The images reside somewhere in a folder on Miguel Rojas’ phone. Maybe his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates will put them together somewhere, but probably not. The photos will never really see the light of day. But to Rojas, they matter.
Rojas spent the eight previous years in Miami and was never part of a club that won more than 79 games. This season, upon his return to the Dodgers, the team won an even 100.
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Rojas’ only previous trip to the postseason consisted of one at-bat as a Dodgers rookie in the 2014 NLDS against the Cardinals.
Returning after nearly a decade of losing, Rojas brought a special perspective to a team that had won collectively for years but had just one World Series title to show for it.
“Just having a couple sets of fresh eyes in there,” said Max Muncy, who reinvented his career in 2018 and has now won at least 100 games in every full season since that first year in Los Angeles.
Rojas noticed something almost immediately: The Dodgers clubhouse seemed to still be reeling from crashing out in the NLDS against the Padres last season after winning a franchise 111 games during the regular season.
“That kind of bothered guys a lot, not being able to move on from that series,” Rojas said. He sensed that because the postseason represented what truly mattered, the disappointments carried on longer.
So Rojas spoke up. At some point in mid-May, with the Dodgers’ pitching teetering and the club playing what manager Dave Roberts called “middling baseball for two months,” Rojas approached some of his fellow veterans. For as much as they paid lip service to the idea of winning each game, a mantra the Dodgers have breathlessly echoed, why not add stakes?
Outfielder David Peralta, another newcomer this season, brought up something he’d witnessed during his two months with the Tampa Bay Rays. There, the club selected a player from the pitching staff and the lineup to represent and speak for the club after each victory.
The Dodgers adopted a variation of the ritual by centering their acknowledgment on the value of winning each series. This was the deal: Win a series and the group celebrates. Players would also select a series Most Valuable Player, then reflect on what went right while acknowledging what they did not accomplish this time.
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Each pocket of the schedule brought with it a new focus.
Then came the key to ritual, the source of all those photos taking up memory on Rojas’ phone.
The Dodgers would snap a picture together, then pass around shots of tequila to celebrate. The brand of tequila will vary — though Mandala has become a favorite — but the intention remains consistent.
“We’ve been such a boring team in the past,” Muncy said, poking at one of the critiques that floated around after the Dodgers’ collapse last October. “It’s been all about winning. We expected to do that, so we just wouldn’t celebrate it.
“It’s kind of refreshing for us to realize that what we do over here is pretty special. It’s not something that happens with ease. So celebrate the wins when they come.”
“Being on this team, we’ve been on a lot of winning teams,” Chris Taylor said. “It’s easy to take it for granted.”
The tradition took a little to get off the ground. The Dodgers dropped three consecutive series, including a road trip to Cincinnati and Philadelphia that did little to quiet concerns about whether their uncharacteristic pitching struggles would be their undoing. They got swept at home by the rival Giants in mid-June and got shut out at home by the widest margin in franchise history. They found their level after that, a stretch that included a Rojas-led conversation that centered around urgency after a series loss in Kansas City.
By the trade deadline, the Dodgers were pulling away. They didn’t lose a series in August. They clinched the division by the middle of September. Even after that, they’d continue to commemorate the series wins.
“It’s really important to keep that momentum,” Peralta said, explaining what these moments can prepare them for, “because when you get to that point in the postseason, that’s when we need to be mentally locked in.”
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They want to be prepared to win a series when losses can mean the end of the road.
“If you go all the regular season and not really acknowledge that and then get to the postseason and say, ‘Now we need to win a series,’ (it’s difficult),” outfielder Jason Heyward said. “I think it’s nice to just have the mindset of, this is what we do. Every single day … it’s something we can expect to celebrate when we do. We’re not trying to do something out of the ordinary.”
“For when the moment comes,” Rojas said. “Everyone sees it as a big moment but we’re not going to see it that way.”
The Dodgers have earned the luxury of having time to take their foot off the gas. The new postseason format, introduced last fall, granted the club five days off to reset while their upcoming opponent started their postseason.
The Dodgers clinched another first-round bye last month, and another 100-win season over the weekend as they completed their regular slate on Sunday in San Francisco. They’d won yet another series. The club gathered afterward in the visiting batting cage at Oracle Park. Just them.
Some players spoke and highlighted their successes. They rehashed a regular season that was now in the books. And they took a shot, and a photo.
“It’s what we do,” Freddie Freeman said.
The next series will mean a lot more. But if they win it, they will celebrate with a few more bottles and at least another photo. From there?
“Hopefully we can do something that we can keep forever,” Rojas said.
(Top photo of Miguel Rojas and Chris Taylor: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)