CAMELBACK RANCH, AZ — The first day back at Camelback Ranch always comes with that familiar spring-training glow, but Dave Roberts didn’t pretend the last two seasons were going to be easy to shake off. When the Dodgers manager talked about the “World Series hangover” idea, he didn’t wave it away as media talk. He treated it like something real that players feel, and something a staff has to manage on purpose.
“I think it’s real,” Roberts said. “And for me to try to say it’s not real is probably not given enough credit to the human being, their minds.”
That’s a pretty candid admission from a manager of a defending champion. Roberts has been around enough winning clubs to know how the calendar can mess with you. A long October turns into a short offseason. A roster full of veterans has bodies to manage. A roster full of stars has expectations waiting the second camp opens. Roberts’ point was simple: even great teams are made of people, and people carry stuff from season to season.
But he also made it clear he’s not resigned to it. He thinks there’s a way to fight it, and he described it less like one magic speech and more like a season-long balancing act.
“I do think that there’s a way to kind of combat it,” Roberts said. “For me, you got to figure out how to keep guys involved, focused… It helps when you have depth with young, excitable players infused with new players that are veterans that haven’t won, and also trying to figure out when to push the go button on the whole team.”
That last part is Roberts admitting the job isn’t only writing the lineup card. It’s timing the moments when you ask for more. When you challenge guys. When you let them breathe. When you sense that the room needs a jolt. He even admitted he doesn’t know what it looks like yet, because you can’t script it in February.
“That’s…certainly something that I’m mindful of,” he said. “I don’t know what that looks like this year.”
When he was asked if he learned anything from last year that he’d apply now, Roberts didn’t bite on the idea that he’d redo things differently. He respects the fact that every roster has its own personality and its own problems, even when the expectations stay the same.
“I wouldn’t change anything from last year,” Roberts said. “This team’s going to be different than last year’s team… but it’s kind of read and react. I can’t… make that premeditated decision because I just don’t know yet.”
The other part of the hangover conversation is pressure. The Dodgers have been the target for years, and now they’re the defending champs again. A reporter asked whether it gets more personal, whether the pressure rises in a way that changes the tone. Roberts didn’t sound interested in the drama of it.
“We were here a year ago saying that we had a very talented roster coming off a championship,” he said. “The goal was to win a championship. That was the goal. And so that’s still the same goal.”
Then he talked about how his team handled being chased last year, and he gave an answer that sounded like it came straight out of a manager’s daily routine, the steady message you repeat until it becomes background noise.
“I think that they handled it glowingly,” Roberts said. He explained it with an analogy about vision and focus: “I thought we did a very good job of keeping our eyes looking forward at our goal versus looking to the side and looking about looking at who’s around us, who’s chasing us.”
He didn’t deny there’s a target on their backs.
“Knowing you have a target as we should if you’re the defending champions,” he said, “but to still focus on yourselves and what’s forward. That’s what we do a good job of… It’s easy to say not concern yourselves with, you know, people that are trying to knock you off the hill… but it’s harder to do in practice,” he said.
And when asked why he thinks they’ve been able to do it, Roberts said his message is consistent, but he pushed the question back toward the players because they’re the ones who actually have to carry it out every day.
“I could say that that’s my messaging all the time every day,” Roberts said, “but it’s probably better to hear from them. I do think that we do a good job of each day just trying to focus on that day, win a baseball game. We talk about that a lot.”
He also couldn’t resist one practical reminder, the kind that always pops up when a coach is being asked about “targets” and “statements” and “teams coming for you.”
“That’s well and good,” Roberts said, referencing other teams talking about wanting to beat the Dodgers, “but you still got to play.”
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