The words will sound like a rallying cry or hollow rhetoric. The next five weeks will decide how history judges the 2018 Los Angeles Dodgers, a group Kenley Jansen spoke for in the wake of another calamitous defeat Wednesday.
“It sucks losing,” Jansen said. “It sucks going 4 1/2 back. It sucks being in third place. But you’ve just got to be a man and deal with it, and step up Friday. We all need to step up.”
The Dodgers rested Thursday as a crucial stretch of baseball awaited them. At this juncture, trailing two teams in the National League West and three for entry into the wild-card game, each night carries sizable implications.