The Dodgers Can Fire Dave Roberts, But Shocking NLDS Loss Felt Inevitable
Any loss as brutal and baffling as the one the Los Angeles Dodgers just endured is invariably a "heads must roll" situation, and the most vulnerable neck surely belongs to the guy who was in charge throughout it all.
Still, it's worth backing up and asking if the Dodgers' latest earlier-than-expected postseason ouster was really one man's fault. Or, for that matter, if it was really that surprising.
What's on paper doesn't leave much doubt about the latter. The Dodgers made history with their 111 wins and plus-334 run differential in the 2022 regular season, yet they still went down 3-1 in the National League Division Series to a San Diego Padres squad that made no history of any kind in winning 89 games with a plus-45 run differential.
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"Shock factor, very high. Disappointment, very high. It's crushing," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters shortly after Josh Hader fired strike three past Freddie Freeman to secure a 5-3 win for the Padres in Game 4 on Saturday.
Blame the Manager If You Want
Because, let's face it, the Dodgers skipper is hardly blameless for the fact that the Dodgers failed to win the World Series after their fourth 100-win season under his leadership.
Among other things, it's in part thanks to Roberts' decision-making that Jake Cronenworth delivered the go-ahead knock with two on and two out in the seventh inning of Game 4:
Cronenworth started that at-bat facing hard-throwing right-hander Yency Almonte, only for Roberts to make the switch to Alex Vesia after Almonte had already thrown ball one. Going for the left-on-left matchup was apparently always the plan, yet the execution isn't the only aspect that looks less than ideal in retrospect.
Cronenworth is typically above average versus left-handed pitching, and specific splits from this year suggest there was little to be gained from having him face a breaking-balling southpaw instead of a flamethrowing righty:
To watch Roberts manage according to conventional wisdom this time around might not have been so baffling if he hadn't bucked conventional wisdom earlier in the series.
In choosing to pinch-hit Austin Barnes instead of All-Star Chris Taylor or promising rookie Miguel Vargas with two on and two out in the eighth inning of Game 2, Roberts cited the shape of the former's bat path as his justification. Yet he was ultimately calling on a guy with an 87 OPS+, so the resulting out was hardly a surprise.
While we're at it, let's also pick at the decision to start Tony Gonsolin in Game 3.
Roberts couldn't have made that decision without the blessing of the front office, yet it always looked unnecessarily risky on account of Gonsolin's injury-induced pitch count limitations. Those effectively made it a bullpen game for the Dodgers, whereas they could have put their trust in Tyler Anderson and his 2.57 regular-season ERA.
So Long as You Also Blame Everything Else That Doomed the Dodgers
For starters, how about an offense that never really resembled the one that led the majors in scoring during the regular season?
Things started off well enough, as the Dodgers put up five runs in the first three innings of a 5-3 victory in Game 1. Alas, just seven more followed over the next 32 innings. Mookie Betts went just 2-for-14 in his table-setting role atop the offense, and the team went 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position over the last three games.
The manager's fault? Psh. Come on. Unless we're talking about a Mr. Burns-Darryl Strawberry situation, no manager is capable of manufacturing offense.
Managers also don't have the power to heal injuries, and there's no denying that the Dodgers went into the NLDS with many more red flags in that department than the Padres.
Out of the picture were ace starter Walker Buehler, who had Tommy John surgery in August, and ace reliever Daniel Hudson, who tore his ACL in June. Though the club deemed Gonsolin and fellow starter Dustin May good to go, the former had only recently returned from forearm tightness and the latter made only six appearances following his return from Tommy John before landing back on the injured list with lower-back tightness.
Blake Treinen also barely pitched this year because of shoulder troubles, and one could have deduced as much from watching him struggle with his stuff and command in Game 2:
One might ask why Treinen was even on the NLDS roster if the answer wasn't so obvious: Because the Dodgers simply needed bodies in the bullpen.
Per its 2.87 ERA, Los Angeles' pen was the best in the National League during the regular season. The Dodgers nonetheless posted a 4.02 ERA in the ninth inning, mainly by way of struggles on the part of Craig Kimbrel that persisted until he lost the closer's job in September and was then left off the postseason roster entirely.
That Kimbrel's slide into irrelevance was so predictable only makes the Dodgers' handling of the trade deadline less forgivable in retrospect. Hader was out there. David Robertson was out there. Jorge López was out there. Yet in settling for Chris Martin, the Dodgers acquired a middle-innings guy when they clearly needed a late-innings type.
In addition to ill-timed bad offense and a cringe-worthy injured list, this is another thing that's not on Roberts. It's on President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman, whose excuse for not doing more ahead of the Aug. 2 trade deadline amounted to a shrug.
To be sure, Friedman is to be commended for how he's leveraged the Dodgers' Scrooge McDuck-ian resources into a .623 winning percentage over the last eight seasons. It's also not for lack of trying that he didn't land a bigger fish this summer, as he reportedly made a "solid" bid for Juan Soto before the Padres nabbed him.
Yet the bullpen, at least, has been an all-too-consistent blind spot for Friedman.
Before a void at closer became a problem in 2022, the Dodgers were previously dogged by the absence of a strong bridge to Kenley Jansen. This weakness had a way of rearing its ugly head in October, typically in situations involving Clayton Kershaw being asked to do too much.
Just Don't Blame It on MLB's New Playoff Format
There's a school of thought that the Dodgers were done dirty by MLB's new playoff format. And to be fair, it's not without its merits.
For instance, Travis Sawchik of The Score rightfully argued that baseball is "not designed to be played in small samples." And yet, Major League Baseball insists on crowning its champion based not on its six-month marathon of a regular season, but on its one-month sprint of a postseason.
Further, the sprint has only become more prone to randomness as the number of playoff teams has increased from two to 12 since 1968. As both the Dodgers and Atlanta can attest, the new environment is such that even the best teams are vulnerable to hot teams.
True though this may be, however, it's nonetheless a lousy excuse for why the Dodgers are just 1-for-10 in their pursuits of World Series glory even as they've won more regular-season games than anyone over the last decade. That's not an accident. That's a trend.
Rather than expect the matter to resolve itself, it's about time the Dodgers tried something different between now and Opening Day 2023.
Even though the Dodgers just extended him through 2025 in March, Roberts ought to be on the chopping block. Perhaps he does own the fourth-highest winning percentage of any manager ever, but the club's leadership has every reason to wonder if somebody else might be able to do more if given the same level of talent that Roberts has been afforded.
There must nonetheless also be changes on the talent front, though the Dodgers admittedly don't have much of a choice there.
With Justin Turner's 2023 option unlikely to vest and Kershaw, Anderson, Kimbrel, Martin, Andrew Heaney, Joey Gallo and Trea Turner all ticketed for free agency, the team is about to have a ton of holes to fill. The bright side of this, of course, is the flexibility to buy up all the big fish on the offseason market.
They might, for example, address their ace and closer needs by signing Jacob deGrom and Edwin Díaz away from the New York Mets. If not Trea Turner, they could seek to install Carlos Correa or Xander Bogaerts at shortstop. Then there's the nuclear option of a mega-contract for 62-homer slugger Aaron Judge.
No matter how they go about their offseason business, you can rest assured that the Dodgers will go into 2023 looking good. Looking good, after all, is kind of what they do.
The real tell will be whether they look good in a whole new way. Because if the '23 Dodgers bear even a close resemblance to the '22 Dodgers, their latest quest for a championship will look a lot like Albert Einstein's definition of insanity.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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