They spent a bunch of bucks buying players for this season, and they are in the cellar! What gives?
It’s a system the Mariners have perfected over the last decade.
It’s called “buying guys that broke.” We have 17 people on the DL right now.
Go, Puig!
They fell into a couple of old fallacies:
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The whole simply equals the sum of the parts - a team’s performance can be predicted by summing individual stats from years ago, never mind what they’re capable of doing now, and there’s no such thing as teamwork in the real world anyway.
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The more you pay a guy, the better he’ll play.
They also thought Kemp would be worth something this year.
Carl Crawford is a pretty good metaphor for this team. On paper, he’s a really good player with a solid history. But he’s developed an injury history, which doesn’t bode well for regular players, let alone 31 year old leadoff hitters who rely on their speed. That’s not terrible if you’re signing Juan Pierre for $1.6m, but it is if you’re signing Carl Crawford for $20m/year. Kemp has been a huge disappointment, but I honestly can’t blame the Dodgers for that - they certainly overpaid him, but they’d have been overpaying for a 35 HR .280/.340/.475 player as well. His pathetic level of production is Hamilton-esque.
Then you add in a truly mediocre infield (aside from Adrian Gonzalez). Mark Ellis is a 36 year old 2B. Dee Gordon at SS (or rather “the major league level”) is a failed experiment. And at 3B you have a rotation of Juan Uribe, Jerry Hairston and Luis Cruz? AJ Ellis at backstop seems like a decent bargain. Then you realize he’s a 32 year old journeyman that hasn’t had more than 430 plate appearances in any season at any level before.
The rotation is solid, but has been unlucky. You might be able to say that Greinke isn’t cut out for a big market like LA, but he did just fine for the Angels last year. Billingsley isn’t lights out or anything, but he’s a fine #5 starter. Ryu has been tremendous, as has Kershaw. Beckett has also definitely held his own.
But the bullpen… Brandon League has no business closing games, especially with a talent like Jensen behind him. Mattingly doesn’t seem to have a clue how to use them, and the rest of the arms have really been a joke.
Edit TL;DR: In other words, they overpaid for players that aren’t even producing at an average level, and completely ignored every other position on the field that wasn’t plated in gold.
I hope all the kings horses and all the kings men can put the Dodgers together again.
The Yankees have proven that you can buy pennants with talent. I hope the Dodgers can do the same.
They’ve also proven that you can mortgage your future for a bunch of big names with awful contracts.
Same thing that happens for a dozen teams a year; shit happens. It’s sports.
As the Yankees and Red Sox have repeatedly demonstrated over the years, spending a lot of money CAN make you a much more consistent winner. But it’s no guarantee. Sometimes people get injured, or they suck. Or the people you paid all the money to do fine but the young player you were counting on to get better regresses. It’s sports; you can’t predict it perfectly.
I have some minor quibbles with the rest of the post but for the most part you are right. The infield has always been bad but injuries have made it worse, and Kemp clearly hasn’t fully recovered from his shoulder surgery. On top of it EVERYONE on the team has gotten hurt and the bullpen, other than Jensen and Rodriguez is terrible. And thats where I disagree with the above quote. Mattingly is doing exactly what he should do with his best reliever, deploying him in the highest leverage situation and not saving him for the “save”. Unfortunately there isnt anyone on the team more reliable than League, and League has cost the team 7 or 8 games now. But who else do you use? League never gets the heart of the order. In those games when the toughest bats are up in the 9th League gets the night off.
Mattingly screws tons of stuff up as a manager, give him credit when he does something that the SABR community has been calling for for years.
Let’s be fair, nobody has ever been that bad. In fact, the Dodgers* haven’t even lost 7 games Brandon League pitched in.*
Ok, ok, you are right. It’s probably only been one or two, but it feels like 7 or 8.
In 8 starts Becket is 0-5 with a 5.19 ERA and has only gone more than six innings once.
He’s also been on the DL since May 15.
I’m guessing the Dodgers don’t feel like they’re really getting their $15.75 million’s worth this year so far.