The Dodgers in beating the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday night to close out the National League Division Series in four games improved their record under Dave Roberts to 19-9 (.689) with a chance to close out a postseason series. The rest of MLB since 2016 is 92-88 (.511) in such games.
Wednesday’s win was also the 72nd career postseason win for Roberts, surpassing Tony La Russa for second-most in MLB history.
“It’s special,” Roberts said on Monday night in Atlanta. “I have a lot of respect for Tony
and the managers that have done what I’m doing; they’ve done it for a long time.”
Roberts is now a dozen wins behind Joe Torre for the most postseason wins ever.
Roberts has done all this in 11 seasons at the helm of the Dodgers, and his 11th season isn’t finished yet. Torre managed a total of 29 seasons in the majors, though 76 of his 84 postseason wins came in his dozen years with the New York Yankees.
Modern managers have more opportunities to amass postseason wins, with both the wild card round and Division Series. Plus, League Championship Series before 1985 were only best-of-5 instead of best-of-7, making in harder for earlier managers to pile up the October victories. So here is every MLB manager with at least 30 postseason wins, broken down by series.
All of Casey Stengel’s 37 wins came in the World Series, and the same for Joe McCarthy’s 30 wins in the Fall Classic.
If we look at a more modern era, since the League Championship Series has been around since 1969, here are the most postseason wins in just the World Series and LCS combined:
- Joe Torre 50 wins
- Tony La Russa 47 wins
- Bobby Cox 41 wins
- Dave Roberts 40 wins
- Casey Stengel 37 wins
- Bruce Bochy 36 wins
- Sparky Anderson 34 wins
