September 27, 2024

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

The Dodgers won the National League West on Thursday night, Sept. 26. Not in April or March or even February, as they’ve done in the past.

This was not a matter of making sure scorpions didn’t get inside the ball bags in Arizona, or making sure the landing gear was functional on the team plane. This was a pitched battle, and not very well pitched at that. The Dodgers’ starting rotation became a matter of Yoshi and Jack and Turn Your Back. They should have put a diving board after the fifth spot in the batting order at times, so severe was the dropoff.

Yet there they were, coming back from a 2-0 deficit, getting yet another go-ahead hit from Shohei Ohtani, winning 7-2 and wrapping up their 11th N.L. West title in 12 years. And even then, amid the celebration, Freddie Freeman was on crutches and wearing a walking boot, having sprained an ankle.

They will finish up in Colorado over the weekend and then take a week off. That hasn’t always been a reward for teams that earn a bye, but in the Dodgers’ case it might work. Put everyone at the starting line and fire the pistol, and the Dodgers might still be the best team in baseball.

“I don’t know,” manager Dave Roberts said a couple of days ago, when some folks were measuring the pieces of sky that were falling. “I think we’ve had a great year.”

Roberts is finishing his ninth season as the Dodgers’ manager. He took over in 2016 and the Dodgers lost the NLCS to the Cubs, the eventual champs. The Dodgers won 91 games that year, and that earned Roberts his only Manager of the Year award, even though he has won more than 91 games every year since. He has finished lower than first only once, and that was in 2021, when the Dodgers won 106 games and finished a game behind the Giants, whom they ousted in the Division Series. And when it comes to winning percentage for managers, he is fifth all-time, at .626, and no one who has managed past 1948 is better.

Put another way, Roberts is 340 games over .500 even though he’s managed only those nine years, plus one game as San Diego’s interim in 2015. Joe Torre managed 29 years and was 329 games over.

But, yes, Torre won four World Series with the Yankees, and Roberts only has won the one Covid World Series over Tampa Bay in 2020, which followed a 50-game season and was basically a pamphlet in baseball’s library. Some of those stumbles have featured late-inning pitching calls that went haywire, and Roberts has borne the criticism for those, even though some of the same critics dismiss his successes because they think he’s a puppet for general manager Andrew Friedman, and the beneficiary of the Guggenheim Partners’ billions.

In truth, all managers are getting squeezed by analytics experts, to differing degrees, but the main responsibility of the skipper has not changed. You don’t manage decimal points or lineup cards. You manage people, and the Dodgers have as many high-strung people as anyone else in the game, and Roberts has been there longer than any of them except Clayton Kershaw. Before Roberts got there, the Dodger clubhouse was fractious and cliquish. It has gradually become businesslike and harmonious, even though the cast changes annually. Roberts won’t be Manager of the Year this year, either. Pat Murphy of Milwaukee probably will be. But such opinions don’t matter. The bottom line does.

Ohtani came into Roberts’ life this year, and with Freeman and Betts he formed a Production Line that exhausted opposing pitchers after one inning. But Roberts had to overcome management when it came to pitching. The original starting rotation was Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, James Paxton (Ladner, B.C.), Gavin Stone and Bobby Miller. Only Yamamoto will be in the playoff rotation. Glasnow got hurt, to no one’s surprise. Miller was probably the worst pitcher in the league. Paxton ended up with the Red Sox, and Stone, who had been a semi-savior, also got hurt.

The Dodgers frantically got Jack Flaherty from Detroit, and they nurtured Walker Buehler from his Tommy John surgery and got a decent start out of him on Thursday. But they’ll be at a pitching disadvantage against anyone they play in October, at least until the ninth inning, where Michael Kopech is suddenly throwing the hissing strikes he couldn’t throw for the White Sox and Red Sox.

The Dodgers are an incongruous 10th in quality start percentage in the National League, and 9.7 percent of the flyballs they give up become home runs, which is a league high.

Dustin May missed the whole season again, although he had an esophagus injury to go with his elbow and flexor tendon surgeries, and Tony Gonsolin is just now scrambling back with his elbow. Any time a new pitcher landed, like a rescuing cavalry officer, he was thrown off his horse. River Ryan looked like a star before his elbow gave way.

Kyle Hurt had arresting stuff and he had Tommy John, too. Ryan, May, Stone, Gonsolin and Emmet Sheehan are on the 60-day injured list with arm problems. And, of course, the Dodgers long ago thought they’d have Julio Urias and Trevor Bauer in this rotation. Their injuries were given, not received.

Overall the Dodgers used 40 pitchers, and 17 of them started. That will make for a very long playoff-shares meeting, as the Dodgers try to honour the contributions of Ben Casparius, Dinelson Lamet, Michael Petersen and J.P. Feyereisen.

So the Dodgers had to win a lot of 8-5 games. They lead the league in slugging, doubles and walks and are second in runs scored. It’s difficult to remember now, but Mookie Betts began the season at shortstop, then moved to second base when Gavin Lux was struggling, then was out from June 16 to August 12. When he returned, Lux and Miguel Rojas had stabilized the middle infield, and Tommy Edman had come from St. Louis, and put on his centre field cap.

Meanwhile, Teoscar Hernandez provided 31 home runs and 94 RBIs and, for much of the season, was in the middle of as many big rallies as Ohtani was.

Maybe all the hassles will toughen the Dodgers in October. After all, their real problem in all those postseasons was an eerie inability to hit with men in scoring position. And maybe there really is a law of averages, untouched by decimal points or algorithms. Remember that the underdog can be a dangerous beast, particularly when it’s a disguise, not a description.