoffs with a best-of-three wild-card round starting Tuesday against the Cincinnati Reds, the questions about past October disappointments have dissipated.

So, does the pressure of this postseason feel different?

“You would think,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “But the pressure’s always going to be there. Especially when you’re this team, when you’re the Los Angeles Dodgers, there’s a lot of expectations around you. There’s a lot of pressure.”

Indeed, after an underwhelming regular season that saw the Dodgers win the NL West for the 12th time in the last 13 years, but fail to secure a first-round bye as one of the NL’s top two playoff seeds, the Dodgers have a new task before them.

Erase the frustrations of their 93-win campaign. Maintain the momentum they built with a 15-5 regular-season finish. And recreate the desperation that carried them to the promised land last fall, as they try to become MLB’s first repeat champion in 25 years.

“For us, the challenge is not letting that pressure get to you and finding our rhythm, finding what’s going to work for us this year,” Muncy said. “Each year the team has to find their identity when they get to this point. You have an identity during the regular season, and you have to find a whole ‘nother identity in the postseason.”

The Dodgers’ preferred identity for this year’s team figures to be the opposite of what worked last October.

Unlike last year, the team has a healthy and star-studded starting rotation entering the playoffs. Also unlike last year, the bullpen is a major question mark despite an encouraging end to the regular season.

For the wild-card series, it means the team will need big innings out of Game 1 starter Blake Snell, Game 2 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto and (if necessary) Game 3 starter Shohei Ohtani — who is being saved for the potential winner-take-all contest in part to help manage his two-way workload.

Ideally, their production should ease the burden on a relief corps that ranked 21st in the majors in ERA during the regular season, and has no clear-cut hierarchy for its most trusted arms.

“The starting pitching is considerably better” than it was last year, Roberts said Monday. “That’s probably the biggest difference between last year’s team.”

Granted, the Dodgers do feel better about their bullpen right now, thanks to the return of Roki Sasaki, the reallocation (at least for this series) of Emmet Sheehan and Tyler Glasnow from the rotation to relief roles, and recent improvements from Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott.

“[We have] much more confidence than we had a couple weeks ago,” Roberts said of the bullpen. “I think that it’s because those guys have shown the confidence in themselves, where they’re throwing the baseball. I think last week we saw guys more on the attack setting the tone, versus pitching behind or pitching too careful.”

Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott delivers against the San Francisco Giants on Sept. 19.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Still, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will pitch in the ninth inning, or be called upon in the highest-leverage moments.

Close, late contests would be best for the Dodgers to avoid.

To that end, the continuation of the Dodgers’ recent uptick at the plate would also help. During a dismal 22-32 stretch from July 4 to Sept. 6, the Dodgers ranked 27th in scoring, struggling to overcome injuries to several key pieces, slumps from some of their biggest stars, and a general lack of consistent execution in situational opportunities. Over their closing 20 games, however, the lineup averaged an NL-best 5.55 runs per game behind late-season surges from Ohtani and Mookie Betts, plus team-wide improvements while hitting with runners in scoring position.

“The team is starting to fire on all cylinders, finally,” Muncy said. “It’s something that we haven’t really felt all year.”

The Dodgers had good news on the injury front during Monday’s team workout at Dodger Stadium. Muncy, who missed the last four games of the regular season while battling leg bruises and what Roberts has described as other “overall body” issues, is expected to be in the lineup. So too is Tommy Edman, who hasn’t played in the field since last Wednesday because of a lingering ankle injury.

The big question remains catcher Will Smith, who has been out since Sept. 9 with a right hand fracture.

Roberts said Monday the team has been “encouraged” with Smith’s recent progress. The slugger was even able to take live at-bats Monday night.

“If he can get through today and feel good,” Roberts said, “then it’s a viable thought” that he could be on the final 26-man roster the Dodgers will have to submit ahead of Tuesday’s game for the wild-card series.

Either way, the Dodgers’ biggest concern remains on maintaining their recent level of play. Erasing past October failures might no longer be a motivation. But, like Muncy, Roberts said the urgency to win another World Series remains the same.

“I don’t know if it’s easier or harder that we won last year,” Roberts said. “But, honestly, all we care about is winning this year.”

If the world is asked in a random exercise to name leaders who have weaponized nationalism, crises, and emotional triggers in world history, the textbook examples will always consist of three defining figures in international politics: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini. Nonetheless, there are other highly famous political characters as well that mastered the art of political manipulation, realpolitik, and conflict engineering. One of them, like the previous crisis constructors, was not only an ideologue or a demagogue but also a strategic architect of German unification and realpolitik, Otto Von Bismarck.From orchestrating wars to rallying political crises, applying ruthless pragmatism to tapping the public’s pulse for unification, and operating narratives to politically alienating adversaries, the pattern of urgency, manipulation, and crisis manufacturing for peace in Europe continues to synchronize with the coursebook that conflict agitators follow in the 21st century.

From Trump to Modi, using conflicts as a unifier in domestic politics and a reinforcer for global overlordship, or regional dominion, has been the coursebook that has set a solid ground for performative crisis politics to take center stage. The national or global urgency engineered around military operations, internal threats, and the adventures of geopolitical adversaries gives a cogent justification model for crisis exaggeration. The use of national security as a justified political tool to wage war has been a mainstay for regional security and strategic stability to thrive in a world of permacrisis. The adventures from perilous military maneuvers, Operation Midnight Hammer to Operation Sindoor, both act as textbook examples of how populist leaders weaponize crises and geopolitical tensions to gauge the international reaction. The political maneuvering that encircles the psychological urgency, which is constructed around a tense war climate, helps to update the scorecards for the states losing their diplomatic traction. Even if Trump continues to use tariffs and geopolitical crises to flex America’s Goliath-like posture in international politics, the looming reactive outbursts that will emanate from the staggering public debt of America might become its political doomsday. Therefore, as long as the self-proclamation of Nobel Prize seeking continues, crisis termination dynamics will remain complex, transitory, and inflamed as Bismarckian practices continue to juggle regional adversaries. Public debt, economic protectionism, coercive diplomacy, and realpolitik continue to redirect conflict agitators and Trump’s diplomatic canvas in global politics, but fracturing de-dollarization adventures frequently maim America’s global dominion.

The persistence of the world to engage in perpetual low-level conflicts with diplomatic stalemates, all while trying to avoid full-scale wars but also achieve strategic complacency, has caused an overlap of concepts in international security. From deterrence theories to compellence tactics and securitization to preventive or preemptive strikes, the world has engaged in a cyclical discourse where compellence has emerged as a dominating force to calculate the adversary’s response and outmaneuver them in psychological scorecards. The constantly pushed incremental pressure and false dilemma create a risk-prone environment for regional rivals to engage in a miscalculated scenario of multiple escalation dynamics, which Bismarck did in the Franco-Prussian War. These manipulative practices to provoke adversaries while creating urgency and using prestige politics to ignite a chain reaction of desperate political moves across the border have constructed new political strategies, marked with political aggression, to cogently engage in warmongering exercises. With Modi following similar models to consistently push Pakistan towards strategic miscalculations by incrementing national pressure, the illusion of choice offered by him to follow a predetermined pathway of peace approaches has become an outdated doctrine for South Asia, especially for Pakistan. The political overspill of Bismarckian diagrams drawn by Modi and the international reluctance to grant a ‘win’ to India both display that urgency and crisis politics, with victimhood populism and political desperation to delegitimize opponents, have lost substantial ground. Following the same model, Trump seems to be lingering at his electoral promises of terminating conflicts around the globe and reviving the abstract idea of Pax Americana for international politics, portraying America’s influence as an urgent necessity for global regulation and recalibration. The ashes of dysfunctionalities after settling conflicts through coercive diplomatic and military endeavors are a grim feature of Trump’s diplomatic and ideological doctrinal moves. From transactional diplomacy for the Gulf to a reverse Kissingerian model for the Russia-China alliance, Trump’s diplomatic model seems to be more instinctive than consistent with ideological lexicons.

The Bismarck model of using political timing, psychology, and provocation—all three strategies—designed a cogent and adept method of foreign policy of weaponizing crisis and creating urgency to shroud political cognition, which Modi seems to be institutionalizing as an accepted practice against Pakistan on domestic grounds. The political instrumentalization of regular clashes and crises in South Asia to create a justification model for counteroffensive maneuvers and warmongering narratives revolves around important political events. From electoral needs to domestic diversions, or regional dominations to international tabbing of adversaries as regional disturbances, Modi appears to desperately wrap Pakistan in a diplomatic cloak of isolation. With the Bismarckian pointer of manipulative outlines, Modi would perilously engineer another crisis to conceal national failures post-Balakot-Sindoor. If Modi follows a similar pattern of crisis construction, just like Bismarck did, the launchpad for such military and political maneuvers would be the northern areas of Pakistan, particularly Gilgit-Baltistan. Despite the previous retaliation patterns of Pakistan, creating a risk-prone conflict with reactive outcomes, Modi will invite a berserk amount of regional pressure and escalation. Theoretically and practically, igniting a conflict with new external and domestic spectacles, Modi appears to be in a desperate cycle of reviving electoral domination and regional prestige. The retaliatory approach from Islamabad and Beijing would trap the conflict from two opposite sides, with Beijing’s militaristic adventures in the northern disputed territories. Even if proxies or informants engineer something like Pulwama or Pahalgam, India would still be in a high-risk gambit that could meet unimaginable results if the Bismarckian urgency and crisis weaponizing playbook gets mishandled and cloaks foreign policy objectives with electoral overlordship gambles.

The group stages showed the best and the worst of England as France exploited their defensive frailties and kicked them into gear for the remaining two matches.

Bruised by their opening defeat, the Lionesses vowed to do their talking on the pitch – and they did.

Emphatic victories against the Netherlands and Wales followed as they finished runners-up in the group, avoiding a heavyweight quarter-final tie with Germany in the process, and a potential meeting with world champions Spain or hosts Switzerland in the semi-finals.

Where they finished in the group did not concern manager Sarina Wiegman – outwardly at least – but she was pleased with the “urgency” that the France loss gave them.

“That really brought us together and everyone really wanted to perform and be successful,” she said.

“In the Netherlands game, we really created urgency and momentum by playing really well and to our strengths.

“With that loss, the urgency came and I think the team really responded well. Now hopefully we can show that again against Sweden.”

England were dominant in their wins over the Netherlands and Wales, scoring 10 goals in the process, and displaying some of their best free-flowing football.

Lauren James stood out with her individual quality, Ella Toone proved her worth in the starting XI and Alessia Russo was the glue up top.

“It doesn’t seem it at the time but [losing to France] was probably the best thing that could have happened to us as a team and it motivated us,” said England forward Beth Mead.

“We had hard conversations, we figured things out. You don’t win or lose a tournament in the first game.

“Now we are in a position where we are building quite nicely.”

Midfielder Keira Walsh said their “slow start” may have “kicked them into gear” but they found confidence and bravery that had been lacking in Zurich.

It would have been a huge disappointment had England failed to qualify for the knockout stages but having progressed from the toughest group in the tournament, Georgia Stanway said it was something worth celebrating.

“There have been many days in this tournament where we could have been going home. To be staying a few more days is something we can be proud of,” she added.