Dodgers Have One of the Easiest Schedules in Baseball
You know the old saying: The Rich Get Richer. That certainly appears to be the case for the Dodgers with their 2020 schedule.
The popular baseball analytics website FanGraphs released their ZiPS projections, factoring in the strength of schedule for players in a shortened 60-game season. The Dodgers ended up with the fourth weakest strength of schedule in all of baseball, meaning they shouldn’t have a difficult time in 2020.
Looking within their division, the Rockies and Giants have the fifth and fourth most difficult schedule. This can mostly be attributed to the fact that both of those teams have to play the Dodgers at least ten times. The Diamondbacks fall somewhere around the middle of the pack, for reasons that aren’t really clear.
All of this to say, the Dodgers “probably” won’t have much difficulty getting back to the playoffs in this shortened season. Adding Mookie Betts and David Price more than makes up for the losses of guys like Rich Hill, Hyun-jin Ryu, and Alex Verdugo.
Vegas odds have the Dodgers winning close to 38 games while Fangraphs has them finishing at 38 as well. Let’s be honest, in the National League West, it probably won’t be that close.
Dodgers: Kenley Jansen Does Not Want Pitchers Throwing at Astros Hitters
Not so fast…. Stats don’t matter with this run. 1/2 our games are against the Giants, Padres, and DBacks. Teams that absolutely hate us and would make their season to trip us up…. Add the Angels and Asstros to this schedule and we got us a barn burner of a season.
I agree this schedule is actually ridiculously tough when you factor in how much the Dodgers usually struggle early on against lesser rivals. With no time to recover this could be a disaster. The Giants Dbacks Padres Angels and Astros could easily bury us. They need to figure out what those teams are doing to them quicker this year
Let’s not forget that we can never beat the Los Angeles Angels to save our lives.