SACRAMENTO — For Dave Roberts, it’s 1,000 down and Cooperstown to go.

Victory No. 1: 15-0 over the San Diego Padres in 2016, with vintage Clayton Kershaw on the mound and Adrián González in the cleanup spot. Amid the postgame handshakes, González showered Roberts with bubble gum.

“There was no stress,” Roberts said. “It was such a nice soft landing.”

Victory No. 1,000: 9-3 over the Athletics in Sacramento on Tuesday with home runs from Tommy Edman and Miguel Rojas, and with Justin Wrobleski striking out a career-high 11 to become the Dodgers’ first 10-game winner.

Pretty soft landing too, and well worth a celebration.

“I can’t ask the players to enjoy milestones and things and not do that myself,” Roberts said. “But what it does is it gives me an opportunity to look back on a lot of people that have supported me — players, coaches, front office. I’ve done a lot of growing, had a lot of great experiences. That’s what I’ll take away.”

For Roberts, the Dodgers job is the stuff of dreams, but he might not hold it as long as you think.

No major league manager has ever won 1,000 games so quickly. Roberts did it in his 1,606th game, 35 fewer than Cap Anson.

Walter Alston, who led the Dodgers to their first four World Series championships, managed 23 years, until he was 64. Tommy Lasorda won two titles and managed 20 years, until he was 68.

“I will not manage 20 years,” Roberts said.

This is his 11th season. His contract extends through 2029. No need to decide now, but he could see managing through 2032, when he will be 61 and Mookie Betts will be playing the final year of his deal.

“Mookie wants me to manage until his contract expires, so that’s something I am thinking about,” Roberts said. “But I can be certain I’m not going to do 20 years. It’s too much. I love it, but it’s a lot to give. To see myself doing that for another seven, eight, nine years, that’s a lot.

“There’s more to the job. Nothing against Tommy or Walter, but there’s more to the job than there used to be. That’s just the truth.”

Alston and Lasorda are in the Hall of Fame. Roberts, with three championships so far, will be too.

“I’m not chasing wins,” Roberts said. “I’m chasing having great relationships with my players. So, yeah, the result, the fallout is a lot of wins.”

If you don’t win, you’re not around long enough to develop those relationships. In the two decades between Lasorda and Roberts, the Dodgers employed seven managers and won no championships.

Even 1,000 victories and three titles cannot sway the cynics: How good do you have to be to manage a lineup loaded with MVP winners in Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman? Easy, no?

“I would definitely say it’s probably the reverse,” Betts said. “It makes it harder. It’s probably easy to write in a lineup, for sure. But to manage so many personalities, injuries, guys coming up, guys coming down, it’s a lot, especially losing. We went through our stretches where we weren’t playing well.

“And then it’s the other way, like, ‘Oh, you got this roster, and you’re still losing X, Y, and Z.’ But he just kind of handled it. Handled it with grace. And still come out on top. So, yeah, it’s probably easy to write in the lineup, but to manage it for 162-plus is really hard to do.”

Rojas put it bluntly.

“You’re not managing any team, you’re managing one of the best teams that’s been ever assembled, so you have more pressure on top of your shoulders, because you’re supposed to win,” Rojas said. “So if you don’t win, you’re not a good manager, right?”

It is one thing to manage a young team, where the manager might be the biggest presence in the room. It is quite another to manage the best baseball team in the world, with a star-studded roster, and keep the players — as Lasorda would have said — pulling on the same end of the rope.

“Whenever guys are going through it, he’s always right there, he’s calling us in the office, whatever it is that we need,” Betts said. “So he definitely welcomes the personalities, but makes sure the egos kind of stay in.”

Betts said he does not really regard Roberts as a manager. Or, at least, he regards him as more than a manager.

“I just don’t really see him that way,” Betts said. “I see him more as like a baseball dad, to be honest. He’s always there.”

Roberts makes an effort to check in with every player, every day. When Rojas rejoined the Dodgers in 2023, he said the first thing Roberts asked about was not about his play or his role, but about his family.

Those are the kinds of things that allow Roberts to keep the egos in check, not just with the superstars but with the role players that need to understand their role and buy into it.

Said Rojas: “You see how everybody in this locker room is happy with their role. … It’s not easy to have this kind of environment and camaraderie that we have every single day.”

Rojas, who aspires to manage, said he would like to coach alongside Roberts after he retires.

“When you have a guy like him that is being really successful at his job, you want to learn as much as possible,” Rojas said, “and hopefully I can be right next to him at some point, because I think I would love to keep helping him being the great manager that he is, as long as he wants.

“I want him to be successful, I want him to go to the Hall of Fame, and hopefully I can help him at some point, more than what I’m doing right now.”

There is a more immediate matter. Rojas would like to win his third championship, and help Roberts win his fourth.

“Hopefully, we win another championship, and the last two years have been great,” Rojas said. “But at the end of the day, it’s about the environment that we have in this clubhouse, and that’s what separates Doc from the rest of the managers that I’ve had.”

Shohei Ohtani will start Friday, not Wednesday

The Dodgers scratched Shohei Ohtani from his scheduled Wednesday start against the Athletics, in a move that all but ensures he will not pitch in the All-Star Game.

The Dodgers delayed Ohtani’s start until Friday. The team plans a bullpen game Wednesday, with Roki Sasaki expected to start Thursday’s opener of a four-game series against the San Diego Padres and Ohtani lined up to follow the next day.

Roberts said the move did not reflect any health concerns. Ohtani was in Tuesday’s lineup at designated hitter, and Roberts said he would DH on Wednesday as well.

Instead, Roberts said, the move affords Ohtani extra rest and two starts against the teams closest to the Dodgers in the National League West standings, the Padres this weekend and the Arizona Diamondbacks the following weekend, rather than making his last two starts before the All-Star break against the A’s and Colorado Rockies. Ohtani would still available when the Dodgers resume play after the All-Star break against the New York Yankees.

“There’s just no downside,” Roberts said. “This just made too much sense.”

However, by starting on the weekend before the All-Star Game, Ohtani would no longer be lined up to pitch in the game. Roberts previously had said that Ohtani, already elected as the NL designated hitter, would not pitch in the game unless he were the starting pitcher, as it would be impractical for Ohtani to warm up during a game in which he was the DH.

The top candidates to start for the NL: Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers, the major league leader with a 1.45 earned-run average, and Cristopher Sanchez (9-3, 2.13) of the host Philadelphia Phillies.

Ohtani would have been starting Wednesday on his usual six days’ rest. However, with the Dodgers on a run of 13 consecutive games without an off day, Roberts said pushing Ohtani back would allow the Dodgers to better manage his workload.

He is 8-2 with a 1.58 earned-run average this season. Among NL pitchers with at least 70 innings, his ERA is bettered only by Misiorowski.

Ohtani already has pitched 79 2/3 innings this season, his most in three years. He spent all of the 2024 season and the first half of the 2025 season rehabilitating from elbow surgery.

For all that Ohtani has accomplished and will accomplish during his career, he might have missed out on his one chance to pitch in Sacramento. This series marks the Dodgers’ lone scheduled visit during the A’s three-year stay here. The A’s plan to move into a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028, the next time the teams are scheduled to face off.

_____

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.