Yeah, it looks okay to me. Sure, there’s holes, but show me a team with no holes. The worst hitter in the lineup is a guy I thought would be decent (Dee Gordon.)
I mena, you’re describing as a “Question mark” a guy who last year batted .292 and won a Gold Glove. My team started the year with a first baseman who hasn’t had an OBP above .300 since 2009; now THAT is a question mark.
All kinds of things went wrong for the Dodgers last year and they still finished over .500. It’s a team with a hell of a backbone of talent. All teams could, in theory, have a bad year if everyone “plays down to their floor” but the Dodgers didn’t look like any sort of a bad team. Or to put it another way; how often does a team go into the season with the league’s best hitter AND best pitcher? (Kemp, not Braun, was the best player in the NL last year.) That’s a pretty rare thing to possess.
I mean, yeah, I’d agree Capuano and Lilly and pitching out of their minds, and that can’t continue, but then they don’t have to play .700 ball, either.
Meanwhile, in the Giants-Brewers game in Milwaukee, the same Giants fan caught two foul balls in the first inning. Not as awesome as the two homers, but two double-catches in one night is astonishing to me.
Interesting question… here are years where the same team won the Cy Young and MVP (not including years when the same player won them both and since 1967 when the Cy Young started).
1967 BOS: Jim Lonborg and Yaz
1974 LAN: Mike Marshall and Steve Garvey
1980 PHI: Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt
1982 MIL: Pete Vuckovich and Robin Yount
1984 CHN: Rick Sutcliffe and Ryne Sandberg
1988 LAN: Orel Hersheiser and Kirk Gibson
1990 PIT: Doug Drabek and Barry Bonds
1990 OAK: Bob Welch and Rickey Henderson
1991 ATL: Tom Glavine and Terry Pendleton
1993 CHA: Jack McDowell and Frank Thomas
2002 OAK: Barry Zito and Miguel Tejada
2005 STL: Chris Carpenter and Albert Pujols
2006 MIN: Johan Santana and Justin Morneau
Now of course these were not necessarily the best players or pitchers, but it’s a starting point. Not really that rare, actually. Maybe I’ll see if I can find a list of common-team WAR leaders…
It sounds simple put that way, but the Dodgers just weren’t sure how ANYONE was going to perform this year. Remember, Kemp had good year/bad year/awesome year, and was then handed a huge contract. It was hard to be certain the Talented Mr. Kemp was going to show up this year. Ethier had been injured and had expressed being disgruntled. No one knew which Loney would show up (and I still don’t think we do). Juan Uribe, who hit .204 last year with four home runs, was slated to be our starting 3rd baseman. A.J. Ellis was getting his first opportunity to be an every day catcher. And we brought in two questionable starting pitchers to replace the workhorse Kuroda.
With Arizona expected to be as good as last year, and the Giants expected to be better than last year, I heard pre-season predictions for the Dodgers ranging from finishing third to last, and the most optimistic thing I recall hearing was from MLB TV analyst John Hart, who I believe said that IF everything went right for the Dodgers, they’d have a shot at the wildcard or maybe the division. Given all that has gone on injury-wise so far this season, I don’t think anyone would claim that everything has gone right for the Dodgers, except for what we’re seeing in the win column.
So forgive us Dodger fans if we’re still a tad bit skeptical. But it’s not just us!
So I looked at BBRef WAR and it’s much rarer to have both hitter and pitcher season-leaders that way. The ones I found since 1950:
1987 BOS: Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs
1982 MON: Steve Rogers and Gary Carter
1981 PHI: Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt
1980 PHI: Ditto
1979 BOS: Dennis Eckersley and Fred Lynn
1965 SFG: Juan Marichal and Willie Mays
1963 MIN: Camilo Pascual and Bob Allison
Of course by this method Kemp and Kershaw don’t count since Roy Halladay led the NL in bWAR for 2011.
I was expecting at least a three year rebuilding process. But the new owners (blessed be their camels!) are willing to spend to get talent and are fully behind the home-grown talent in the minors. The Dodgers just might be able to kluge together a winning team this year, but it won’t be something that will last without some serious tinkering. We’ve gotten used to the lack of power hitting, but would it kill management to go nail down a few left fielders?
Incredible comeback for the Dodgers tonight! Down 5-0 after 5 innings and down 6-1 in the 7th, they came back to tie it. Gave up a run to go into the 9th down 7-6, and scored two in the top of the 9th to win 8-7. On a rare bad night for a Dodger starter (Aaron Harang), the rest of the team picked it up and got the job done. This team warms my heart.
I find this one particularly funny because neither one was even close to the best pitcher or hitter that year, although both honors belonged to Red Sox players, so it still fits the criteria. Pedro and Manny got hosed in '02.
Gwynn .609
Van Slyke .600
A J Ellis .521
Kemp .500
Ethier .462
Abreu .440
Loney .402
Kennedy .320
Dee .189
Sellers .154
Seven Dodgers over .400 with runners in scoring position? As someone on the Dodgers board said, that could be a pretty good reason why they are winning.
Well, that and the fact that half of the Albuquerque Isotopes are currently in the line-up.
There were 4 hitters with higher WAR, including (as RickJay suggests) a player on the Red Sox. Alex Rodriguez’s WAR was almost a full 3 games higher than Manny’s
Was that Nomar? Ok, then him. Either was better than Tejada.
Regarding the Dodgers pitching, has Chad Billingsly lived up to the hype? It seems like he’s only had one real good year so far, but he’s always counted on as a front-end-of-the-rotation guy.
Right, but Alex Rodriguez was better than Nomar or Manny, to the tune of more than 2 wins. That’s pretty significant. Jim Thome and Jason Giambi were also at least as good as either of the Boston players that year.
My point is not that Manny or Nomar would necessarily have been an awful choice. Nor is my point that Alex Rodriguez got robbed. It’s simply that, if you’re going to argue that the Boston players got “hosed” in 2002, you need to show that they were not only more deserving than the guy who actually won, but that they were more deserving than some of the other guys who didn’t win.
The problem with Billingsly is that when he is locked in he is DOMINANT, but when he isn’t he’s just ok. So, he is rarely bad, and sometimes he is amazing, but most of the time he is just good. He is a very solid #3 starter and likely always will be.
The problem is, when he came into the league people thought he was going to be a #1, and since he isn’t he is very very disappointing to Dodger fans (most of whom want to see him dead it would seem). But he’s perfectly good, he just isn’t going to be the Don Drysdale to Kershaw’s Sandy Koufax like people expected. Living up to those kinds of expectations can be a bitch.