Dodgers Take Another Early Exit From the Postseason Tournament

It doesn’t take deep analysis to realize that if your starting pitchers combine to allow 13 runs and record 14 outs, your chances of winning a short series aren’t very good. Likewise if the two superstar MVP candidates atop your lineup go 1-for-21, your four 100-RBI guys combine to drive in one (1) run, and your entire team slugs .250. With numbers like that, it’s not too hard to explain the fate of the 2023 Dodgers, who were swept by the Diamondbacks in the Division Series that concluded on Wednesday night at Chase Field. Despite a slow start to their season and considerable upheaval in their rotation, the Dodgers won 100 games and cruised to their 10th division title in 11 years, but for the third year in a row, they were ousted by a team that finished the regular season miles behind them.

Indeed, the Dodgers’ exit from the past three postseasons accounts for three of the largest differentials in winning percentage between winner and loser in major league history:

Note the increasing frequency with which such upsets have happened, owing to the continued expansion of the postseason. When the two pennant winners went straight to the World Series, it was less likely their records would differ so greatly unless one won at least 70% of its games. And where we once had one postseason series per year, now we have 11, creating so many more opportunities for what look to be mismatches — except that in a short series, anything can happen, a fact we’ve known for well over a century. Just ask Tinker, Evers, and Chance about the 1906 White Sox, the Hitless Wonders who pantsed their crosstown rivals despite the Cubs having the highest single-season winning percentage in AL/NL history.

With greater television revenue in mind, not to mention a means of loosening the link between spending and winning, Major League Baseball has created an October tournament where underdogs can still win with significant frequency. Half of the list above is from the past four full seasons (2020 is excluded, for obvious reasons), where either 10 or 12 teams made the postseason, increasing the possibility of such gaps in winning percentage. This year’s Dodgers were knocked out by the sixth seed, where last year’s club was ousted by the fifth seed. The 2021 edition was itself the fourth seed, as even with 106 wins it wound up with a Wild Card berth; the 88-win Braves won the NL East and claimed the third seed and had home-field advantage. And this list may yet get another addition this October, as the Braves (104–58, .642) trail the Phillies (90–72, .556) two games to one in their best-of-five after Bryce Harper’s two-homer, two-staredown showing on Wednesday evening. They’re 86 points apart in winning percentage, the same gap as the two teams’ 2022 editions were.

As I wrote last year on the occasion of the Dodgers’ ouster, the expanded playoffs has created a growing disconnect between the regular season and the postseason. From 1969 to ’93, when there were just four playoff teams, 29.2% of those with the majors’ best record won it all. Since then, that’s down to 25%, or 21.4% if you throw out the 2020 Dodgers, who had to navigate a playoff field of the current size to win their lone championship of this recent run. Unless the Braves win it all — they have only about a 15% chance according to our current Playoff Odds given their deficit — both numbers will decrease.

The competitive balance disparities caused by tanking in the wake of the successful rebuilding efforts of the Cubs and Astros have given us gluts of both 100-loss teams and 100-win teams that still fall short of the big prize:

I’ve broken the spans down by the reigning playoff format. From 1995 to 2011, one Wild Card team per league made the playoffs; five of them won the World Series, each by beating a 100-win team somewhere along the way. The change to two Wild Card teams per league playing a do-or-die game before the Division Series helped trim that number to two such champions from 2012 to ’21, one of which beat two 100-win teams. As of last year, we now have three Wild Card teams per league; the jury is still out on the count of winners and the sample is small, but we now have extreme numbers of teams reaching triple digits in wins or losses. Already we have three teams with 90 wins or fewer in the League Championship Series round for the first time since 2014, according to Baseball Prospectus’ Mike Gianella; if the Braves don’t make it, we’ll have four for the first time since the LCS was created in 1969. Great work, Mr. Manfred.

Back to the winning percentage differential list: the 2021 Braves serve as a reminder that comparisons between teams’ full-season records only go so far. That team was just 52–54 through the end of July, having lost Ronald Acuña Jr. to a torn ACL earlier that month. A flurry of trades upgraded the dismal outfield, bringing in both NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario and World Series MVP Jorge Soler. The team that reached October was a stronger one than its overall record indicated.

As for the 106-win Dodgers: by the time they faced the Braves, they had lost All-Star Max Muncy to an elbow injury and Clayton Kershaw to a forearm injury during the season’s final weekend and were also down Trevor Bauer, who had gone on administrative leave at midseason over domestic violence allegations. They were still a strong team, but the distance between them and the Braves was diminished, turning a seven-game series into even more of a tossup than it might have looked based on the disparity in winning percentages.

This year’s Dodgers arrived at the postseason in similar fashion, with a rotation that was irreparably broken. They lost both Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin to Tommy John surgeries, and Julio Urías was placed on administrative leave à la Bauer back in September. Neither Gonsolin nor Urías had performed at their full potential this year before going down, but the starters who filled out their rotation were generally even less effective. Given the situation, manager Dave Roberts had little choice but to cross his fingers when anointing Kershaw his Game 1 starter. The 35-year-old southpaw’s 2.46 ERA papered over his 4.03 FIP, his highest mark since his 2008 rookie season. Worse, the version of Kershaw that returned from a six-week absence due to an unspecified shoulder injury was even shakier, losing nearly two miles per hour off an already-diminished fastball, and more or less limited to a five-and-fly plan.

The alternatives to Kershaw were veteran Lance Lynn, a once-dependable workhorse who this season was rocked for a 5.73 ERA and 5.53 FIP and allowed 2.16 homers per nine; hotshot 24-year-old rookie Bobby Miller (3.76 ERA, 3.51 FIP); or anyone from a trio of rookies with 12 or fewer career starts under their belts in Michael Grove, Emmet Sheehan, and Ryan Pepiot, each with promise but none obviously ready for prime time. Even if Roberts could mix and match with a bullpen that ranked among the league’s best, a deep run through October was going to be an unusually difficult trick to pull off.

The Dodgers couldn’t do it — couldn’t even come close to doing it. Kershaw was rocked for six runs in one-third of an inning in the opener, hit so hard one had to wonder if he was tipping his pitches, or if we’ve seen the last of the future Hall of Famer. In Game 2, Miller struggled with his control and allowed three runs, failing to make it out of the second inning.

The Dodgers didn’t throw in the towel — they had ample chances to overcome their early deficit in Game 2 before losing 4–2 — but by that point, the handwriting was practically on the wall. Only three teams have had multiple starters allow three or more runs while pitching two or fewer innings in a best-of-five series (Division Series or pre-1985 LCS), and all lost the series, namely the 2017 Red Sox and this year’s Orioles and Dodgers. Teams that got two such starts in a best-of-seven LCS or World Series went 4–12 (2–5 for the former, 2–7 for the latter). The one team that did so in a best-of-nine World Series, the 1921 Giants, won in eight games. While it wouldn’t have reached the best-of-75 format that a trio of statisticians recently determined would be required for the team with the greater true talent to win out, maybe the Dodgers could have petitioned the league for a best-of-nine, staff woes be damned.

Any chance the Dodgers had of overcoming the gut punches they sustained in the Los Angeles leg of their series flew out the window in the third inning on Wednesday night, when Lynn’s gopher problem resurfaced. The 36-year-old righty allowed four solo home runs in the span of six batters, the last of which, by Gabriel Moreno, came via the first pitch he threw after a review of a potential home run down the right field line had been overturned. The four homers in an inning by a team set a postseason record; that they all came against the same pitcher, without so much as a visit from catcher Will Smith, pitching coach Mark Prior, or Roberts, almost defies belief, and testifies to a lack of urgency on the team’s behalf.

That Lynn, the game’s most homer-prone pitcher, was even out there points to one of Roberts’ more questionable decisions. For all of the big righty’s postseason experience, he entered with a career 5.28 ERA in 58 innings, having allowed eight runs in six innings over his past two trips with the 2018 Yankees and ’21 White Sox. And while he pitched somewhat better after arriving from the South Side than before, he was roughed up by two of the three playoff teams he faced. Pepiot, meanwhile, pitched to a 2.14 ERA and 4.28 FIP in 42 innings after coming back from an oblique strain; the Dodgers used openers for him in two of his four starter-length outings, with promising results. Calling upon him would have looked riskier than starting the grizzled vet, but it might have worked out better.

Even if they had gotten stellar starting pitching, the fact remains that the Dodgers managed only six runs in three games, one-third of them in garbage time in Game 1, and hit .177/.248/.250 for a 40 wRC+, an ignominious showing. Betts tied for the NL lead in WAR and ranked second in wRC+ during the regular season, but he went 0-for-11 with one walk, the continuation of his season-ending mini-slump, and his first three-game hitless streak since April 25–27 in Pittsburgh. “I did absolutely nothing to help us win,” said the player who during the regular season had done more to help his team win than just about any other. “There’s no words for it.”

“If we can just get the big hit this year, I think we’ll be OK,” said Freeman before the series when discussing last year’s struggles against the Padres, which included a teamwide 0-for-20 streak with runners in scoring position. But he went 1-for-10 with two walks and didn’t drive in a run, passing up some very hittable pitches. Both Betts and Freeman have won MVP awards and championships in the recent past, but they picked the wrong three games to go dry — or, rather, the Diamondbacks pitchers did a damn good job of attacking them, as this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

The other Dodgers couldn’t pick them up. They didn’t even get 20 chances to drive in runs, going 4-for-17 with a walk with runners in scoring position; by comparison, the Diamondbacks went 7-for-24 with five walks and a pair of sacrifice flies with runners in scoring position. “We didn’t do it for three days,” said Freeman. “Not good by us.”

And so the Dodgers’ season ends in bitter disappointment for the third straight year. By my research, various runs of the Roberts-era Dodgers have produced the best won-loss record, the best run differential, and the best combination of the two over any five-year span of the post-1960 expansion era. That’s nice, but MLB doesn’t give out pieces of metal for such accomplishments. The league and the players’ union have decided they like the randomness and excitement of a postseason tournament better, and even with the profit motive driving the creation of an increasingly larger field, it’s tough to disagree given all the ensuing drama. The best you can do is keep showing up and hoping to get hot once in awhile, as the Dodgers have demonstrated, winning a single championship in a decade-plus stretch of division dominance, just as the Bobby Cox-era Braves did before them. The hardest fact of autumn is that sometimes it’s just not your year, no matter how many games you win.