Dave Roberts (roberda07)

David Ray Roberts

Bats Left, Throws Left
Height 5' 10", Weight 180 lb.
School University of California, Los Angeles
High School Rancho Buena Vista High School
Debut August 7, 1999
Final Game September 28, 2008
Born May 31, 1972 in Naha, Okinawa, Japan

Biographical Information[edit]

Dave Roberts played for Team USA in the 1999 Pan American Games. The club's leadoff hitter, he hit .308 and stole four bases, the most in the competition.

He is known for what is arguably the most important stolen base in Boston Red Sox history. In Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, with Boston down to the New York Yankees three games to none and trailing 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th inning, he came in as a pinch runner for Kevin Millar, who had drawn a lead-off walk against Mariano Rivera. He immediately stole second base, then came in to score on Bill Mueller's single to tie the game. Boston went on to win the game in extra innings. That kicked off the Red Sox's incredible comeback that sent them to their first World Series title since 1918.

After his retirement as a player, Roberts worked for the San Diego Padres in their baseball operations department. In May 2010, it was announced that he was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma and would need to undergo chemotherapy. He defeated the cancer, as subsequent tests conducted a year later showed no return of the condition. He then became a coach for the Padres in 2011. He served as the Padres' first base coach from 2011 to 2013. He moved up to bench coach in 2014 and started the 2015 in the same role. On June 15th of that year he was named interim manager, replacing Bud Black. After the Padres lost that day's game, he was replaced by Pat Murphy, who was managing the El Paso Chihuahuas, San Diego's AA affiliate in the Pacific Coast League, and he returned to his bench coach duties for the rest of the season.

After the season, he was one of a large number of candidates identified as a potential successor for Don Mattingly as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was considered an outsider, given his lack of managerial experience, but he impressed during the interview stage and was the surprise winner of the competition on November 23rd, getting the job for the 2016 season. The Dodgers were confident in his ability to get the most out of talented but underperforming budding stars like Yasiel Puig and Joc Pederson to complements their slew of highly-paid superstars. The Dodgers, and especially President Andrew Friedman, were also impressed by his knowledge of analytics and his front office experience, a marked contrast with old-school predecessor Mattingly. Also working in his favor was the fact he had played for the Dodgers and had been a star at UCLA.

Roberts had a very auspicious debut as a full-time manager, as the Dodgers won their first three games of 2016, all by shutout. In his fourth game, on April 8th, he was faced with a tough decision, as his starting pitcher, Ross Stripling was making his major league debut, and was pitching a no-hit shutout when he reached his pitch count limit of 100 after walking Angel Pagan of the San Francisco Giants with one out in the 8th. Roberts decided to replace him with reliever Chris Hatcher, denying him a shot at history, and Hatcher quickly surrendered a two-run homer to Trevor Brown. Dave's managerial opponent that day, Bruce Bochy, told the press he would have made the same decision had he been in his position. He was placed in a similar position on September 10th, when Rich Hill started off a game against the Miami Marlins with seven perfect innings. He had only needed 89 pitches to go that far, but Roberts was concerned over Hill's previous struggles with blister problems and decided to pull him in favor of Joe Blanton, who gave up a hit with two outs in the 8th. The Dodger won handily, 5-0, but Roberts told the media it was one of the hardest decisions he had ever had to make: "This is probably the worst I've felt after a win," he told reporters. The Dodgers finished in first place in the NL West, and Roberts led them to a win over the Washington Nationals in the NLDS before they fell to the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. After the season, he was rewarded for the team's excellent showing by being named the winner of the NL's Manager of the Year Award.

The Dogders repeated as NL West champions in 2017, but it was a strange season. After a decent start, the team caught fire in May following the call-up of rookie Clay Bellinger, who replaced injured veteran Adrian Gonzalez at first base. They were winning games at an unprecedented pace for a while that had them threatening the all-time record for wins in a season. They then hit a completely unexpected roadblock in late August, when they went on an unexplainable streak of losing 16 of 17 games; they had built such a huge lead that they were never threatened with not making the postseason, but the concern was that what had seemed like an unstoppable machine was now completely misfiring. However, the team finished strong, ending with 104 wins. On August 23rd, Roberts had a flashback when once again Rich Hill made a tremendous start, flirting with a perfect game and then completing 9 no-hit hittings after a 9th-inning error, but his teammates were unable to score a run for him against the Pittsburgh Pirates. This time, Roberts decided to extend his mercurial starter, having him begin the 10th inning in the hope of keeping the no-no alive, but a lead-off homer by Josh Harrison sadled him with a 1-0 loss. In the postseason, the Dodgers rolled over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLDS and the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS to reach the World Series for the first time since 1988. They extended the Houston Astros to seven games before bowing out, with two poor starting performance by mid-season acquisition Yu Darvish making the difference in favor of Houston. In the series, Roberts was notorious for the little confidence he showed in his starting pitchers, taxing his bullpen to the max (Brandon Morrow became only the second man to pitch in all seven games of a postseason series) as he tried to leverage a perceived advantage created by his deeper bullpen. While the final result may have been disappointing, there was no denying this had been another extremely successful season for Roberts.

In 2018, the Dodgers stumbled out of the gate because of a rash of injuries, but they eventually managed to turn things around and finished in first place in the NL West, although it took a one-game playoff against the Colorado Rockies to do so. After that, they rolled over the Atlanta Braves in the Division Series and eliminated the resilient Milwaukee Brewers in seven games in the NLCS to return to the World Series. There, they met a juggernaut in a very inspired Boston Red Sox team completing a record-breaking season, and only managed to win one game, that being an 18-inning marathon in Game 3. While the final result was again a disappointment, there were not as many "what ifs" asked after the World Series loss, and everyone recognized that Roberts had done a great job just taking the team that far under trying circumstances. He was rewarded after the season with a four-year extension keeping him as the manager until 2022.

Dave's son Cole Roberts was a 38th-round pick in the 2019 amateur draft.

"Maury Wills once told me that there will come a point in my career when everyone in the ballpark will know that I have to steal a base, and I will steal that base. When I got out there, I knew that was what Maury Wills was talking about." -Dave Roberts

Notable Achievements[edit]

Won a World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2004 (he did not play in the World Series)

NL Manager of the Year Award: 2016
NL Pennants: 3 (2017, 2018 & 2020)
Division Titles: 7 (2016-2020, 2022 & 2023)

Other Postseason Appearance: 1 (2021/Wild Card)

100 Wins Seasons as Manager: 5 (2017, 2019 & 2021-2023)
Managed one World Series Champions with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020

Preceded by
Don Mattingly

Los Angeles Dodgers Manager
2016-

Succeeded by
current

Year-By-Year Managerial Record[edit]

Year	Team	League	Record	Finish	Organization	Playoffs	Notes
2015	San Diego Padres	National League	0-1	--	San Diego Padres		interim between Bud Black (32-33) and Pat Murphy on June 15
2016	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	91-71	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost NLCS
2017	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	104-58	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost World Series
2018	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	92-71	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost World Series
2019	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	106-56	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost NLDS
2020	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	43-17	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	World Series Champs
2021	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	106-56	2nd	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost NLCS
2022	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	111-51	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost NLDS
2023	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League	100-62	1st	Los Angeles Dodgers	Lost NLDS
2024	Los Angeles Dodgers	National League			Los Angeles Dodgers

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Dave Roberts (roberda07)

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Biographical Information[edit]

Notable Achievements[edit]

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