The 2025 Dodgers looked a lot like the 2024 Dodgers on Thursday.
Just with gold lettering adorning their World Series championship jerseys.
In a 5-4 win over the Detroit Tigers in their home opener, this year’s Dodgers produced all the same hallmarks of last season’s title-winning club.
Timely offense, epitomized by Teoscar Hernández’s go-ahead, three-run home run in the fifth inning off reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal, and Shohei Ohtani’s solo blast in the seventh for a key insurance run.
Starting pitching that was just good enough, with two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell limiting damage in a five-inning, two-run debut with the team.
And effective relief from the bullpen, which nursed a narrow lead to the finish line for a home-opening win and 3-0 start to the Dodgers’ championship defense.
Thursday was always going to be about 2024 more than 2025.
Over a 30-minute pregame ceremony, the Dodgers raised a “2024 World Champions” banner up the center-field flagpole, unveiled a new “2024” sign next to their other seven World Series plaques in right field, and were delivered the Commissioner’s Trophy by Ice Cube — via a Dodger blue Chevrolet Bel-Air the hip-hop artist drove across the warning track.
To commemorate their title, the Dodgers also wore special gold-trimmed jerseys and caps, just as they will again Friday when they are presented their World Series rings.
And if all that wasn’t enough, the ceremonial first pitch came with a fitting twist. Kirk Gibson, the walk-off hero of the club’s 1988 World Series, took the mound to throw the ball. Freddie Freeman, the walk-off hero of last year’s Fall Classic against the New York Yankees, squatted behind the plate to catch it.
The accompanying roar from the early arriving Dodger Stadium crowd wasn’t quite to the level of either man’s iconic October home run. But for a hazy afternoon in late March, it was deafening nonetheless.
The Dodgers’ goal is to be back in the World Series again, aiming to become Major League Baseball’s first repeat champion — and undisputed dynasty — since the New York Yankees of 1998 to 2000.
But first they will have to tackle another grueling 162-game schedule. So far, they’re off to an unblemished start.
After sweeping their season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs in Tokyo last week, the Dodgers faced a new task back on home soil against Skubal, the 28-year-old left-hander who rolled to last year’s Cy Young with an 18-4 record and AL-leading 2.39 earned-run average.
For four innings the Dodgers couldn’t crack him, a second-inning home run from Tommy Edman representing their only scoring.
Snell, the biggest star of the Dodgers’ half-billion offseason spending spree, was less clinical in his first Dodgers start. Though all five hits he gave up were singles — most of them hit softly — the $182-million star struggled to find the strike zone, walking four and putting himself under constant stress.
Snell stranded runners at second and third in the second inning, then another at third base in the top of the third. But with the bases loaded and two outs in the fourth, he spiked consecutive two-strike curveballs, the second bouncing all the way to the backstop to plate a run. In the fifth the Tigers loaded the bases again with two singles and a walk, setting up Manuel Margot for a sacrifice fly to center.
It was an imperfect outing for Snell, who despite owning two Cy Youngs still is known for a lack of consistent efficiency, having topped 130 innings just twice in his nine-year career.
But on this loaded Dodgers team, his ability to limit damage — the Tigers were 0 for 9 against Snell with runners in scoring position and 0 for 15 on the day — was enough.
Just like in the latter stages of last season, when Hernández punctuated his bounce-back, All-Star season with a penchant for clutch hitting that continued into the playoffs, manager Dave Roberts bumped Hernández ahead of Freeman in Thursday’s batting order, putting the right-handed-hitting slugger third against a left-handed starter, and the left-handed-hitting Freeman fourth.
“I just like it,” Roberts said before the game. “There’s a Teoscar tax, to get through Freddie the third time.”
Indeed, with two on and two outs in the fifth, Skubal paid it on a first-pitch fastball, leaving a 96-mph heater over the heart of the plate that Hernández blasted to center, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.
Two innings later Ohtani answered a Spencer Torkelson solo homer in the top of the seventh, the Japanese star’s second long ball of the season just three games in.
And after Tanner Scott and Blake Treinen combined to close out the game in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively, Dodger Stadium erupted in the same way it did so often last fall, celebrating a home-opening victory from a club beginning another long march toward World Series glory.
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