Examining How Aggressively The Dodgers Need To Address Shortcomings
Ultimately, Mattingly is right. Baseball is (more or less) a series of individual performances grouped together in a team context. Unlike football or basketball, baseball really isn’t a sport where collectively a team can find a rhythm, building synergy as the season goes along.
It’s why in baseball’s playoffs, more than any other sport, almost anything can happen. Building a postseason resume is a long play marathon. The playoffs themselves are the opposite. Obviously team quality matters, but “the best” team doesn’t win in baseball’s postseason in the same way it almost always does in the NBA.
The Dodgers start the second half with a difficult road trip — 10 games spread over Washington, Atlanta, and New York — and for most of a month will have to beat teams at or above .500, something they have rather famously failed at all season.
A bad run could put them in a precarious spot, because while the Dodgers toil against solid squads, the Giants have a pretty friendly schedule coming out of the break. Assuming for the sake of argument they make it through relatively unscathed, though, the Dodgers might face an interesting dilemma.
There are holes to fill. Injuries to Brandon McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu blew a hole in the starting staff behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. Patching it is easier said than done. “When you lose Hyun-Jin and you lose Brandon, you’ve got to replace that. That’s where you’re having trouble, trying to replace two quality starters that give you pretty much consistent outings when they go out there,” Mattingly says.
“That’s something you just don’t (easily) replace. It has a trickle down effect on your club.”
Given how things went last year, would anyone object to a little more help for the bullpen, too? Particularly if they don’t address the rotation? Offensively, “we haven’t scored consistently,” Mattingly says. To say the least, as Bill Plunkett notes in for the OC Register. Those fixes could be expensive, though, and as we’ve learned over and over and over again, deadline acquisitions often have zero impact on a team’s ability to get to or thrive in the playoffs.
Taken at his word, Mattingly believes the blueprint laid out by the Dodgers in constructing the team — pitching bolstered by solid defense and a good-enough offense — still holds.
So how much organizational capital should the Dodgers expend on players they might not need to reach October? Particularly when the results once they get there can rightly be described as a crapshoot?
This is an organization badly wanting to win, and plenty aggressive when it comes to acquiring talent. They’ve also been careful about wasting organizational depth, aren’t prone to trades driven by PR, and have strong opinions about cost/benefit ratios in personnel decisions.
Year 1 of the Andrew Friedman administration has been a revolution for the Dodgers, philosophically. What happens over the next three weeks will continue revealing that world view.
[divide]Brandon Beachy Disappointed By Results
It has been interesting so far. Good and interesting perspective, Brian. Hope you and Andrew are doing well.
Taking the long term approach does not seem to be what the teams making it to the WS do. They go out every day to win every day. The Dodger woes are in every aspect of their game with the exception of the defense which performs every game for the most part. The Dodger offence is mediocre at best and at times very bad. The pitching is not what you see on paper. Kershaw can’t keep the ball down which is why his era is twice what it was. Greinke is stuck with a team that can’t score runs when he is on the mound. The bullpen will give a brilliant preformance then suck for two games. They have NO lead off hitter, well the have Rollins but this is the Rollins of today not yesteryear. Puig has lost something, I do not know if he is bored, hurt or he really is not that talented. Pederson is GREAT, the first Dodger rookie to start an All-Star game, but allot is put on him. Turner turned out to be the best signing the new management has done. They suck at singing pitchers and from what it looks like are more then willing to let Greinke walk away. It should be noted the catching is very good. Now we come to management and coaches. I am NOT a Mattingly fan, I think he is over his head and why has the hitting coach and pitching coach still there? As I have watched Mattingly I believe he cost the team 7 to 10 games a year. He is like Lasorda without the huge ego. He does not seem to have other then so so support of the team. One paper this team should be 1 or 2 in all of baseball. They will probably win the division as that is there only avenue into the Play-Offs, but as the Giants have there number they could loose it all in the last week of the season. IF they make it to the Play-Offs they will no doubt be bounced in the first round and proabaly badly at that. This team does not act like a team that KNOWS it can and WILL win every game when it takes the field. Of course this is baseball and no one wins every game but championship teams do not look at games as ‘musts’ wins, every game is a must win to them.
This team isn’t going to let Greinke walk away. The Kershaw-Greinke combo at the top of the rotation is what gives this club an identity. Given that there isn’t a legitimate third starter on this roster (let alone a legitimate #2 to replace him next season), I can’t imagine them letting him get away. He’s had tremendous success here, and doesn’t seem like the type of guy that is going to uproot and go pitch in Boston on a whim.
With the idiot Ruben Amaro still in Philadelphia, you can probably rule out Cole Hamels, because he’s going to insist on Seager in return, and they wouldn’t trade him for anyone. Cincinnati might be more realistic in their requests for Cueto, who is a free agent anyway, but I’m guessing LA is going to end up with another rotation-filler type for this year and hope for the best.
Well, new genius team in the FO, isn’t proving itself to be as they hoped. Part of picking pitchers, is like buying a good car. You need to pick a name that performs and lasts, not just performs for a while and breaks down.