The Los Angeles Dodgers have a 1-0 series lead in the National League Division Series with the help of Hyun-jin Ryu and Max Muncy. If they end up winning the World Series, they’ll need Ryu and Muncy to lead the way, which is ... not a sentence I expected to type at this time last year. This is a remarkably different Dodgers team from last year. If you don’t look too closely, you might think it’s a much worse Dodgers team.
Be careful with that.
Start with the Hall of Famer, the ace of aces. In his final start of the regular season, Clayton Kershaw allowed five runs in five innings to the San Francisco Giants. On the surface, this isn’t remarkable. Good pitchers allow runs, too. Max Scherzer allowed six runs in four innings against the Braves just two weeks earlier. It didn’t change the perception that Scherzer was a mega-ace, so why should an uncharacteristic start from Kershaw be any different?
Dig deeper, and it gets a little stranger. It was the first time Kershaw had allowed five runs to the Giants ... ever. It was his 44th start against them, and the previous run distributions went like this:
0 runs allowed - 11 starts
1 run allowed - 14 starts
2 runs allowed - 14 starts
3 runs allowed - two starts
4 runs allowed - two starts
Kershaw shutting down the Giants was as reliable as anything in baseball. Still, nothing is as unreliable in baseball as reliability. All we’ve established is that this wacky game can surprise you from game to game.
But the Giants weren’t even the Giants that Kershaw was used to shutting down. They were a decrepit shell of a team, on their way to finishing with the worst second-half OPS in team history, a span that includes the Deadball Era. They could still mess with Kershaw.
And then the news came that the Dodgers are letting Kershaw rest an extra day before he starts Game 2 of the NLDS. It makes sense, but there’s some cognitive dissonance that comes with it, too. Kershaw is the guy who has probably already had a better career than Sandy Koufax, and the Dodgers didn’t open with him? The old postseason plan was to pitch him as much as possible, even if on short rest. Their new plan is to make sure their best pitcher is rested more than he’s ever been in the postseason. It feels equal parts precautionary and strategic, but our cynical eyes keep drifting back to the “precautionary” part because we’ve been hurt by pitchers too many times before.
All of this, combined with Kershaw posting his lowest K/9 and his highest FIP, ERA and ERA+ since 2010, suggests something horrifying: He’s mortal. Still excellent, mind you. Just mortal.
Over the last two seasons, the Dodgers have moved away from the ride-Kershaw-until-he-collapses mentality and focused more on a ride-Kenley-Jansen-until-he-collapses mentality, using their dominant closer for multiple-inning stints. But that Jansen probably won’t be here this postseason. No reliever allowed more home runs than Jansen this year, and he’s allowed more home runs over the last six weeks than he had in any previous full season.
That’s not to say Jansen is a liability. That’s not to say that he’s anything less than filthy and effective. It’s to say that he’s mortal. Which is something of a theme with this year’s Dodgers team.
Corey Seager is hurt. Chris Taylor is a fine hitter, but he isn’t the bat-whipping deity he was last year. The fruits from Cody Bellinger’s all-or-nothing approach are more erratic than last year’s. Manny Machado’s .273/.338/.487 line with the Dodgers is eerily similar to Matt Kemp’s .290/.338/.481 line with them this year. Both are productive. Both come with some measure of disappointment (Machado’s in relation to his numbers with the Orioles and Kemp’s in relation to his first-half numbers.)
The bullpen beyond Jansen isn’t as strong as it has been, and pitchers like Alex Wood, Rich Hill, and Kenta Maeda have been good-not-great, which is a sharp contrast from last year. This isn’t to say that the Dodgers are, to a man, worse than they were last year — Ryu, Muncy, Justin Turner, and Walker Buehler have all been phenomenal — but that there’s a feeling about this team that’s different. The depth is as strong as ever, but the pillars in the middle of the building are showing signs of distress. This might be the most flawed Dodgers team of the last few postseasons.
And my advice to you is to ignore it. It probably doesn’t mean a damned thing.
That’s not just a reference to the glib truism that anything can happen in the postseason, even if that still holds true. Yes, Brian Dozier could hit 10 home runs over the next three weeks, and it wouldn’t necessarily teach us anything new about baseball. It would just be one of those things. Isolated moments of postseason dominance isn’t what I’m talking about, though. It’s the sense that beyond the foundation, beyond the old plan of Kershaw and Jansen and Jansen and Kershaw, there is as much depth on this team as any remaining in the postseason.
I’m no statamatrician, but I’d like to see a stat for something like, “Appearances from someone who probably shouldn’t be there.” That is, both on the pitching and hitting side, times a player is in the game, even though he stresses you out. The postseason is two games old, and we’ve already seen Drew Butera, Terrance Gore, and Jonathan Lucroy hit. Fernando Rodney and Liam Hendriks have faced seven combined batters. These are players who make you say something like, “Uhhhhh” the whole time you’re watching them. It’s not because they’re bad; it’s just that they’re a little bit worse at varying skills than you’re used to.
The Dodgers generally don’t have these players. Joc Pederson never turned into Jim Thome, but he’s still pummeling mistakes. Kemp is struggling since the second half, but he’s still punishing lefties. The rotation might not be as dominant is it has been, but Hyun-jin Ryu has been absolutely outstanding, and everyone behind him is absolutely worthy of a postseason roster spot, if not a postseason starring role.
Look at this roster and think to yourself how many times you expect to say, “I can’t believe this guy is hitting,” or “Wow, this pitcher is terrible.”
Not a lot. Some players are better than others, and Dodgers fans know that if Ryan Madson is pitching in the 15th inning on the road, with the opposing team having a chance to walk off, they’ll be nervous. So it isn’t the perfect roster.
It’s a roster that’s absolutely jam packed with contributors, though. Contributors big, small, tall, wide, and everywhere in between. Here are 25 players who could probably fit on your favorite team in some capacity.
Kershaw is mortal now, yes. Jansen is mortal, as well. Two of the foundational pieces of the last six postseason runs are showing just a little sign of wear, and the instinct is to dismiss the Dodgers’ chances. Because if they couldn’t win a championship with those guys at their peak, how can they win one when everyone is older, achier, and crankier?
Because this might be the best Dodgers roster in memory, even if it’s also the most flawed. It’s complicated. The elite players are nursing their wax wings, but everyone else combines to be fearsome as all hell. This isn’t the Dodgers powerhouse we’re used to.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t still a Dodgers powerhouse, though. It’s an important distinction.
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