This was the headline in early September:

For struggling Dodgers, another spoiled chance and a repetitive message: ‘It’s got to get better’

That was six weeks ago, and already those words seem sent from another time and place. Surely not these Los Angeles Dodgers. Not the team of superstars that just bullied its way to a National League pennant. The Dodgers have taken down the surging Cincinnati Reds, the loaded Philadelphia Phillies, and the best-in-baseball Milwaukee Brewers. They’ve lost just one playoff game in the process. On paper and on the field, they look like a juggernaut.

This team was struggling?

For much of the regular season, the narrative around the Dodgers was one of profound disappointment. They were good, but not nearly the unstoppable force their roster, payroll and track record suggested.

So how did a team that underperformed for six months become a relentless steamroller when it mattered most? It started a year ago and has been quietly coming together ever since.

Step 1 — Start with a championship lineup
Won their second World Series in five years last October

Ten players have taken at least eight at-bats for the Dodgers this postseason, and all 10 were with the team last October, too. Four were with the Dodgers when they won in 2020. Despite the in-season focus on the Dodgers’ flaws, it was not as if the entire roster was falling apart. From April 28 to the end of the season, the Dodgers played only two games in which they didn’t have at least a share of first place.

Shohei Ohtani is a favorite to win his third straight MVP award, first baseman Freddie Freeman was top 10 in baseball in wRC+, Will Smith was the best-hitting catcher in the National League, and Mookie Betts — the converted right fielder — led the Major Leagues in Defensive Runs Saved at shortstop and ranked eighth in Outs Above Average, earning a Gold Glove nomination.

Massive expectations didn’t come out of nowhere. The Dodgers were loaded with talent from the beginning.

Step 2 — Rebuild the pitching staff
Signed SP Blake Snell in November
Re-signed RP Blake Treinen in December
Signed SP Roki Sasaki in January
Signed RP Tanner Scott in January
Signed RP Kirby Yates in January
Re-signed SP Clayton Kershaw in February

Even after splurging on Ohtani in December of 2023, the Dodgers actually did not have baseball’s largest payroll in 2024. The Mets did. But the Dodgers spent the most this year. With a 10-player spending spree — re-signing four players and adding six more — the Dodgers committed nearly $400 million total and added roughly $185 million to this year’s payroll.

This winter alone, they spent roughly the same amount of money the Seattle Mariners are spending on their entire roster.

The Dodgers brought back outfielder Teoscar Hernández and utility man Kiké Hernández, added left-handed bat Michael Conforto, and signed versatile Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim. But their biggest expense was the pitching staff, which had grown precariously thin last season. Franchise icon Clayton Kershaw re-signed, as did veteran reliever Blake Treinen. Young Japanese starter Roki Sasaki chose to join the Dodgers in January, around the same time the team added the market’s top free agent reliever, Tanner Scott, plus another veteran closer, Kirby Yates.

The Dodgers’ biggest offseason splash, though, was their first. On November 30, when he’d been on the open market less than a month, two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell signed a five-year, $182-million deal. He made only 11 starts in the regular season, but he has been absurdly dominant in three playoff starts (21 innings, 28 strikeouts, 0.86 ERA).

Step 3 — Find a center fielder
Andy Pages won the job in March then thrived in April

The Dodgers entered spring training with several options up the middle. Betts was Plan A at shortstop, and Tommy Edman was also going to play either second base or center field, but the team had five options for the final everyday job: veteran infielder Miguel Rojas, versatile utility players Kim and Kiké Hernández, and homegrown center fielders Andy Pages and James Outman. There was uncertainty because neither homegrown center fielder had proven he could handle an everyday assignment.

That changed when Pages won the center field job out of spring training and posted an .891 OPS in the month of April. He finished with the fifth-best fWAR among Major League center fielders and wound up starting 117 games at the position. No other Dodger started more than 19.

Pages had some offensive ups and downs (.727 OPS in the second half, hit for more power against righties, higher on-base percentage against lefties) but his emergence as an everyday option let the Dodgers use Edman primarily at second base (where he won a Gold Glove in 2021) and to take their time with Kim (who spent a month getting acclimated in Triple A then provided a spark when he was promoted in early May). Pages has not hit much this postseason, but he’s started every game.

Step 4 — Take full advantage of the game’s best player
Shohei Ohtani returned to the mound in June

In his first year and a half with the Dodgers, Ohtani was the Most Valuable Player in the National League, but he wasn’t nearly as valuable as he could have been. On June 16, the game’s only true two-way player made his return to the mound following his 2023 Tommy John surgery. Most of his starts were limited — no more than three innings through the end of July — but his presence in the rotation was a game-changer for the Dodgers’ pitching staff.

Especially now.

With Ohtani now cleared for 90-plus pitches, the Dodgers are finally able to maximize their rotation to improve the entire pitching staff. Ohtani, Snell, Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow have been the Dodgers’ postseason starters, leaving Sasaki — more on him in a bit — to slide into the closer role while Emmet Sheehan, who made 12 regular-season starts, has become an important reliever, with Kershaw available for emergency long relief. As for Ohtani himself, he had a 2.87 ERA in 14 regular-season starts and started the Game 4 clincher on Friday, delivering one of the greatest games in baseball history — three home runs and six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts. Yeah, he’s all the way back.

Step 5 — Keep Yoshinobu Yamamoto healthy
Yamamoto avoided last year’s IL stint and got better in the second half

Yamamoto was the most accomplished Japanese pitcher to come to America since Ohtani. He was excellent in his Major League debut last season (3.00 ERA, pitched well in Game 2 of the World Series), but he’d gotten hurt in the middle of June and missed almost three months. His early postseason starts in 2024 were limited to less than 75 pitches apiece.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been stellar since midseason. (Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)

There have been no such limits this postseason. Yamamoto not only stayed healthy, but he seemed to get stronger. Opponents had a .584 OPS against him in the first half, but a .470 in the second half. From June 25 — around the time he went on the IL a year ago — through the end of the regular season, Yamamoto made 15 starts with a 2.22 ERA, and his 2.26 expected ERA during that stretch was by far the best among qualified pitchers (Cy Young favorite Paul Skenes was second-best with a 2.64). This postseason, Yamamoto has thrown more than 110 pitches in two of three starts, including a 111-pitch, complete game in Game 2 of the NLCS.

Step 6 — Trust in the process
Traded SP Dustin May to the Red Sox on July 31
Traded for C Ben Rortvedt on July 31
Traded for OF Alex Call on July 31
Traded for RP Brock Stewart on July 31

Certainly, the Dodgers had not been as dominant as their high-profile roster suggested, but they reached the trade deadline with a 63-46 record — second-best in the National League — and in the previous month-and-a-half, their playoff odds on FanGraphs had not dipped below 98.7 percent. They were on a trajectory to reach the postseason.

Rather than make a reactionary splash at the trade deadline, the Dodgers’ mid-season trades were supplementary. They traded away a depth starter and added three role players: right-handed outfielder Alex Call, backup catcher Ben Rortvedt, and middle-innings reliever Brock Stewart. Call and Rortvedt have been bench players. Stewart got hurt after four outings and hasn’t pitched since August 9.

The most meaningful Dodgers improvements have been entirely internal.

Step 7 — Let Mookie be Mookie
Betts became a top-10 player again down the stretch

Five years before they signed Sasaki, four years before they signed Ohtani, two years before they signed Freeman, the Dodgers traded for Mookie Betts. Nine months later, they won their first World Series in 32 years. The Dodgers were already a model franchise with seven straight playoff appearances and an impressive a blend of player development and open-market spending, but the Betts trade was a flex. The Dodgers traded for one of the best all-around players in the sport, and immediately won a title. Four years later, they won another.

Playing his age-32 season, though, Betts wasn’t elite this year. He was left out of the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade, and as of late August, he was 114th in the Majors in fWAR. His defensive metrics were good, but he had a .681 OPS (which had been as low as .664 in the second half).

That changed in August. Betts started to get hot early in the month — hit .400 over an eight-game stretch — and from August 24 through the end of the season, Betts had a .926 OPS and ranked 10th in the Majors with a 1.5 fWAR. He has remained potent in the playoffs, getting on base, driving in runs, and showing off his infield defense with an impressive throw in Game 3 of the NLCS.

Step 8 — Get key players healthy
SP Tyler Glasnow activated from the IL on July 9
RP Blake Treinen activated from the IL on July 27
SP Blake Snell activated from the IL on Aug. 2
3B Max Muncy activated from the IL on Aug. 4
3B Max Muncy activated from the IL (again) on Sept. 8
INF/OF Tommy Edman activated from the IL on Sept. 10
SP/RP Roki Sasaki activated from the IL on Sept. 24
C Will Smith activated from the IL on Sept. 29

The Dodgers still are not an especially healthy team. At least eight would-be-important pitchers are unavailable this postseason, but the Dodgers did get closer to full-strength in the last three months. As their roster got healthy, they began to look more and more like a viable World Series contender. The Dodgers won nine of their last 11 games in the regular season.

The return to health really started with Glasnow, who was hurt last year and couldn’t pitch in the 2024 postseason. He came back from a two-month absence in July, then Snell returned three weeks later after missing four months with shoulder inflammation. Two days after Snell, Muncy returned after missing a month (Muncy got hurt again and missed another three weeks but returned in September). Edman and Sasaki also came back in the final month, and Smith returned from a hand injury in time for the postseason.

The glue holding everything together might be Muncy. The Dodgers were 37-35 without him in their starting lineup this season. They were 56-34 with him.

Step 9 — Get production in the outfield corners
Teoscar Hernández began to hit again in September
Kiké Hernández took over left field in October

Two of the Dodgers’ big offseason moves were re-signing Teoscar Hernández and signing Michael Conforto. The pair of veterans was supposed to stabilize the outfield and deliver offense in the corners. Instead, the Dodgers ranked 14th in the Majors in wRC+ in right field (where Hernández played) and they were 21st in left field fWAR (where Conforto was below replacement level for the first time in his career).

So, why hasn’t that been a problem in the postseason?

First, Hernández turned things around in September. Beginning with a two-homer game on Sept. 9, he finished the season with a .916 OPS in the final three weeks, and he’s been even more productive in the postseason (again starting with a two-homer game in the wild-card series opener). He leads the Dodgers in postseason RBIs.

As for left field, Conforto hasn’t even been on the roster in the playoffs. Instead, the Dodgers have primarily used noted postseason performer Kiké Hernández in left field while giving deadline addition Call occasional starts. Kiké Hernández has started in left field more times in the playoffs than he did in the entire regular season.

Step 10 — Find an unexpected closer
Sasaki has been pitching the ninth inning in the playoffs

Roki Sasaki’s resurgence has been essential. (Harry How / Getty Images)

Because of his age, cost and upside, Roki Sasaki was the offseason’s most desirable free agent this side of Juan Soto (and some teams surely wanted Sasaki even more than they wanted Soto). He ultimately chose the Dodgers, which seemed almost unfair — the rich got richer — but then he stumbled to a 4.72 ERA and 1.49 WHIP through his first eight starts. His fastball was hittable, and he had nearly as many walks (22) as strikeouts (24). Sasaki wasn’t a gift for the Dodgers. He was a problem.

When Sasaki went on the IL in May, the Dodgers had to not only heal his shoulder but also fix his arsenal. He stumbled through an unimpressive rehab assignment — 6.10 ERA in Triple A — before being activated as a reliever in late September. He’s been dominant ever since. Through a series of mechanical tweaks, the Dodgers solved one problem (Sasaki) and used that to at least partially solve another (their bullpen).

In the end, Sasaki is as good as advertised. And so are the Dodgers.