now that the season is over lets talk about what @yoshinobuyamamoto and i dubbed the dugout gang™️ of this dodgers season. over the past few months, specifically around june and onwards, a little cluster of players formed in the dugout that you'd always see hanging out with each other during games, and that would hold their ranks strong up until the last game of the world series.
this group of guys is as following: ohtani, yamamoto, kim, rushing, sasaki, glasnow, snell, sheehan and dean. sometimes they'd rotate a few guys in and out, depending on line-up and play order, so you'd get teo whenever him and shohei returned from an offensive inning (with andy close behing tbh!), smitty during the tail-end of his il stint and even edman sometimes though both are rarer occurrences, and alex vesia when roki started closing and they headed to the bullpen together.
look at this supreme gang line-up always there for the big moments 💙
you have players who have pretty fixed seats in the dugout due to senority (freddie, mookie, and usually smitty, as well as clayton) and then on the other end of the benches you could see yoshinobu and shohei setting up camp early in the season. once may came around dalton and hyeseong happily inserted themselves into this part of the dugout, egged on by yoshinobu and hyeseong's friendship and dalton being shohei's rehab catcher - you could see those specific bonds blossoming all throughout the season too - so for a hot second it honestly was just the four of them who rotated in an out of the same corner depending on whoever was playing. naturally due to shohei having the most permanent line-up place, the other three had time for a great many bonding sessions and shenanigans while he was on the field.
once the starting rotation started to return over the summer, you could see blake snell, tyler glasnow, and emmet sheehan also gravitate towards this little circle of friends. with emmet being shohei's designated piggy-back reliever, and then making it into the starting line-up alongside the rest, you could see the core of the active pitching rotation chat with each other during games, giving each other heads-up and celebrating each other, and during the many times the bullpen (not you, alex!) fucked it up for them they also supported each other. snell was second to last to join but once he was there, he fit himself into the midst of them like a glove, and you could see him around yoshi, hyeseong, and tyler all of the time.
whole family together during the first blue jays series win... they were just pre-gaming for the real test of loyalty and winning thru the power of friendship (and yoshi's pitching)
last to join was roki, who was there in the beginning already but since we had his lengthy absence he was not part of the core forming during spring and summer of the season. fear not though because he was immediately put back into the roster of friendship and usually hung out with tyler at the back of the dugout, or warming up with alex vesia (which j'adore personally) and it literally got to the point where roki, alex, and emmet were the only reliable bullpen arms who somehow always got the dodgers out of bad spots once they all started to retain some offensive prowess towards the end of the season. and once doc figured out the vesia-reliever-sasaki-closer combination the dodgers were pretty bulletproof during the wildcard round, nlds, and nlcs. all while the starting rotation put up amazing numbers and the offense slowly woke back up!
there was also something so fun to see some of the benched players flock together and support the ones who were out there. dalton pulled his weight during the summer and when smitty was injured (and before rortvedt came in bc both of them were injured), and julien dean was recording amazing saves whenever he was put in, same with hyeseong's runs, but the three of them also just kept the good vibes up even during very horrible, bad stretches or late flops in games that looked bleak to begin with. the anon today who said baseball is a sport that turns men into boys again was so right because these guys all created such a great support system and good atmosphere that helped everyone through their slumps, made them stand taller when they won, and was always there at the end of each game, ready for the victory formation or to leave together. 💙
