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The Los Angeles Dodgers have a 1-0 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 will need Ryu and Muncy to show the way, which … is not a sentence I was expecting to write at the same time. 39, last year. This is a remarkably different team from last year 's Dodgers. If you do not look too closely, you might think it's a lot worst Dodgers team.
Be careful with that.
Start with the Hall of Famer, have some ace. On his last start of the regular season, Clayton Kershaw gave the Giants of San Francisco five points in five innings. On the surface, it's not remarkable. Good pitchers also allow racing. Max Scherzer allowed six points in four innings against the Braves two weeks earlier. That did not change the perception that Scherzer was a mega-ace, so why would an uncharacteristic departure from Kershaw be different?
Dig deeper, and it gets a little foreign. It was the first time that Kershaw allowed five points to the Giants … all the time. It was his 44th start against them, and the previous distributions were as follows:
0 courses allowed – 11 starts
1 authorized race – 14 starts
2 authorized tracks – 14 starts
3 races allowed – two starts
4 races allowed – two starts
Kershaw, turning off the Giants was as reliable as anything in baseball. Yet nothing is less reliable in baseball than reliability. All we have established is that this crazy game can surprise you from game to game.
But the giants were not even the giants that Kershaw used to shut up. It was a dilapidated shell of a team poised to finish with the worst second-team performance in its half-time history, a period that includes the era of Deadball. They could still play with Kershaw.
And then, it was learned that the Dodgers let Kershaw rest one more day before he started the second match of the LNDS. This makes sense, but there is also a cognitive dissonance. Kershaw is the guy who probably has already had a better career than Sandy Koufaxand the Dodgers did not open with him? The old post-season plan was to throw it as much as possible, even if it was resting. Their new plan is to make sure their best pitcher is more rested than he has ever been in the playoffs. It is both preventive and strategic, but our cynical eyes keep coming back to "precaution" because the launchers have injured us too often.
All this, combined with Kershaw's lowest K / 9 and highest FIP, ERA and ERA + since 2010, suggests something horrible: He's deadly. Always excellent, notice. Just mortal.
Over the past two seasons, the Dodgers have moved away from the mindset of rolling until it collapses and has become more focused on the mindset of rolling over until it's over. They are collapsing, using their dominant narrower for multiple passes. . But this Jansen will probably not be here in the playoffs. No relays have allowed more home runs than Jansen this year, and he has allocated more home runs in the last six weeks than in any previous full season.
This does not mean that Jansen is a liability. This does not mean that it is nothing less than dirty and effective. It is to say that he is mortal. Which is a theme for this year's Dodgers team.
Corey Seager is injured. Chris Taylor is a good hitter, but he is not the deity of the flogging he was last year. The fruits of Cody Bellinger's all-or-nothing approach are more erratic than those of last year. Manny Machado's .273 / .338 / .487 range with the Dodgers is strangely similar to Matt Kemp's .290 / .338 / .481 line this year. Both are productive. Both come with some disappointment (Machado versus his numbers with the Orioles and Kemp compared to his first half figures.)
Beyond Jansen, the market is not as strong as it has been and pitchers like Alex Wood, Rich Hill and Kenta Maeda have been good, but not great, which contrasts sharply with last year. . That does not mean that the Dodgers are a worse man than last year – Ryu, Muncy, Justin Turner and Walker Buehler have all been phenomenal – but they have a different feeling. The depth is as strong as ever, but the pillars in the center of the building show signs of distress. This could be the most imperfect Dodgers team of the latest postseasons.
And my advice is to ignore it. That probably does not mean a damn thing.
It's not just a reference to the legend that anything can happen in the after-season, even if it's still true. Yes, Brian Dozier could hit 10 homers in the next three weeks and that would not necessarily teach us anything new about baseball. It would be just one of those things. The isolated moments of dominance in the playoffs are not what I'm talking about, though. This is the feeling that beyond the foundation, beyond the old plan of Kershaw and Jansen and Jansen and Kershaw, this team has as much depth as anyone left in the playoffs.
I am not a statamatrician, but I would like to see a statistic for something like, "Apparitions of someone who probably should not be here." In other words, both on the throwing side and on the hitting, a player is in the game, even if he stresses you. The playoffs are two games old and we have already seen Drew Butera, Terrance Gore and Jonathan Lucroy hit. Fernando Rodney and Liam Hendriks fought seven batters combined. These are players who make you say something like "Uhhhhh" the whole time you watch them. It's not because they are bad; it's just that they're a little less capable of varying skills than you are used to.
Dodgers do not usually have these players. Joc Pederson never turned into Jim Thome, but he continues to correct his mistakes. Kemp barely since the second half, but he still punishes the left-handers. The rotation may not be as dominant as it was, but Hyun-jin Ryu has been absolutely outstanding and everyone behind him deserves a spot in the playoff roster, if not is a role to play in the playoffs.
Look at this list and think of yourself how many times you expect to say, "I can not believe this guy hits, "or" Wow, this pitcher is terrible. "
Not a lot. Some players are better than others, and fans of the Dodgers know that if Ryan Madson launches the 15th inning on the road, the opposing team having a chance to escape, she will be nervous. This is not the perfect alignment.
This is an absolutely complete list with contributors. Contributors are big, small, big, wide and everywhere in between. Here are 25 players who could probably be part of your favorite team.
Kershaw is deadly now, yes. Jansen is mortal too. Two of the founding pieces of the last six post-season races show only a slight sign of wear, and the instinct is to reject the chances of the Dodgers. Because if they could not win a championship with these guys at their peak, how could they win one while everyone is older, more buyer and more crankier?
Because it is perhaps the best list in memory of Dodgers, even if it is also the most imperfect. It's complicated. Elite players feed their wax wings, but all the others combine to be formidable like hell. This is not the power of the Dodgers to which we are accustomed.
This does not mean that it is not yet a Dodgers power. This is an important distinction.
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