GLENDALE, Ariz. – The longest tenured position player on the Dodgers’ roster prefers to keep his head down while focusing on the daily grind, even as the potential end of an era looms.
Austin Barnes is as decorated as anybody on the current roster when it comes to team accomplishments, with two World Series rings and four appearances in the Fall Classic.
The SoCal kid on the hometown team has 10 seasons of major league experience, with over 8 1/2 years of official service time, and every one of his previous seasons has ended in the postseason. Barnes has 44 games of playoff experience, 17 of which have come in World Series games.
He even caught the final strike of the 2020 World Series, flipping his catcher’s mask in the air before jamming the baseball in his back pocket to later present as a keepsake.
“There’s not many guys playing today that have caught the last out of a World Series game and that have been a part of an organization for so long,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think he understands the fabric of and culture of our club. He’s one of the glue guys, he really is.
“Guys respect him, and he does whatever we need from him. He’s one of the guys I count on for consistency and messaging and also performance.”
The Riverside native could be gone by now, but the front office would not have it. Barnes signed a two-year contract extension midway through the 2022 season that paid him through 2024. Yet he is still here, in 2025, occupying his familiar corner locker in the Camelback Ranch clubhouse.
In a week to remember this past fall, Barnes celebrated the Dodgers’ World Series title in New York, rode atop a bus through downtown Los Angeles amid 250,000 revelers two days later in the championship parade, and waited just three days more to learn that the club was picking up his $3.5 million option for 2025.
After a series of life-changing events, he refuses to make a big deal about any of them.
“You know, I don’t really like to look too far…
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