The Los Angeles Dodgers entered the 2024 season as World Series favorites as several star players joined the club in the offseason, including Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernández.

However, for most of the year the season did not go as planned. The Dodgers have struggled with an inordinate number of injuries, and then some.

The threat of injury didn't stop all year long, and perhaps the most devastating news for the team came when it was discovered that the Dodgers would be without their ace for the rest of the year as Glasnow was shut down for the rest of 2024.

This lowered morale in the Dodgers' clubhouse, leading to manager Dave Roberts calling a team meeting that ultimately changed the course of the season.

“One time we saw a lot of fans that we saw not from the team but from outside, everyone was panicking because we had suffered a lot of injuries,” Hernández recalled. “We lost a lot of pitchers. Once upon a time we felt like we were down as a team.

“One meeting changed everything. Then we realized that we have the potential, that we have the players, that we are still the Dodgers and that we can do special things with the guys that we have healthy all year and just have the opportunity to to keep the team going until these guys are able to come back and continue to help the team win.”

Hernández said the meeting occurred when the Dodgers were playing the Atlanta Braves in mid-September. The Dodgers lost their first two games against the Braves before holding the meeting and winning the next two.

“I just wanted to get the guys together,” Roberts said. “I’m not a big meeting guy. I just felt like at that point, I think we had lost two games in a row to the Braves, we got the news that Tyler was going to be out for the year. And I just felt like there was some kind of little suffering for me, and that's just not who we are.

“I knew Walker was pitching that night and felt like we needed him to help us win 11 games in October. So I wanted to have a little bit of the meeting with him on the hill that night and I challenged him a little bit. The message was basically: I can't believe in them any more than they believe in each other. You have to believe in yourself, right?

“And I just felt like we had enough talent in the room to do that. I just wanted to bring this to light. The most important thing was that these guys reacted to each other.”

Teoscar Hernández: The Dodgers needed little offense

While the Dodgers were still playing top-notch baseball overall at this point, the meeting was more focused on the future and looking ahead to the postseason.

“It was just a meeting where we all wanted to stick together again and keep pushing until we won everything,” explained Hernández.

So far, the meeting has proven successful as the Dodgers are just one win away from the World Series. They still have a lot of work to do, but this club has the talent and attitude to get it done.

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