After Acquiring Machado, Dodgers Need Relief

The Dodgers have shaken off their early-season blues and climbed from 10 games below .500 to 10 above in the space of two months. They just made a huge splash with their Manny Machado acquisition — you can read about their lineup upgrade, their improved odds and the prospects they surrendered — but that doesn’t mean that president of baseball operations Andrew Freidman and general manager Farhan Zaidi can lie back in their hammocks sipping daiquiris through the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline, as the team still has at least one other area of glaring need: the bullpen.

Before digging into their need to relieve their relievers, it’s worth considering the state of their rotation. The Dodgers have dealt with a variety of injuries thus far such that they have just one pitcher who’s made at least 18 starts — one who has spent the whole season in the rotation without interruption, basically — namely Alex Wood. Whether by accident or design, only four other teams can make that same claim: the upstart A’s (Sean Manaea), resourceful Rays (Blake Snell), and two also-rans, the Blue Jays (J.A. Happ) and Marlins (Jose Urena). The fading Angels, who have been working with a six-man rotation (more or less), have no starter who’s taken more than 17 turns.

From the Dodgers’ original starting five, Kenta Maeda (16 starts), Clayton Kershaw (13), Rich Hill (11), and Hyun-Jin Ryu (six) have all spent time on the disabled list, with Ryu still present there due to a groin strain so severe that you’d be excused for crossing your legs reflexively. Fill-ins Ross Stripling (14 starts) and Walker Buehler (10) began the year in the bullpen and the minors, respectively. Including call-ups Caleb Ferguson (three starts) and Brock Stewart as well as openers Daniel Hudson and Scott Alexander (one apiece), the team has used 11 starters, as many as the Marlins and more than all but the A’s, Angels, Mets (12 apiece), and Rays (14).

Despite the patchwork arrangement, the Dodgers have gotten very good work up front. Their starters’ 10.2 WAR is second in the NL and fourth in the majors, and by both ERA- (86) and FIP- (83), they’re first in the NL. The group has pounded the strike zone (19.8% K-BB, first in the league and second in the majors) while also keeping the ball on the ground (45.7% GB rate, tied for third in the NL and the majors) and in the ballpark (1.03 HR/9, third in the NL and fifth in the majors).

Individually, Stripling earned a spot on the All-Star team and — overlooking the fact that he’s two-thirds of an inning short of officially qualifying — ranks second in ERA (2.08), third in FIP (2.71), and sixth in WAR (2.3). Maeda is ninth in WAR (2.3) and would also rank among the league’s top 10 in both ERA (3.12) and FIP (2.76) if he weren’t 9.1 innings short of qualifying. Wood is 11th in WAR (1.9) and 10th in FIP (3.47). Kershaw (2.74 ERA, 3.17 FIP) has been very good but something short of Kershaw-esque when not serving time on the DL due to biceps tendinitis and a lower back strain, and Buehler, a 23-year-old rookie, has shown he’s perfectly ready for this job (3.45 ERA, 3.00 FIP). Ryu was pitching some of the best ball of his major-league career when he suffered his injury on on May 3. The only starter who’s been truly lackluster has been Hill, and even he’s been serviceable (3.23 ERA, 3.73 FIP) in 30.2 innings since returning from his second DL stint, for his umpteenth blister issue. With Ryu now building up his pitch count towards a possible end-of-July return, the Dodgers could soon have seven able-bodied starters, and as it is, they’re toying with the possibility of using a six-man rotation coming out of the break.

All of which his to say that the rotation isn’t an apparent trade deadline need for them, which is good, because the pickings are slim, with guys like Happ, Cole Hamels, Matt Harvey, Tyson Ross and Zack Wheeler, carrying greater name recognition without being demonstrably better than what the Dodgers already have in house, particularly if they intend to stay under the $197 million luxury tax threshold.

Take Hamels, a Southern California native whom the Dodgers made a run at acquiring in 2015. The 34-year-old lefty is back up to striking out a hair under a batter per inning, but thanks to a rate of 1.7 homers per nine, his FIP is a gaudy 5.05. He projects to be worth just 0.8 WAR over the remainder of the season at a cost of roughly $9 million for the rest of this year, with either a $20 million club option or $6 million buyout for next year. Buehler, Hill, Maeda, Wood, and Stripling all forecast to produce 0.7 to 1.0 WAR in fewer innings (50 to 66, compared to Hamels’ 74); sure, injuries and variance can produce just about any range of outcomes there, but for the cost of prospects and blowing their marginal tax rate (unless, say, Hill or Ryu is traded to make room), it doesn’t add up to a sensible move. Happ has a 4.29 ERA, a 4.02 FIP, and about $7 million remaining in salary before free agency, is projected to produce 1.2 WAR the rest of the way, and will probably require a bigger bounty in prospects, since every contender will be in on him. If the Dodgers could get Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard — both forecast for at least 2.0 WAR the rest of the way, with two years of additional club control for the former and three for the latter — that’s another matter, but it doesn’t sound as though the Mets intend to move either.

The bullpen, on the other hand, cries out for help. The unit is seventh in the NL in ERA- (98), 10th in FIP- (100), and tied for ninth in WAR (1.7). The free-agency loss of Brandon Morrow looms large, for they lack a trustworthy late-inning righty in front of closer Kenley Jansen, who after some early hiccups has been fine if not totally dominant, with a 1.47 ERA and 2.54 FIP since May 1. Unwilling to commit something on the order of the two-year, $21 million that the Cubs gave Morrow, Friedman and Zaidi have gone bargain basement, and they’ve gotten what they paid for, with newcomers Daniel Hudson, Erik Goeddel, and J.T. Chargois — plus holdovers Pedro Baez, Josh Fields, and Yimi Garcia — combining for a 3.63 ERA, 4.14 FIP, and a grand total of 0.3 WAR in 161.1 innings. Woof.

The Dodgers have done a bit better with lefties Scott Alexander and Tony Cingrani, who have combined for 0.9 WAR in 64.1 innings, but the latter is on the DL with a rotator cuff strain, and Baez, Fields, and Garcia are all down with various arm injuries, as well, none of which are fatal. None of those guys are difference-makers, and neither is Tom Koehler, an offseason acquisition who’s attempting to work his way back from an anterior capsule sprain. They can hope that Julio Urias, who needed surgery for an anterior capsule tear himself last summer, can return — mid-August or September is the latest hope — but counting on him to throw key innings is another matter entirely.

That motley assortment (with the exception of Jansen) is projected to combine for 0.4 WAR over the remainder of the season, a total unchanged by the recent acquisitions of lefty Zac Rosscup (via waivers from the Rockies) and righty Dylan Floro (via trade from the Reds). As for who they might trade for, here’s a list of 11 relievers, most of whom have been mentioned by an insider such as ESPN’s Buster Olney or MLB.com’s Jon Morosi as available, with a few others thrown in and Brad Hand crossed off the list after Thursday morning’s trade to the Indians:

I’ve ranked these pitchers by their rest-of-season WAR via our Depth Charts. As you can see, it isn’t a whole lot — and, in some cases, it’s so meager that it simply appears as zero — which will happen when you’re talking about 20-inning slices. Just about anything can happen in 20 innings; a team might catch lightning in a bottle and get twice the value or consider launching a guy into the sun instead of putting him on the postseason roster. Pressly is here because Baseball Prospectus’ Matthew Trueblood made a compelling case, while Giles is on the outs in Houston to such a degree that he was recently optioned to Triple-A.

It’s not a terribly impressive group — there’s no Aroldis Chapman or Andrew Miller — but then, the Dodgers don’t need a true blue closer. Their bullpen situation is such that they probably can’t afford a value play — an underperformer who will come cheap and/or have some control remaining, as Cingrani did last year — as their primary move; they need somebody who is already dealing, which probably puts the emphasis on guys like Familia and Soria. My guess is that, if they were going to acquire one of the Orioles’ arms, they’d have folded it into the Machado trade, but maybe they’ve laid the groundwork and are allowing Baltimore to focus on fielding other offers now that their biggest move is done while hoping that Brach and/or Britton puts together a couple strong weeks that will boost the price (Darren O’Day, whom they dearly would have liked to move, just went down for the year with a season-ending Grade 2 hamstring strain.)

As you can see, the impact wouldn’t be huge, but the club could theoretically add a couple of these guys, such as Oh and Familia, and create a one-win upgrade the rest of the way. That doesn’t sound like much, but in our Depth Charts rankings, that would vault them from a projected 1.1 WAR (10th in the majors) over the rest of the year to 2.1 WAR (second) — to say nothing of the effect on the postseason, which would be much larger. And while every contender has the same idea, the Dodgers do have a bountiful farm system and some remaining payroll flexibility even afer the Machado trade.

Health permitting, the Dodgers can also use some of their surplus starters in the bullpen. Already they’ve begun doing so with Ferguson, to encouraging results: 13 innings, two earned runs, 16:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and a fastball that’s gained a click from 93 to 94 while topping out at 96. Stripling was sterling in that capacity earlier this year; having maxed out at 123 minor- and major league innings in 2016 (including postseason) and 80.2 in 2017, his workload needs minding if he’s to remain available in October. Maeda was a revelation as a reliever last fall, Buehler was averaging 98 mph as a green rookie, and both Wood and Hill have spent time in a big-league bullpens. Given the team’s ongoing precautions regarding starter workload, which manifest themselves in their ample use of the DL and in the league’s fourth-shortest average stint by their starters (5.29 innings), they’re not above sending anybody besides Kershaw down there for a spell, if not necessarily for the remainder of the season.

Via Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, the Dodgers just improved their odds of winning the NL West by 10.4% (to 80.0%) with their deal for Machado — and improved their probability of winning the World Series by 2.2% (to 16.3%). Nothing they do with the bullpen, short of building a time machine to that could summon vintage Mariano Rivera, Goose Gossage, or Wade Davis is going to move the needle nearly that much. But having come as close to a championship as they did last year without winning, they owe it to themselves to keep trying, and the best that can be said is that they have no shortage of options for directions to go.