By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/09/11/the-bleeding-dodger-blues/Let’s phrase it this way, as politely as possible: It sucks to be a Dodger or a Dodger fan right
now. And while it’s always admirable to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, it sucks even
worse to know that no team in major league history ever lost ten straight in any season in
which they went on to win a World Series.
Ten straight and fifteen lost out of their last sixteen games. And there’s another precedent
for you: The Dodgers, formerly 2017′s best team, are the majors’ first to win fifteen of sixteen
and lose fifteen of sixteen in the same season. For the past two weeks the Dodgers have been
baseball’s worst.
And, as Justin Turner reminds himself, his club, and their fans, looking at the season record of
92-51 as of this morning, which is still the best in baseball, means three things against the
current sinking: jack, diddley, and squat. Nobody’s talking about whether the Dodgers will set
the record for wins in a regular season. They’re talking about whether they’ll be lucky to finish
the season at 100.
“What we did three months ago doesn’t mean a whole lot right now,” Turner said, after the
Rockies finished a four-game sweep of the Dodgers with an 8-1 Sunday thrash. “No one in
this league is going to feel sorry for us. No one in this league is going to show up and be like,
‘Oh, poor Dodgers.’ There are a bunch of sharks in the water. We’re bleeding a little bit right
now. I think teams are smelling the blood.”
It’s gotten so bad that Rockies manager Bud Black sent relief pitcher Tyler Chatwood out to
start on Sunday with a prayer for three serviceable innings and got more of an answer than
he dared hope, Chatwood pitching five shutout innings against a Dodger lineup that’s been
so futile of late they could have been shut out by a maid with arthritic shoulders.
Rich Hill pitched well enough to win, surrendering a measly two runs and four hits in a five-
inning outing. It wasn’t his fault the Rockies exploded for five in the eighth, but nobody told
reliever Walter Buehler to walk the bases loaded with one out and then serve Mark Reynolds
a grand salami, before his relief Tony Cingrani gifted Tony Wolters an RBI single.
Somehow, the Dodgers still remain nine ahead of the Diamondbacks, who did their part to
add to the Dodger miseries by sweeping them twice during this sixteen-game sinking. Look
closer, though, and you can find real reasons for the Dodgers’ deflation that suggest anything
but a tank job, and this is also accounting for whether they left too much behind prior to the
fifteen-of-sixteen deflation:
* You can find Corey Seager playing through a sore elbow and having only 26 at-bats during
the fifteen-of-sixteen-lost. He nailed his first extra base hit since mid-August in on Friday
against the Rockies, but if his elbow doesn’t stop barking the Dodgers lose a serious significant
bat.
* You can find Cody Bellinger, still in the Rookie of the Year conversation, missing the first
several games of the sad string with an ankle sprain and not looking like his earlier self since
coming off the DL. Ankle injuries are a tough recovery in the short term, and Bellinger hasn’t
exactly looked unimpeded standing in at the plate and swinging. He slugged .615 in August
but his September thus far shows two walks and thirteen strikeouts.
* You can find Logan Forsythe, their pickup from Tampa Bay, looking nothing like the guy
who bopped 37 homers in his previous two seasons as a part-timer, even if he does have
an impressive walk rate.
* You can find Joc Pederson struggling much of the year and prompting the Dodgers to reach
out for Curtis Granderson from the Mets for the stretch drive. But you can also find the aging
Granderson, whose clubhouse presence isn’t enough anymore to cancel out his fading bat,
having gone from one of the best hitters in baseball in May and June to hitting .114 in seventy
at-bats since he joined the Dodgers.
* You can find Clayton Kershaw having one good and one bad start since he came back from
the DL, but while he’s probably going to be Kershaw again soon enough, maybe soon enough
to break the current dissipation, there isn’t as much behind him as people think.
* Because you have Alex Wood’s 5.10 ERA in his previous eight starts, Yu Darvish pressurising
himself (walk year, thought the final piece for the stretch when the Dodgers dealt for him at the
non-waiver deadline) into a 5.34 ERA in six Dodger starts, and Pedro Baez’s 2.53 ERA proving
a fluke with his 4.63 fielding-independent pitching and his walk proclivity and home run
vulnerability catching up to him. Did we leave out Hyun-Jin Ryu and his 4.57 FIP?
This isn’t to say the Dodgers can’t pick up, dust off, start all over again, and finish strong over the
final nineteen games. But since the 2006 Cardinals finished with a 12-17 string the final month
and went on to win that year’s World Series, only one other team since has had a final month
comparably bad and still gone on to win a Series: the 2017 Royals, 15-17 their final month but
winning a Series because they were smart enough to hit into the Mets’ porous infield defense.
And the 2000 Yankees had a 15-18 final month but still went on to win the World Series in five
against that year’s Mets, though the Series was a lot closer than a 4-1 triumph would indicate
on the surface.
The Dodgers have some history with futile Septembers not preventing World Series trips. In
1952, they were 13-15 in September and took the Series to seven games before the Yankees
beat them. In 1959 they went 10-15 in September and won the pennant, abetted by the
Braves’ last-minute exhaustion, not to mention the World Series. And, they went 13-15 to
finish strike shortened 1981 and survived the special playoff rounds to win the World Series.
That last is what Tommy Lasorda referenced when he reassured current manager Dave Roberts
that he wasn’t exactly the first Dodger manager to whom this has happened. Roberts’
predecessor, Don Mattingly, who now calls Derek Jeter his boss in Miami, presided over a 12-
15 September 2013 but still took the Dodgers to the National League Championship Series
at least.
Institutionally, the Dodgers are capable of surviving the worst to get to the big dance. But
while Kershaw is likely to be Kershaw the rest of the stretch, barring unforeseen health or
rhythmic issues, these Dodgers don’t exactly have Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy
Campanella, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Don Drysdale, Larry Sherry, Sandy Koufax,
Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey, Fernando Valenzuela, or Orel Hershiser to secure them.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Roberts deadpanned after the Rockies finished the weekend sweep.
“We have a very frustrated and upset clubhouse.” And, one that could, potentially, experience
the single worst collapse in pennant race history, assuming the Diamondbacks stay heated up
and meet or overtake them, when you figure that waking up on 25 August the Dodgers had
a 21-game lead in the West.
It would be worse than their thirteen-game collapse of 1951 that ended with the pennant
playoff heard ’round the world and, unfortunately, a tainted Giants triumph in light of the
subsequent revelations of the Giants’ then-elaborate sign-stealing scheme. It would be
worse than the 1964 Phillies, the 1978 Red Sox (who once had a fourteen-game lead
before having to play and lose a single-game division playoff), the 1995 Angels, the 2007
Mets, the 2009 Tigers, the 2011 Braves, and the 2011 Red Sox.
The good news is that the Dodgers have a fair shot at ending the current sorrows this
week: they open on the road with a three-set against the Giants, the first to be eliminated
mathematically when it happened last month. They won’t even have to face Madison
Bumgarner this week, not that Bumgarner’s been his old self since returning from that
dirt bike-imposed shoulder injury. And it’s not like the Giants have had anything to close,
but they’re also without Mark Melancon. (Gone for the season; forearm compression.)
The bad news is that Roberts can’t persuade Koufax, Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey, Tortilla
Fats, or Bulldog to come out of retirement after that, when the Dodgers move on to
Washington. Even at their incumbent ages, including the octogenarian Koufax, they
might be enough to keep the ship afloat. Might.
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