In a clubhouse filled with future Hall of Famers, landmark annual salaries and enough star power to light up the baseball universe, Dave Roberts knew better.
When giving his annual division-clinching, playoff-preparation speech in Cincinnati recently, Roberts didn’t focus on Shohei Ohtani or Freddie Freeman or Mookie Betts.
He pointedly addressed the shadows.
“To finish this season strong, to win 11 games in October, you never know who is going to be the guy…who that moment is going to fall to … and many people have lived it in this clubhouse,” he intoned to a hushed bunch preparing to pop the champagne. “So my ask is, be ready to be that guy.”
Be ready to be That Guy.
Be ready to be the unheralded hero who emerges from the dugout shadows to smash that hit, spin that pitch, stalk that catch, seal that title.
Last season they survived Game 7 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays with not one, but two versions of That Guy.
Miguel Rojas hit his first home run in 44 days to tie the game in the ninth. Then Andy Pages, who was benched after batting .078 in the postseason, kept the game tied in the ninth by climbing over Kiké Hernández to make a belief-defying catch.
“This is a legacy that is gonna be remembered forever,” said Rojas afterward.
That the victory was engineered by two previously anonymous or forgotten role players defines that Dodger legacy. It is not always the platinum-selling superstars who have carried them through generations of greatness. It is quite often the one-hit wonders.
Be ready to be That Guy.
Dodger postseason history is brimming with them.
One season before being tackled by That Guy, Hernández was That Guy, hitting a second-inning home run to set the tone for a Game 5 victory in the 2024 division series against the San Diego Padres.
There was Austin Barnes, stealing the spotlight by becoming only the second player in history to drive in a run with both a sacrifice bunt and a home run in the same World Series game in 2020 against the Tampa Bay Rays.
There was Mickey Hatcher streaking around the bases in the 1988 World Series. Who can forget the Stuntmen?
There was José Lima throwing a complete-game shutout against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 division series. Who can forget Lima Time!
Remember Jay Johnstone’s pinch-hit homer in the 1981 World Series? Remember Chuck Essegian’s two pinch-hit home runs in the 1959 World Series?
It could be anybody. It has been anybody. As Roberts declared, if the Dodgers are going to three-peat, it must be somebody.
Here are the candidates to be That Guy for 2026, in order of probability.
Josue De Paula
It’s got to be him, right? He is the favorite to be That Guy because he’s already That Guy.
He has the swagger. He has the style. He has the Soto. With all of his flexes and stares and shuffles, every plate appearance feels like an event.
More importantly, he has the nerve. Imagine being a 21-year-old summoned from double A into the clubhouse of the best team in baseball, then dropped into the lineup as a temporary replacement for … Ohtani!
He shrugged. He styled. He swung. In 11 games he had 10 hits, one homer, seven RBI and an OPS of 1.081.
He was sent down when Ohtani returned, but fear not, he should be coming back, just in time to blast a game-winning pinch single in the 10th inning of a clinching October night.
Anybody remember how 20-year-old Frankie Rodriguez came out of nowhere to help lead the Angels to their 2002 World Series championship?
This could be that.
“We had a runway to give him, which we gave him, and he performed more than admirably,” said manager Dave Roberts.
Runway is a perfect metaphor for a kid who is about to take off.
Kyle Tucker
Can you be That Guy if you make baseball’s highest annual salary of $60 million?
You can if you’ve spent most of the season stinking up the joint. You’ve booed him. You’ve jeered at him. You hate the fact that sometimes he doesn’t look like he cares. He’s perhaps the easiest Dodger to dislike since Frank McCourt.
All true. But you know what else is true?
Tucker has a .969 OPS this September with six homers and 13 RBIs and a sudden knack for having the best at-bats at the most important times.
“I feel like I’ve tried just about everything,” he told reporters earlier this season. “And every time I feel like I’m turning a corner, I get hit with a roadblock.”
It feels like that corner has been turned. There is a sense that the roadblock has been hurdled.
Believe it or not, Kyle Tucker is on a path to That Guy redemption.
Edwin Díaz
Like Tucker, he has been a bust. Like Tucker, he has made a bunch of money for doing nothing.
But unlike Tucker, he has been battling injuries. And while he was terrible in his recent triple-A rehab assignment, he ended that with a scoreless inning.
For all his tribulations this season, he’s not that far removed from being baseball’s best closer. He’s still Edwin Díaz. And he still loves October. Of his eight career postseason games, he’s allowed runs in one.
There is every chance that when he gets the chance to save a game or a series or a season, he will do exactly that.
That Guy usually hasn’t stepped on the October stage while being serenaded by a trumpet — it’s just the opposite, right? — but for Díaz, the Dodgers would love to make an exception.
Emmet Sheehan
Would it surprise anyone if one of the Dodgers’ stalwart yet fragile starters came down with even a minor October injury?
Enter Sheehan, who can be this season’s version of Will Klein, coming out of the bullpen to pitch boffo bulk innings in relief.
He’s been inconsistent most of the season with a 4.57 ERA, but have you checked him out this month? In three September appearances spanning 17 innings, he’s allowed one run with 24 strikeouts and three walks.
“I feel like I’m in a much better spot now,” he told reporters. “Whatever role they want me to do, going forward I’m ready to do it.”
The role of That Guy is still available, and he seems ready for the script.
Hunter Feduccia
The backup catcher has two qualities necessary for being That Guy.
He’s tough, witness him vomiting near home plate last month against the Colorado Rockies.
He’s got a great eye, note his success rate of 63.2 percent on ABS challenges, which is above the league average.
Can you imagine Feduccia somehow ending up behind home plate in the 18th inning and using an ABS challenge to turn a ball into a strike, a loss into a win, and a series into a championship?
Why not him? Why not any of them?
Last October Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages were asking themselves the same question.
Lurking in the shadows this fall will be their successor. Nobody knows the current identity of That Guy, only that the Dodgers cannot three-peat without him.
The post The Dodgers cannot three-peat without ‘That Guy’… but who is he? appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
