LOS ANGELES — Case closed? Freddie Freeman thinks so.

“I mean, we had a layoff last year. We won the World Series,” Freeman said. “So we crushed that narrative.”

It’s probably not that simple.

Major League Baseball changed its postseason format beginning in 2022, offering a first-round bye (and five-day break) to the teams with the best two records in each league. In the first two years of that format, teams that had the five-day break went 23-28 – with 17 of those wins produced by the Houston Astros (who won the World Series in 2022 and reached the American League Championship Series in 2023).

The Dodgers didn’t handle it well either year. They lost their first series each year, winning just one game each time.

The break got a lot of the blame, particularly in 2023 when they hit .177

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