MILWAUKEE –– Dave Roberts delivered the speech. Teoscar Hernández supplied the punch line.
In the wake of their National League Division Series defeat of the Atlanta Braves last week, the Dodgers gathered around their manager at the start of a champagne celebration in Truist Park’s visiting clubhouse.
First, Roberts extolled their culture and competitiveness. He then declared that “we’re smarter, we’re better and we’re tougher” than their postseason competition.
That’s when, from the corner of the room, Hernández chimed in with one more observation.
“And we’re dinosaurs!” he shouted.
Cretaceous creatures, who have once again found the fountain of October youth.
Throughout the regular season and leading into the playoffs, the Dodgers’ aging roster loomed as their biggest area of concern. Their average lineup age of 30.9 years old, according to Baseball Reference, was the oldest in the majors.
Their grizzled veteran core has played more games (and traveled more miles, including two season-opening Asia trips) than any other club in baseball the past two years.
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That’s why the team could help but notice the recent “dinosaur” comment made by new Padres owner José E. Feliciano –– even if he was trying to refer to the actual collection of fossils kept by Dodgers owner Mark Walter.
To the two-time defending champions, it still qualified as a perceived slight.
“We’ve heard it,” 36-year-old third baseman Max Muncy said. “But you can’t focus on the outside stuff for us.
Indeed, the Dodgers do not need any extra motivation this postseason, as they continue their quest for a third-straight World Series title in the NL Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers.
“You worry about yourself,” Muncy said. “You worry about how you’re getting ready for the game, how you’re preparing for the series.”
But talk about their age has nonetheless added some fuel to their competitive fire.
“Los Viejitos!!!” Kiké Hernández captioned on an Instagram photo of him, Muncy, Miguel Rojas, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman earlier this week –– playfully using the Spanish term for “old folks” to describe the club’s five eldest statesmen.
“I like our dinosaurs,” Roberts also joked with AM 570 earlier this month. “Our dinosaurs have come through in the biggest spots.”
That was not always the case during the second half of this year’s regular season, when the Dodgers’ offense slipped into such a glaring funk –– highlighted by an inability to consistently slug the ball –– that one rival scout remarked in late August: “This is the oldest they’ve ever looked.”
Since then, however, they have rediscovered a jolt. They scored the fourth-most runs in the majors in September. They outslugged the Braves in the NLDS by belting eight home runs, all but one of which came from players age 33 or older.
Now, they are banking on their experience to give them an edge in this week’s NLCS, starting with a showdown against 24-year-old flamethrowing Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski in Game 1 on Sunday.
“The toughest part about age is [managing it during the regular] season,” Roberts said. “But once you get through the marathon and you get to the sprint of the postseason, advantage goes to us in the sense of the experience.”
Father Time, of course, will eventually win out at some point.
Even Muncy acknowledged that there has been “some talk” of this being a potential final ride for this version of the roster.
“For us, it’s about playing for each other, and that’s what makes it so special,” Muncy said. “A lot of us have been through a lot of moments together –– good, bad, in the middle –– and I wouldn’t want to share those with anyone else, that’s for sure.”
For now, however, the Dinosaur Dodgers just want to keep on roaring.
Eight wins away from another World Series, age is the least of their concerns.
“I don’t like thinking that this could be towards the end [of our run], because I don’t think it is,” Muncy said. “I think we still have a lot of good baseball left in us. Hopefully we can keep going.”
