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By Jon Weisman
With the official release of Brian Wilson today, preceded by recent acquisition Ryan Lavarnway being claimed on waivers by the Cubs and Kyle (that’s Kyle) Jensen being designated for assignment, the Dodger 40-man roster is back at, well, 40. But it’s not your slightly older sibling’s 40.
Let’s catch up on who’s new:
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By Jon Weisman
Not that it means anything, but the Dodgers are winners of a kind.
Twice a year, in a forward-looking gaze, ESPN.com ranks all 30 Major League teams “in an attempt to measure how well each team is set up for sustained success over the next five years.” In the newest rankings, the Dodgers are No. 1.
It’s a nice reflection of the building strength of the organization and a reminder that, despite the disappointment of the past month, that all is not lost. But it’s admittedly an ephemeral honor.
After all, when ESPN.com debuted its Future Power Rankings in February 2012, the Dodgers were saddled with the 19th spot, so the site wasn’t exactly effective in predicting how the Dodgers would perform over the next three seasons, let alone five. In fact, even that unimpressive ranking was called “a leap of faith,” despite the promise of an impending ownership change.
At the time, under the Dodger Thoughts headline “Changes in MLB come too fast for long-term predictions,” I called the whole thing “folly” …
By Jon Weisman
With the MLB playoffs comes the national spotlight for the Dodgers. With the national spotlight comes the attempts to tell the story of the Dodgers by those who only have a passing acquaintance to them, to those who only have a passing acquaintance with them.
So for the benefit of baseball’s fans and media galaxy-wide, here are three storylines that are sure to be shared about the 2014 Dodgers — and the reasons why they are largely bogus.
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By Jon Weisman
At their peak this season, the Dodgers led the Giants in the National League West by 5 1/2 games, on August 12. Five days later, that lead was down to 2 1/2 games after a three-game sweep by Milwaukee, and for some, the roof was caving in.
Ten days later, the lead was back up to 4 1/2 games.
Now, the Dodgers’ lead in the NL West is down to two games, and again, some look up at the ceiling and find it’s hanging a bit low. Maybe this time they’ll be right; maybe it’ll continue to drop and drop until it collapses all around us.
But there isn’t a team in baseball that doesn’t have a house that needs retrofitting from time to time.
And then, of course, are the San Francisco Giants, who the national media handed the NL West title to before summer had started. On June 8, they were 42-21. Then on August 25, 27 wins and 41 losses later, they were 69-62.
They win eight straight games, still trail the Dodgers, and now they’re invincible? I’m not quite convinced.
Look, I know that rushing to judgment is irresistible. You see it all the time – people will give up on a game after a bad two innings, so why wouldn’t they give up on a season after a bad couple of losses? The Dodgers trailed the Diamondbacks by 9 1/2 games last year and rallied – that didn’t stop any number of folks from deciding this season was over two months ago. The Dodgers trailed the Nationals in the seventh on Monday, 6-2, then were one Joc Pederson foul ball away from a magical comeback.
I’ve never really known what you gain from the absolute pessimism – it’s one thing to lower expectations, another to eliminate them entirely. But clearly, it’s a thing.
All I can say is this: Baseball is an inherently streaky game, so much so that the 2014 Dodgers’ lack thereof (one winning streak longer than three games, no losing streaks longer) stands out as a true oddity. Los Angeles is 7-8 in its past 15 games, which as lowpoints go, is pretty good.
Over the past week, no doubt, the Giants have been better than the Dodgers. Over the coming weeks, who knows? Enjoy the pennant race.
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All Wet
The Dodgers might well have caught a break Tuesday from the Wrigley Field grounds crew, whose struggle to effectively put down a tarp during a 10-minute rainstorm left the field unplayable, causing the Giants’ game against the Cubs to end after 4 1/2 innings in a 2-0 loss. There is talk of a protest, but at least for now, San Francisco fell to 4 1/2 games behind Los Angeles in the National League West.
By Jon Weisman
Teams don’t win or lose, organizations do.
Maybe that’s just a matter of semantics, but the point is, every aspect of your organization, top to bottom, plays a role in the fortunes of the team. And sometimes, you need the bottom to carry the top. Or, depending on your point of view, the middle.
That’s what the Dodgers face right now, given the possibility that Zack Greinke will become the fifth Dodger starting pitcher sidelined for at least the short term, following Chad Billingsley, Josh Beckett, Paul Maholm and Hyun-Jin Ryu.
And yes, I think it’s important to include Billingsley in these lists, because when the season began, he was considered likely to be in the rotation in the second half of 2014, certainly more likely than Beckett or Maholm.
Here’s the latest on Greinke from Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
Greinke is only a “possibility” to make his scheduled start on Thursday, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said after Tuesday night’s 8-6 win over the Padres.
Greinke has been dealing with a tender elbow for the past three weeks, bypassing regular bullpen sessions to throw on flat ground, which puts less of a strain on the arm.
Mattingly would not elaborate on Greinke’s condition or who might replace him, although the Dodgers have few options besides rookie Carlos Frias, who pitched four innings in relief of Dan Haren on Sunday. …
If Greinke misses a start, that would mean each of the Dodgers’ six primary starting pitchers this season has missed at least one turn in the rotation, although Haren’s was outwardly labeled a rest stop.
And so the Dodgers have needed to step up in other places. They’ve made trades to bring in Kevin Correia (who was rocked for three runs before retiring a batter Tuesday, then held San Diego to one run over his next 19 batters) and Roberto Hernandez. They called up Stephen Fife and Red Patterson early in the season and now perhaps will use Frias as a starter as well.
About the only thing that hasn’t happened yet is a sustained turn in the rotation from a minor-leaguer, in part because someone like 2011 first-round pick Zach Lee, who turns 23 next month, hasn’t come on the fast track. Not that he’s been slow. Lee had made midseason leaps to the next level in 2011 (high school to Single-A Great Lakes) and 2012 (High-A Rancho Cucamonga to Double-A Chattanooga) before spending full seasons at Chattanooga in 2013 and, up to now, Triple-A Albuquerque in 2014.
Lee has struggled somewhat predictably in his first Pacific Coast League season (a league Clayton Kershaw bypassed on his way up). It would be nice to see the Dodgers get a youthful infusion in their rotation, but the timing might not be right for Lee. Maybe it will be the 24-year-old Frias, who retired the final 12 batters he faced in long relief Sunday after allowing a solo home run.
Happiest of all would be if Greinke wakes up healthy this morning or the next. But if someone takes Greinke’s turn Thursday, that pitcher will be the Dodgers’ No. 11 or No. 12 starter this season. You’re not expecting someone like that to dominate; you’re hoping he keeps you in the game enough for your offense to step up, as it did Tuesday, behind Carl Crawford’s three singles, walk and home run and the pairs of doubles from both Matt Kemp and Justin Turner. One player acquired by trade, one player acquired through the draft, one player a savvy pickup by the front office from the discard pile. Because, like we said, you win or lose with your entire organization.
For photo highlights from Sunday, visit LA Photog Blog.
By Jon Weisman
The most challenging part of the Dodger season is over — on paper.
In reality, every day is its own special challenge.
Los Angeles came out of the All-Star Break having to play 29 games in 31 days, 18 of them on the road, 26 of them against winning teams. That’s a hell of a tough run, and despite the weekend sweep by Milwaukee, the team went 16-13 (.551), an 89-win pace over a 162-game season against some of the best baseball had to offer.
At least in the short term, the Dodgers’ performance did little to support the idea home games are more valuable than road games (Los Angeles is a .500 team at home but has baseball’s best road record, 40-26, and went 11-7 on the road against the above-.500 opponents), or that strength of schedule affects performance.
Against the team that now has the best record in baseball, the Angels, the Dodgers won three out of four. Los Angeles performed its worst against teams that are now No. 1 in the National League (the Brewers) and No. 14 (the Cubs, who beat the Dodgers two out of three.)
By Jon Weisman
In dropping their final two games at Pittsburgh while the Giants were scoring in the 14th inning Tuesday and the ninth inning Wednesday to defeat the Phillies, the Dodgers have fallen two games behind in the National League West standings. That figure will be 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 games after San Francisco plays a final game today at Philadelphia (and against Cole Hamels) beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific.
For the time being, this is the farthest back the Dodgers have been since June 27. Since going 16-6 to gain 10 games on the Giants between June 8-30 and move into first place in the division, the Dodgers are 8-10 in July.
Nevertheless, the Dodgers’ pitching is lined up about as well you could imagine for their three-game series at San Francisco that begins Friday, with Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu taking the mound and relievers Kenley Jansen and J.P. Howell off since Monday.
On top of everything else, the Giants will arrive in San Francisco well after the Dodgers have gotten there.
Greinke is scheduled to face Tim Lincecum, who picked up his first career save Tuesday and has been on a roll since throwing his second career no-hitter June 25. Lincecum has an ERA of 0.95 in his past 38 innings with 31 strikeouts against 28 baserunners. The batting average on balls in play against Lincecum during that time, however, is .140.
Saturday figures to pit Kershaw against Ryan Voglesong, who has a 3.99 ERA after allowing 11 hits to the 22 batters he faced in an abbreviated start Monday at Philadelphia — a game the Giants ended up winning, 7-4.
Sunday’s scheduled pitchers are Ryu and Yusmeiro Petit, who has mostly pitched in relief and would be making his seventh start of the season. Petit has a 6.32 ERA as a starter this season after allowing five runs in five innings at the top of Tuesday’s 14-inning game, his first start since May 31. Petit was replacing Matt Cain, who went on the disabled list Monday.
Madison Bumgarner and Tim Hudson, the Giants’ two best starting pitchers this season, will have pitched Wednesday and today and therefore should miss the Dodgers. Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles has a nice preview of the upcoming series.
By Jon Weisman
The Los Angeles Kings, the darlings of the city and a sports league right now, played at our fair Dodger Stadium on January 25 and, despite no small amount of pomp and electricity surrounding them, more or less stunk it up. They were shut out, 3-0. It was the Kings’ fifth straight loss, midway through a stretch when they would lose nine out of 10.
If you ignored the NHL’s scoring system for overtime losses and looked strictly at won-lost records, the potential Stanley Cup champions were 30-28 four months ago.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, darlings of no one right now, were 30-28 four days ago.
With many more games to play.
1) The Dodgers did not start a throwaway lineup Friday. Behind the best pitcher in baseball, they started five regulars.
• Hanley Ramirez sat because of an injury.
• Carl Crawford sat for any or all of three reasons: He had a .569 OPS this season against lefties and a .596 OPS in September, along with a season-long need for rest.
• Adrian Gonzalez is the only name that seemed out of place on the bench, but given that he is also left-handed and Madison Bumgarner was on the mound, you could understand.
2) Before the game Friday, I described the scenario of “a game that was essentially a tossup deciding whether or not Dodger fans would be elated or deflated.” That’s what Friday’s game was.
After Juan Uribe’s two-run homer broke a scoreless tie and Andre Ethier was hit by a pitch with two out, Giants leftfielder Juan Perez made one of the best catches I’ve seen all year (against A.J. Ellis) to rob the Dodgers of a third run and the chance for more.
Moments later, in the following inning, San Francisco scored three runs on four hits against Clayton Kershaw, the last two runs coming on a dink single by Brett Pill. An error by backup leftfielder Scott Van Slyke, fielding the previous hit, didn’t help matters.
Carl Crawford might have made the play that Van Slyke didn’t, and as a result, maybe the Dodgers wouldn’t have lost Friday’s game. On the other hand, Crawford also grounded into a double play as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the eighth inning, right before Ethier doubled.
Most nights since June 22, the Dodgers have cashed in more opportunities than their opponents. On this night, the opposite happened. This is the tightrope we walk.
3) Ramirez is hurt, and it might not be a simple injury – it’s an irritated nerve in his back. Matt Kemp has played 8 1/2 innings since July 5. Though a .210 batting average on balls in play isn’t helping, starting catcher Ellis, with a .281 on-base percentage and .263 slugging since July 24, might be worn down. And now Andre Ethier has a shaky ankle.
Talk all you want about lineups and momentum, but this is the only issue for Dodger fans to worry about as they head toward the playoffs. Will they be at full strength?
* * *
Some fans will look at late-season losses by a playoff-bound team like a leaky gas tank, the idea being that the losses themselves weaken the team. They are not discrete events, but rather events that have impact on the future. Momentum is something that needs to be actively protected, or it will dissipate into the universe like helium from a balloon.
Either that, or the losses reflect a team that has stopped caring about winning, and that apathy is a disease that will carry into the postseason, when you can’t afford it to.
Do either of those scenarios really make sense? Or does it make more sense that the next game is a new game, and the same hunger and talent that fueled a historic midseason run won’t have evaporated just when you need it the most?
It is plausible that the Dodgers are tired. It is evident they are not 100 percent healthy. The best way to deal for Don Mattingly to deal with both those issues is not to overplay his hand. Yes, losing doesn’t feel good, and having a higher playoff seeding could be great. I’m still hoping the team wins 100 games, though they now need to go 14-1 to do it. But we should all agree that it’s not worth wearing down the active roster further if it will weaken the team in the playoffs.
A manager in this situation finds the best possible balance between giving players the rest they need and keeping the fires burning. Some days, it’s debatable how best to find that balance, and if things go wrong for Los Angeles next month, countless among us will look to September for the seeds of self-destruction.
But can you really identify a better strategy right now than:
• Giving injured players time to heal.
• Giving healthy players an occasional rest, and giving bench players an occasional start to keep them fresh.
• Continuing to push those on the field to make the best effort on the field to win.
Any student of 1988 knows that the Dodgers needed their bench to win that World Series. The same was true in 1981. If a championship is the goal in 2013, there are three things you need to do – amass your talent, avoid injuries as much as possible, and be as prepared as you can be to overcome them when they arrive. This is the Dodgers’ challenge, and it’s not an easy one.
The joy in this Dodger summer is not just in the winning, or being in first place.
It’s that the Dodger summer is about the game.
Three years ago, two years ago, the Dodger universe was mired in L’Affaire McCourt. Even last year, in the months following the ownership change, there was still a detox period.
This year, good or bad, the conversation has been about the game. The worst it has gotten was the debate over the fate of Don Mattingly in the spring (here and here, for example) — a debate that clearly wasn’t a figment of our imagination. There’s been all the injuries, carping out this player’s performance or that one’s. But it’s all about the game.
Meanwhile, baseball at large is enveloped in a conversation about performance-enhancing drugs and punishments that Los Angeles is not really a principal part of. It’s not that Dodger fans don’t have a tangential interest in it, just as it wasn’t that baseball fans didn’t have a tangential interest in the McCourt trauma.
But mainly, we get to go our merry way, winning and losing, living and dying with our team, the way we were meant to, the way we were deprived of from the moment Frank and Jamie figured out they couldn’t make it work.
Of course, the more it remains about winning and not losing, the better.
So when the Dodgers were losing game after game for two solid months, why didn’t the team blow up into 25 selfish fireballs like everyone said they would?
Before going 21-5 in their past 26 games, the Dodgers were 30-42. In reality, it was even worse than that. Los Angeles started its season 6-3, then went 24-39, a .381 winning percentage that placed them among the worst teams in baseball.
Through that entire stretch, there were only two off-field issues of any note at all, and each of the people involved handled them gracefully.
Don Mattingly became the subject of daily rumors of his impending firing. Mattingly didn’t lash out, but kept his focus on the task at hand.
Mattingly did say the following on May 22:
“We’re last place in the National League West. Last year, at this point, we’re playing a lineup that basically has nobody in it, that fights and competes and battles you every day for every inch of the field. We talk about it as an organization. We’ve got to find the club with talent that will fight and compete like the club that doesn’t have that talent. If there’s going to be a message sent, it’s going to be over a period of time.”
Though Mattingly was speaking about the entire squad, Andre Ethier was benched the day Mattingly made these statements, something few people thought was a coincidence — including Ethier, who was clearly hurt by the comments.
Whatever negative reaction Ethier might have had after that day, however, he kept in the clubhouse, without pouting or making a stink in the press. And in the past two months, Mattingly has singled Ethier out for praise for his efforts.
And that’s it. No tabloid stories have come out of the Dodger clubhouse. No tales of infighting or finger-pointing. Beset by injuries and slumping players, the losses kept piling up — June began with an 8-14 record — and everyone had every reason to be frustrated. But no one, not even the so-called troublemakers from outside (Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford or Josh Beckett) caused trouble. Yasiel Puig has ruffled feathers, but those angry birds are opponents, not teammates, unless you call statesman Juan Uribe’s reactive counseling a conflict.
Maybe the Dodgers have just become experts at running an airtight clubhouse, but I doubt they’re that competent. More likely, the minor stuff has been settled in-house, but the major conflicts just haven’t happened.
I’m not crediting chemistry for the turnaround. It seems clear that improved health, solid pitching and a red-hot Ramirez have been the keys.
But I do think it’s worth noting that the narrative of the Dodgers as a chemistry-challenged team was severely tested this spring. And like so many other invented tales, it was found false.
Previously on Dodger Thoughts:
March 31: The Giants’ 2012 title: Dealmaking trumps chemistry
How low can they go?
The Dodgers’ current .417 winning percentage would be their worst over a full season since 1992, their second-worst since 1944.
Though it’s possible I’m just repressing it, I can’t recall ever expecting a Dodger team to be bad. There have been plenty of times when I wouldn’t have predicted them to win a title, and I was sufficiently skeptical this year, but a truly terrible record always takes me by surprise. That’s one difference I think Dodger fans – even cynical ones – have with fans in Pittsburgh or Kansas City. If you’re predicting horror in a given year, you’re probably in the minority.
The Dodgers won 86 games last year and didn’t hurt themselves in the offseason. Sure, there were weaknesses headed into 2013, but here are the 10 most prominent players the Dodgers shed from 2012: James Loney, Shane Victorino, Juan Rivera, Bobby Abreu, Matt Treanor, Adam Kennedy, Joe Blanton, Nathan Eovaldi, Jamey Wright and Josh Lindblom. Be honest: How could you have expected those departures would put the Dodgers on their current 68-win pace?
That’s right: 68-94.
Here’s one for you: Forget about the playoffs for a moment. Forget about .500. The Dodgers need to play .450 ball over their remaining 90 games to reach 70 wins. Will they do it?
Yes, there have been injuries – Chad Billingsley and Matt Kemp most prominently – but nearly every year has injuries. Team chemistry? The manager? People raise those red flags every time the Dodgers start losing, but are we to believe that this team really has the worst set of intangibles in two decades? You thought the Davey Johnson-Gary Sheffield-Kevin Brown teams were doing a revival of Hair? That Jim Tracy and Paul DePodesta were Romeo and Juliet?
Mediocrity comes with the territory in the post-1988 era. But true awfulness has been a rare thing.
With apologies to the 99-loss season in 1992, the worst stretch of Dodger baseball in my lifetime has probably been 1986-87. That’s the only time since the 1960s that the Dodgers have had back-to-back losing seasons – identical 73-89 campaigns. I know how it began: Pedro Guerrero’s gruesome Spring Training slide into third base – but my memories of 1987, beyond the implosion of Al Campanis, are almost non-existent. Guerrero came back with a vengeance (.416 on-base percentage, .539 slugging), and Orel Hershiser and Bob Welch was steady, but the rest of the team was essentially as incompetent as this year’s.
The core of that awful team won a division title in 1985 and a World Series in 1988. Tommy Lasorda managed every year.
I don’t know when the losing is going to end for this current brand of Big Blue Wrecked Crew. I do know that in Los Angeles, things tend to reverse course in a hurry, good to bad, bad to good. We’ve really seen it all in the past 25 years – all except for a World Series.
Perhaps it will come in a year when we least expect it.
1) A.J. Ellis worked his way from fringe prospect to one of the top catchers in the National League, and hasn’t let up at all.
2) Adrian Gonzalez, rather than mailing it in, has gone all-out to carry the Dodgers, even with neck issues.
3) Carl Crawford, probably not 100 percent but essentially the same story as Gonzalez.
4) Nick Punto, scrappy like a cliche, but the cliche fits. The Boston guys are not the problem.
5) Mark Ellis takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
6) Matt Kemp is clearly trying. His struggle is lost mechanics and lost strength, due to his labrum injury. It is not an issue of effort.
7) Luis Cruz can be accused of a lot of things, but not going through the motions. He is a grinder.
8 ) Scott Van Slyke, cast off by the Dodgers only months ago, took it upon himself to take it to another level and resurrect his career.
9) Hanley Ramirez’s biggest sin this year — wanting to play as much baseball as he can, regardless of what his body says.
10) Justin Sellers will literally run through a wall for you.
11) Zack Greinke will literally put a rod through his shoulders for you.
12) Kenley Jansen will literally put his heart on the line for you.
13) The Dodgers would have been happy to pay Ted Lilly to camp out on the disabled list, and Lilly repeatedly refused.
14) Chad Billingsley wanted to pitch through a tendon injury rather than take the year off.
15) Chris Capuano, no prima donna, will take any role you give him and take no offense.
16) Jerry Hairston never met a position he won’t play.
17) Andre Ethier is a pit bull. Don’t know what’s going on between him and Don Mattingly, but he is not taking things lying down. He may be still figuring out how to channel his will to succeed.
18) Matt Magill, Stephen Fife, Shawn Tolleson, Tim Federowicz, etc., etc. – all they want to do is contribute.
19) Hyun-Jin Ryu embraces the challenges of new kid on the continent.
20) Clayton Edward Kershaw.
I could have come up with more examples if I allowed myself more time. But I kept a strict timer on drafting this. Five minutes to write it, five minutes to edit.
There might well be a talent deficit on the Dodgers, especially with injuries and players like Kemp and Ethier struggling to find themselves. But the narrative of the Dodgers failing because they’re a team of all-ego individualists is a false narrative.
Update: Holy cow, I forgot Uribear, reinventing his career.
* * *
Joe Blanton starts for the Angels tonight against the Dodgers. Last time he pitched in Dodger Stadium, on September 29, Blanton threw six shutout innings and Kemp hit two home runs. So you know what to expect.
Carl Crawford, LF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Andre Ethier, RF
Matt Kemp, CF
A.J. Ellis, C
Juan Uribe, 3B
Luis Cruz, SS
Hyun-Jin Ryu, P
Sure, OK, we can start with the bullpen. It’s hardly the only thing going on with the Dodgers, but it’s something. Oh yes, it’s something.
You need good relief to win, but you can’t plan for good relief.
This comes up every year, so it’s tedious to point out, but it doesn’t seem to go without saying.
I’m going to ask take my years-old research into this on faith; whether you choose to do so is up to you. But what you find is that there is virtually no consistency year-to-year among relief pitchers. The best might give you two or three consecutive good years. The very best.
The reasons for this should be clear. You don’t become a reliever unless you are flawed in some way that prevents you from being a starter. That obviously doesn’t mean you can’t be a fantastic reliever in a given year, but for the most part, relievers are pitchers who aren’t designed to be great over the long haul. They typically have a limited number of pitches, which leaves them vulnerable to being figured out over time. The good ones end up getting overworked, or maybe they were never that good in the first place, instead merely a triumph of small sample size. We could go on, but let’s sum it up this way: Mariano Rivera is not reality.
The 2003 Dodger bullpen was incredible. It was also, in many significant ways, an accident.
Staffing a bullpen has always, fascinatingly, been Ned Colletti’s simultaneous strength and weakness. Colletti has had a knack for finding capable non-roster talent (Takashi Saito, Ronald Belisario) over the same years that he has invested multiyear deals in such inconsistent arms as Matt Guerrier and Brandon League. There is no correlation in the Colletti tenure between salary and performance, yet the expensive signings continue.
The point is that you can never feel good about your bullpen entering a season – never. I really believe that. You can’t feel anything at all. The best thing you can do is assemble a number of arms before Spring Training, a combination of youth and experience and promise and reclamation, and then hope for the best.
The peril of having someone with a long-term contract is that you feel obligated to keep him past the point of effectiveness. That’s the boat the Dodgers are in with League and Guerrier, even with a new ownership that doesn’t much worry about player salaries these days.
The Dodger bullpen is leaky through and through. Almost nothing is working right now. Just as you were gaining supreme confidence in Paco Rodriguez and Kenley Jansen, they found growing pains that left them struggling like the more experienced J.P Howell, League, Guerrier and, if you will, Belisario and Javy Guerra.
Fans tend to have unreasonable expectations of bullpens – you see outrage anytime any relief pitcher gives up a run, let alone a lead. I’m not sure where fans get the idea that every reliever on their team should have a 0.00 ERA, but there it is. Every Dodger relief pitcher since the heyday of Eric Gagne and Saito has been attacked for his failings, however momentary, however good that pitcher has been overall. So when a bullpen is collectively struggling as much as the Dodger bullpen is, it’s frogs and locusts time.
Don Mattingly’s instinct has been correct in general to try to play matchups with his relievers. You can debate the specifics of all his choices – I don’t agree with them all – but the bottom line is, there’s little he can do when no one is reliable.
Mattingly’s bullpen Sunday faced 18 batters and got nine outs. When Jansen entered Saturday’s game in relief of Chris Capuano, he had thrown only 21 pitches in his previous 72 hours. Capuano had pitched well that night, but he was past the 90-pitch mark and going on a balky calf.
But when things are bad, things are bad.
Tim Federowicz is not a martyr.
This morning brought the news that Tim Federowicz, and not Luis Cruz or Ramon Hernandez, had been displaced from the active roster to make room for the return of Mark Ellis from the disabled list. Federowicz is more valuable than Cruz or Hernandez, but the hysteria this caused was rather remarkable.
When I called out this freakout on Twitter, several people lectured me, as if I didn’t know, that it wasn’t just about Federowicz, but that it was symptomatic of the Colletti Dodgers’ larger mismanagement in general or obsession with experience over youth in particular. As if I needed to be told that Colletti values experience, sometimes to the franchise’s detriment.
I’ve spent a lot of time on how to phrase this next section, because I don’t want to give the impression that you shouldn’t try to maximize every advantage you can. Federowicz can’t help the Dodgers that much right now, but sure, I’d rather see him get five at-bats a week over Hernandez, because an on-base percentage over .500 in Albuquerque and above-average defense suggest a better skill set than Hernandez currently offers. Scott Van Slyke’s callup was overdue, not because he was guaranteed to hit two homers in a game, but because he was on a hot streak in the minors that made it clear there was no better time to try him out.
But just as there is with the bullpen, there’s a level of knee-jerk fan reaction with the bench that is out of proportion. When a player is a single game away from having better stats than his competition, as Hernandez is compared with Federowicz (3 for 17 with one walk and no extra-base hits as a major-leaguer in 2013), and neither is projected to be a starter, and the alternatives to Hernandez as backup if A.J. Ellis gets hurt are Jesus Flores, Matt Wallach and Gorman Erickson, the uproar should not be Defcon Anything.
Yeah, Cruz stinks right now, and no one in their right mind would keep him over Juan Uribe – just like no one in their right mind would have argued to keep Uribe over Cruz last summer.
See what I’m getting at?
If you’re not frustrated with the Dodgers right now, you’re either not a Dodger fan or very zen. You’re not wrong if you’re unhappy with Federowicz’s demotion. But if you’re angry over Federowicz being sent down, you’re overreacting. It’s not symptomatic of the Dodgers’ larger problems. You’re not going to plug in Federowicz, Yasiel Puig, Joc Pederson and Alex Castellanos into the Dodger bench and as a result see things turn around.
And May 19 is too soon to give up, if only because of one person.
Matt Kemp.
Until Kemp starts hitting, nothing is going to happen with this team. Nothing. The Dodgers cannot win without his bat. And again, it’s not something anger will solve. The effort is there – if anything, he’s trying too hard to get things going. But it is up to Kemp.
It would help if Andre Ethier hit more, but the difference between what Ethier is doing compared to what is expected of him is not what it is with Kemp.
I’m sure Kemp has had all the advice in the world, from Mattingly, Mark McGwire and any number of coaches or people he meets on the street. But no one else can synthesize the good from the bad and put it into action.
You can start firing managers or coaches or trainers. Kemp still needs to hit.
The bullpen can start putting out fires. Kemp still needs to hit.
The defense can stop making two errors a game. Kemp still needs to hit.
But what if he does?
Let me tell you one more thing. I would love to give up on the 2013 Dodgers. It will be a relief if and when I can. I spent part of my Sunday writing this 1,500-word piece that probably isn’t worth a damn, especially for a team barely winning 40 percent of its games.
And the season might be over, except for this. For all their problems, Los Angeles is still somehow only seven games out of first place. The Giants, in case you haven’t noticed, have their own cauldron of concerns. And Arizona and Colorado … I just don’t know. I can’t see them not hitting their own skid. I can’t see it.
The National League West looks like an 85-win division. That’s still within the Dodgers’ abilities.
The team gets healthier. The bullpen stops being a disaster. Matt Kemp starts to hit. And then …
Honestly, that’s as far as I can go. The team does look awful right now. It looks nothing like a winning team. It’s creaky and crumbly. Race to the bottom or race to the top – I truly can’t decide.
Hope to see as many of you as possible as I sign copies of “100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” at Barnes & Noble on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, beginning at 2 p.m. The revised version of is on sale now.
The new edition of “100 Things Dodgers” features several new chapters (including Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw) and other tidbits, as well as new information for some existing chapters. I’m looking forward to meeting readers, taking questions and talking Dodgers.
Oh yes, the Dodgers. To describe the state of things, let’s just say that I put out this tweet mid-game Friday, before Hanley Ramirez took himself out of action with the team’s latest injury.
Thought: It will be very touching when 100-year-old Clayton Kershaw is introduced at 2088’s centennial celebration of Dodgers’ last title.
— Jon Weisman (@jonweisman) May 4, 2013
The score was 0-0, and Kershaw was working on a perfect game at the time. And yet, the sport was feeling like such a struggle for this team, part of a quarter-century of constantly battling uphill while other teams flit from last to first like it was nothing, that I allowed the fatigued pessimist in me a bit of breathing room.
And then Ramirez flamed out running from second to third. I didn’t see the play until after the game, but from the tweets I saw beforehand, it sounded as if Ramirez had no business trying to go from first to third. Then I saw the replay, and these things were clear: Even after slowing down to a near jog haflway between second and third because of the injury, the throw from right field didn’t arrive at third base until Ramirez was beginning his slide. He clearly would have made it if he hadn’t gotten hurt – I watched the replay a dozen times and saw each time that his choice to go for the extra base even with none out was sound.
It was small consolation, that Ramirez’s injury came in an effort valiant, not dubious. Kershaw lost the perfect game, the no-hitter, the shutout and the one-run lead that he mainly provided with his bat. The Dodgers lost the game, painfully if un-unexpectedly, in the bottom of the ninth. Ramirez will be out again, likely for weeks, and even after Adrian Gonzalez’s neck self-corrects and Mark Ellis works his way back from his quad injury, the left side of the Dodger infield will still be Scrappy Central, emphasis on Scrap.
The injuries are exhausting. There’s no use feeling sorry for yourself in this world, but you sort of feel that, after watching 20-odd teams make the World Series in the past 24 years and enduring the Fox and McCourt ownerships, we’d catch a break from the suffering. But this season has been Sisyphusian.
If you aren’t packing up your boulder and going home, all you can do is keep pushing. Let’s rally in Pasadena today!
What happens when three old friends in crisis fall into an unexpected love triangle? In The Catch, Maya, Henry and Daniel embark upon an emotional journey that forces them to confront unresolved pain, present-day traumas and powerful desires, leading them to question the very meaning of love and fulfillment. The Catch tells a tale of ordinary people seeking the extraordinary – or, if that’s asking too much, some damn peace of mind.
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