Alden GonzalezApr 2, 2025, 02:40 AM ET
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- ESPN baseball reporter. Coated the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
LOS ANGELES — The primary seven video games of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2025 season have noticed them play in two continents, face two reigning Cy Younger Award winners and navigate two elaborate pregame ceremonies.
Primary League Baseball’s conventional Opening Day used to be handiest 5 days in the past, and but it kind of feels as though the Dodgers have already executed all of it — excluding lose.
On Tuesday night time, they got here from in the back of to overcome the languishing Atlanta Braves 3-1 and make stronger to 7-0, tying the 1933 New York Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig for the most productive begin to a season for a reigning champion. Best two Dodgers groups have began a season on an extended successful streak, and each circumstances — in 1940 and 1955 — came about when the franchise used to be nonetheless in Brooklyn.
The present Dodgers did it by way of overcoming each Tarik Skubal and Chris Sale. They did it regardless of starting their season greater than 5,000 miles away in Japan. They did it with both Mookie Betts or Freddie Freeman or — as used to be the case from the Tokyo Dome — each absent from the lineup greater than part the time. They usually did it whilst shouldering the drive and expectancies of one of the vital star-studded rosters of their game’s historical past.
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“All that stuff — it is difficult to win a handful of ballgames, let on my own they all,” mentioned Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts, whose workforce has stayed simply forward of the 6-0 San Diego Padres within the Nationwide League West. “I feel we do exactly a in point of fact just right process of resetting.”
The Dodgers have not begun to totally click on, however a theme has evolved via their first seven video games — forged pitching and well timed hitting. Their .864 OPS with runners in scoring place is the 7th perfect within the majors, regardless of no longer but unveiling their best possible lineup. Their 2.25 ERA ranks fourth, although Roki Sasaki and Tanner Scott, two in their largest offseason pitching acquisitions, have handled early struggles.
On Tuesday, Dustin Might took the mound for the primary time in additional than 22 months and set the tone early, restricting the Braves to just an unearned run — on an errant throw from Betts whilst making an attempt to show a double play — via 5 innings.
Might, 27, grabbed the 5th spot of the Dodgers’ rotation in large part as a result of Tony Gonsolin used to be beset by way of a again harm past due in spring coaching. Now not way back, he wasn’t positive if he’d ever make it again. Ultimate July, Might used to be kind of a month clear of getting back from flexor tendon surgical treatment and a Tommy John revision. Then a work of lettuce were given caught in his throat at an Arizona eating place, a freak prevalence that led to a significant tear in his esophagus, despatched him to the emergency room, necessitated stomach surgical treatment and ended his 2024 season prior to it all started.
Might started his trip by way of putting out every of the primary 3 batters he confronted. The Braves, who’ve scored simply 9 runs whilst beginning their season 0-6, did not do a lot else over the following 4 innings. By means of the tip of it, Might felt gratified to be told that his devastating arsenal — a hellacious sweeper, a bowling-ball sinker and an upper-90s fastball — nonetheless performs in opposition to main league hitters.
Most commonly, regardless that, he felt aid.
Might had skilled nerves whilst making his main league debut in 2019 and pitching within the Global Sequence in 2020, however this one, he mentioned, felt “far more heavy.”
“The debut, the Global Sequence and all that stuff is — no longer anticipated, however you are there within the second and the whole thing is happening, you realize it’s coming,” Might mentioned. “This — I did not know if I used to be gonna come again, so it used to be an enormous, massive sigh of aid.”
Might departed after 81 pitches with a 1-0 deficit, however the Dodgers in any case broke via in opposition to Sale an inning later. And the decisive blow used to be as soon as once more equipped by way of Betts, who teamed with Sale to win the Global Sequence as a member of the Boston Pink Sox in 2018. With one on and none out within the backside of the 6th, Betts were given a 1-1 slider out over the plate and lofted it over the left-field fence for his 3rd homer in 4 video games, all of that have pushed within the go-ahead run.
3 Dodgers relievers — Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen and Scott, who pitched an encouraging 9th inning — did the remaining, making the Braves MLB’s lone winless workforce.
Betts has joined the likes of Freeman and Shohei Ohtani, amongst others, in environment an early tone for those Dodgers, both via their phrases or their movements. The messaging has been constant for the reason that onset of spring coaching: What they completed ultimate fall, claiming the franchise’s first full-season championship since 1988, didn’t subject. Chasing the regular-season wins report of 117 is beside the point. All that issues, Betts and others have constantly preached, is maximizing every day. And for the primary seven of 162, the Dodgers have.
“They are no longer settling for simply the only ring,” first-year Dodgers outfielder Michael Conforto mentioned. “They are hungry. I feel it is simply engrained within the workforce of fellows they’d ultimate yr. They made it some degree, for the brand new guys which might be right here, to simply perceive the mindset to head in the market and win each unmarried day, no longer take any days off, and simply be capable to get after it. That is the expectation.”
