The Dodgers Are Frightening Again
The Dodgers have had one of the weirdest seasons I’ve ever seen. Through August 25th, they were 91-36. And then, out of nowhere, they proceeded to lose 16 of 17, looking like one of the worst teams in baseball for almost three weeks. Their spot in the postseason was already secure, but their late-season collapse created an easy narrative that the Dodgers were headed for another playoff disappointment.
And when they drew the Diamondbacks — a club that had beaten them 11 of 19 times during the regular season, including six losses late in the year — in the first round, the narrative got even easier. The upstart team that wasn’t supposed to be here, the one that made the big left-field upgrade in July, would take down their division rival. The Dodgers might have been the better team in the first half of the year, but the Diamondbacks were ready to prove by way of their stronger finish that they were more equipped for October.
Well, so much for all that. Last night, the Dodgers completed a three-game sweep of the team that supposedly had their number. Once again, they look like the hottest team in baseball.
With these three victories, the Dodgers have now won nine of their last 10 — or 11 of their last 13, if that sounds more impressive to you. For the last two weeks, the Dodgers have again looked like the juggernaut that was in pursuit of the all-time win record at one point. And thanks to a few key changes, they look like a very scary NLCS or potential World Series opponent.
When the Dodgers acquired Yu Darvish at the deadline, there were some legitimate concerns about his season to that point. His strikeout rate was trending down, and in July, he posted his worst monthly totals of his career. After a dominant debut in Dodger blue and a decent follow-up, his next four starts were even worse than the end of his Rangers run.
Over the course of four starts from August 16th through September 8th, opposing batters hit .346/.414/.679 against Darvish. That’s a .450 wOBA allowed; Mike Trout’s career wOBA is .412, for reference. Darvish’s walks were up, his strikeouts were down, and his home-run rate was through the roof. He looked nothing like the second ace for which the Dodgers were hoping.
But as quickly as he turned into a batting-practice machine, Darvish has snapped out of his slump, and last night was the culmination of a four-start run that has basically been the exact opposite of the stretch that preceded it.
In his final three starts of the regular season, Darvish allowed just two runs in 19.1 innings pitched, running a nifty 21/1 K/BB ratio in the process. He didn’t allow a single home run in any of those three starts after allowing at least one in each of his five previous starts.
Darvish did finally give up another home run last night — to Daniel Descalso of all people — but he was otherwise completely dominant, striking out seven of 18 batters. Though his night ended with a scary hit-by-pitch, he pushed his K/BB ratio over his last four starts up to 28/1. Opposing batters have hit .132/.163/.181 against Darvish over that stretch.
This Darvish looks like the guy the Dodgers thought they were acquiring. And having another dominant starter like Darvish makes this the scariest rotation left.
One of the main reasons for their late-season losing streak was the inability to hold a lead, as nearly every pitcher tasked with getting the ball to Kenley Jansen failed. If you watched the Dodgers in September only, you’d think Dave Roberts would be forced again to use Kenley Jansen in the seventh inning throughout the playoffs, lacking trust in any of his middle relievers to bridge the gap after the starters were pulled.
This group, though, not only looks like they can be trusted; they actually look like a strength.
The big addition for October was Kenta Maeda’s move to the bullpen, since the team decided they’d be better off with him there than potentially just starting Game 4. And he couldn’t have looked better in the NLDS. In two outings, he faced six batters, retiring them on four strikeouts and two ground outs. A guy who averaged 91.5 mph with his fastball as a starter sat at 94 and topped out at 96 in his inning of relief, and his swing-and-miss slider rolled through the heart of the Diamondbacks order in his first outing.
This entire postseason, we’ve seen what good starters can do in shorter relief outings, and adding Maeda as a hard-throwing strikeout guy gives the team a quality bullpen option it didn’t have in the regular season. And paired with Brandon Morrow’s 100 mph fastball and an apparently fixed Tony Cingrani, the Dodgers now have three reliable middle relievers to get the ball to Jansen.
For all the talk of the dominance of the Yankee relievers this week, it’s actually LA’s relievers who’ve posted the lowest OPS allowed of any relief corps in the postseason so far, having held the Diamondbacks to just a .507 OPS in their 11.2 innings of work.
Pedro Baez might be on the roster, but the NLDS made it clear how Roberts is going to manage his bullpen when he has a lead. And with Morrow, Cingrani, Maeda, and Jansen, the Dodgers look like they have enough bullpen arms to keep it from being just the Kershaw and Jansen show again.
The Dodgers won their division series last year, too, but to do it, they required 101 pitches from Clayton Kershaw in Game 1, 110 pitches on three days’ rest in Game 4, and then a memorable bullpen appearance in Game 5. Jansen’s totals are almost as absurd; he went 27 pitches in Game 1, 16 in Game 3, 13 in Game 4, and then 51 more pitches in Game 5, on his third consecutive day of work.
By the time the NLCS started, the Dodgers were running on fumes. They just couldn’t match a deeper Cubs team that had finished off the Giants in four games and got to rest before the showdown for the pennant. While no one can say definitively why Kershaw got lit up in the series clinching defeat in Game 6, it was unreasonable to expect Kershaw and Jansen to carry the team by themselves indefinitely. And if Kershaw just ran out of gas after handling a ridiculous workload, who could blame him?
That won’t be an issue this year. The first-round sweep means the Dodgers will get four days off before they play again, and Kershaw will have gone eight days between his Game 1 starts in the NLDS and NLCS. Jansen did pitch in all three games against Arizona, but he threw just 16, 18, and 16 pitches in those outings, and now he’ll get a nice break before being asked to take the mound again.
Alex Wood, Ross Stripling, and Pedro Baez didn’t even appear in the LDS, while Josh Fields faced two batters and threw all of eight pitches, so if the Dodgers run into a scenario where they have an early deficit in an NLCS game and just need to eat some innings while saving their best arms, they’ll have plenty of well-rested pitchers from which to choose.
For once, fatigue shouldn’t be an issue for the Dodgers in the NLCS. If either the Cubs or Nationals are going to get through them to advance to the World Series, they’re going to have to beat a fresh, rested group that is again firing on all cylinders.
As this weird season has shown, things can turn in a moment’s notice, and we should never assume that what just happened will continue going forward. But the idea that a big September slump showed that LA was going to be an easy elimination once the playoffs began? The Dodgers just put that idea in the ground, and once again, they look like the team to beat in the National League.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
We goin to the ‘Ship y’all, we going to the ‘Ship what?
The “Narrative” that the Dbacks had the Dodgers number was laughable small sample size. they were 11 – 8 against the Dodgers, now they are 11-11.
11-8 with 6 wins coming during a clearly outlying stretch in the Dodgers’ season.
Dodgers also went 3-4 against the Dbacks early in the year when they didn’t yet have Taylor or Bellinger on the roster. Taylor was called up during the 2nd dbacks series but didn’t start; Bellinger was called up in the first game of the next series.
They only played 2 series against them when they were playing well and went 5-1.
Am I on the right site? Streaks? Much hay being made of a single game performance?
Yes, there is rest, and that’s interesting. Well, could be, if it went beyond nariative.
I have re-read the piece, and see nothing regarding a single game performance.
Fair enough, “great hay” was an exaggeration. I was thinking of the description of Darvish’s start, but in rereading that I think it’s more like a review of an important start than it is data used for projecting long run performance. Sorry, that was sloppy on my part.
I guess my complaint was that there is a lot of recentism in baseball analysis and this site largely avoids that. I think that is a good thing.
I thought the two articles on the Dodgers skid were really great at tamping that nariative down while pointing out what we did learn from it: that current year performance was not as good as previously thought. The latter article could be read as an admonition to pay no attention to the sequence of the wins and losses and the underlying performance and to just look at the seasons stats.
I feel like this article walks that back a bit. It’s most obvious in the section on Darvish.
I think you missed the point of those two previous articles which were
(a) The Dodgers are on a moderate losing streak and these things happen so no reason to panic, and
(b) The Dodgers are on a fairly historic losing streak, and these things tend not to just happen. Plus there are certain things going on that are cause for concern going forward.
This article updates with
(c) The Dodgers are winning again and more importantly seem to have addressed many of the concerns that the losing streak brought up.
There are certain areas where it makes sense to react more quickly as things develop: pitchers that are struggling (e.g. Darvish) can often take a while to figure things out, hitters without much track record that are slumping (e.g. Taylor) may not be able to make necessary adjustments. On the flip side, Darvish’s track record should make you more confident in a short run of good starts; now that Chris Taylor’s broken out of his slump, the fact that he put up almost 5 WAR this season looks a lot more relevant.
In (b) I think you’re ignoring the sentence, “A lot of the team’s early success was built on most everyone in the lineup dramatically outperforming their projections, and no longer can the team just assume that they’re going to get production from every spot in the order.”
Yes, the pitching looks a lot better, but the batting just isn’t as good as it looked for a long time there.
I also don’t see anything about Taylor and adjustments in this article. Am I missing it? His wRC+ in September/October was 62. Anyone can have a skid, but anyone can have a few good months too. For Taylor I’d look at his projections on the team page for a good estimate of what you can expect to see from him, it’s a 101 wRC+, which is great for a SS, but not as good as his 2017 regular season results.
I was referring to Taylor’s whole season; it took quite a while for his production to fall off, and it was due to a swing change that produced improved contact rates and quality that he started on over the winter. He did produce a lot less in September, but his xwOBA was still quite good (suggesting he was likely unlucky for a while, which happens, just like getting lucky for a while happens, which he certainly did early in the year when his wOBA was insane and his xwOBA was merely good. In fact, his September xwOBA was higher than his May xwOBA when he was on his insane tear).
Certainly the Dodgers weren’t likely to have 4 win players at every position, but when they were losing all the time, many of their completely average to good players were absolutely horrific. During the losing streak, Yasmani Grandal had a wRC+ of -1, and Curtis Granderson had a +1. That’s literally pitcher-quality hitting over a 17 game span from 2 guys who are established major league regulars with career wRC+ of 110 or so.
Just returning to established levels is significantly better performance than what was going on in late August and early September; and whatever was going on, they seem to have returned to doing the underlying fundamentals (like having the most selective lineup top to bottom in MLB) that were underpinning their success for a majority of the season. The Dodgers didn’t go out and win 51 out of 60 games just because some guys got hot and lucky for a while; they were extremely good AND lucky at the same time, which is what you need to be to do things like go 51-9, or 22-1. Extreme results are the convergence of ability and good fortune.
Look, I’m not going to tell you that the Dodgers aren’t a great team. The Dodgers have the eighth best lineup by wOBA in MLB or fourth by wRC+, which is really good. But I’d say they are about evenly matched in the NLCS against either team and perhaos a bit outmatched vs the ALCS winner. And the FG win percentages agree with me there.
My criticism of this article is that it reads like a bit of feel good puff for the Dodgers faithful that is what I come to this site to avoid.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of analysis. We know that player performance is noisy around a general true talent level. Something that is more difficult is to understand when the variance is just randomness (because there’s a lot of randomness in baseball), and what isn’t.
What we can see is that players perform up or down from (but in the vicinity of) their true talent level over stretches of time. It can be very difficult at the time to determine whether this is what’s happening or whether it is due to the aforementioned randomness, but we know it’s there. Baseball is a game where a player makes an adjustment and gets very good results for a while, until other teams have an opportunity to see what they’re doing differently and then use another avenue of attack. Pitchers get mechanically wrong, make changes and get right, and their results are changing not just due to randomness but due to fundamental changes in performance level.
In the playoffs, we don’t have the benefit of waiting to see if this breakout is real or luck-driven (and luck-driven isn’t even always the right term, sometimes its driven by a major adjustment like a swing change, and it takes some time to develop a new method of attack that neutralizes the new advantage, see Thames, Eric), instead we need to look at other details that might show us things.
For example the Dodgers have worked with Yu Darvish to make some specific changes, which Eno wrote an article about here recently. Darvish made some of the changes immediately, had a couple good starts with them, and then teams adjusted and he struggled until he finishes making the mechanical adjustment that changed his arm slot and the way some of his pitches are actually performing. Since he debuted the arm slot change in game, he’s got 35:1 K/BB ratio over 5 starts. Eventually there will be a tip or a change someone makes to try to counter that or they will learn how his pitches are now performing differently, but for a while their preparation is useless because pitcher on the mound isn’t throwing pitches that do what they expect.
Since we no longer have the benefit of a large sample, we have to try to drill down to that level of detail to determine whether we think a real change has happened. There are some significant reasons to think that several things have substantially changed in ways that mitigate the real struggles the Dodgers experienced for a period of 3 weeks or so: Darvish finishing his adjustments, stabilization in the bullpen, and the hitters returning to their previously selective and disciplined form. Some of those things had wavered in the summer when the Dodgers had little urgency in any of their games and were frequently clearly disengaged in comparison to their opponents. They got swept in 6 games by the Diamondbacks in 2 series where Archie Bradley was yelling and pumping his fists on the mound after striking guys out, and they were basically shrugging on their way back to the dugout because they had nothing to play for and zero intensity. It’s not a surprise they performed poorly (and probably got into some bad habits they had to battle to emerge from) when they were engaged in such an extended period of coasting.
unfortunately i can only upvote this once.
I’d prefer Fangraphs wait until the playoffs provide a sufficient sample size – sometime around game 6 of the World Series, if it’s necessary – before the posting of any analysis.
I gotta commend Dave Roberts for his performance this past series. With all the angst regarding pitcher usage in some of these DS games, Roberts seemed to always make the right move with his bullpen and with pinch hitters. We’ll see if he can keep it up the next series.
Could not agree more. As a Diamondbacks fan watching, it was clear to see who the more prepared and well-equipped side was.
To me the most head-scratching, Britton-on-the-bench thing about the Arizona game management: the TV cameras kept showing the guy who was by far the best Diamondbacks pitcher in the building, looking healthy and well-rested, and yet the D’backs never put Randy Johnson on the mound.
Brandon Webb could have gone on 1,600 days rest in a pinch as well.
I would not bet against 54 year old Randy Johnson still looking dominant in an inning of work, no lie.
It’d be like Michael Jordan dominating in a 15 minute game of 1 on 1. The Big Unit would be in the ice bath for a week but man would that inning be a show.
The only complaint I had was leaving Kershaw in for the 7th in game 1. Granted, it must be pretty hard to take Kershaw out, especially if he doesn’t want to come out. Luckily it still worked out.
I wasn’t a fan of his quick hook of Maeda in his first appearance and then leaving Watson out there for as long as he did. It seemed like he had more faith in Watson facing a righty than Maeda facing a lefty which I’m not sure I share. But its a minor issue and maybe he had some data on the matchups that I don’t.
Are the dodgers really back? The dbacks are probably the weakest nlds team and kershaw (4R in 6) and hill (2R in 4) didn’t look that great. Darvish looked good but after that season I wouldn’t bet on them.
Don’t get me wrong,they are still a very good team with a solid offense and super deep BP but if the reports that several dodgers pitchers (kershaw amongst them) have lost velo are true I wouldn’t really rank them above the cubs and nats.
The dodgers rotation is deep but everyone but kershaw has question marks behind him with occasional dominance but also health and durability issues.
Hill or darvish can throw a no hitter but also blow up quickly, moreso than for example arrieta or quintana for the cubs.
I’d rather face the cubs than the diamondbacks but the differences are probably small enough that it is personal preference.
I don’t know why you’re saying that Arrieta isn’t a risk to blow up quickly in a start. He’s pitched twice since coming back from his leg injury, and the second of those starts was a blow up: 3 innings pitched, 5 runs allowed (3 earned), 2 HR’s allowed as well as 2 triples. He faced 16 hitters in that game and gave up 4 extra base hits.
Or, it’s a point in their favor that they beat the DBacks so easily even with so-so performances from their top 2?
Your point would stand if there was reason to worry about either of them. Instead, Hill had about as strong a finish as you can ask for (2.81 ERA, 54/9 K/BB in last 7 starts), and Kershaw might win the Cy Young if voters are feeling regressive.
Kershaw was regularly throwing 94 mph fastballs in his start. I think his velocity is fine.
Kershaw started out ABOVE his normal average velocity for the first inning and a half, fell to his normal velocity for several innings, and then faded 1 to 2 MPH below normal at the end. He probably gassed himself by throwing 95 for the first inning, when he threw 1/4 of his pitches (24 pitches) significantly harder than his normal average velocity (which is about 93MPH). He was amped with adrenaline and threw harder than normal and paid for it at the end.
Again?
lol that can be interpreted as “they were never frightening” or “they were never not frightening.”
I meant the second one…but really, I’d say they were always frightening but with distinctly different meanings of the word.
You’re right about that; since as a Dodger fan I went quickly from very not frightened to very not not frightened.
One piece missing from this excellent summary is the Dodgers offense, and despite scoring 20 runs in 3 LDS games, that’s still a bit of an issue, in my view.
After averaging 5.02 R/G in the first third of the year and 5.13 in the second, LA averaged 4.11 R/G in the last third, with comparable drops in all slash stats. And while they recovered from the 1-16 swoon with a 12-6 finish, the offense still wasn’t cooking like before.
Fwiw, the swoon wasn’t all that much about losing leads, since they only scored 2.6 runs per game, with 0 or 1 in 8 of the 17. Isolating the swoon distracts from the fact that LA’s scoring was down for the last third even if you pull out the swoon.
In that last third, Seager, Taylor and Grandal slumped, and Pederson and Gonzalez played their way off the LDS roster. Puig’s improvement couldn’t cover the stink from the rest of the OF, and 2B has given little all year.
And while their .298 BA and .397 OBP in the LDS is lovely, modern postseason baseball is more about slugging than even the regular season. They hit “just” 3 HRs, and their HR rate was down in the last third of the season along with everything else. (And btw, the offense was just as culpable as a tired pitching staff in last year’s LCS, with 17 runs and 4 HRs over 6 games.)
I still think they’re a terrific team, and a favorite to reach the WS. But winning that is a much taller order.
I also wonder what the dodgers offense true Talent Level ist. Bellinger is really good but probably more like a 130 wRC+ guy (at least at this point maybe he can improve more) rather than around 180 which he did during the dodgers hot streak. turner is really good but he is 32 and probably hasn’t improved from a 120-130 wRC+ guy to a 170 wRC+ guy.
Puigs K/BB/ISO really improved so he should indeed be better although you never know with him. seager is the real deal but how sustainable are taylors and barnes lines?
Again this will probably get me some downvotes but while their offense is good I trust the lineup of the cubs or astros/Yankees/Indians in the other league more (although Indians also have 2-3 question marks in their lineup).
the dodgers have a good offense but not a super offense.
Bro, I just don’t think you like the Dodgers that much. Must be a Giant fan. Remember you posting this before the year started. Once again you were wrong on your “analysis”. This is what you posted a few months ago:
Dominikk85
Does anyone else think that the often praised Dodgers depth is a little misleading? The do have a ton of average players (1.5 to 2.5 war projected) and that is worth a lot (some rebuilding teams only have like 2 to 3 average or better players) but in the end a lot of he production hinges on kershaw and seager.
Of course that is true for any team but if you compare them to the cubs, the cubs could compensate a loss of bryant or Lester better than the Dodgers could a loss of their two superstars.
Basically the Dodgers are a solid WC contender plus two superstars which of course equals to a very good team but to me they are not a juggernaut like the Cubs. That doesn’t mean they can’t win 100 games or even the WS, they certainly have the potential to do this if everything goes right but they are not a super team like the Cubs are IMO (which doesn’t mean they couldn’t beat them if the stars align right).
If we devide the players in superstars (5 plus war), very good players around 3 to 4 and average ish (1.5 to 2.5) you get by using projections:
Cubs
Super: Bryant, rizzo
Very good: Lester, arrieta, Russell, contreras, zobrist,Heyward, probably schwarber (zips has him lower but I think after is WS showings 3 war is not unrealistic), hendricks
Average : lackey,baez, almora, Davis, Montgomery
Dodgers:
Super: kershaw, seager
Very good: Peterson, turner, grandal, maybe maeda, hill (projects as average but I bump him to very good, maybe fair for docking puig)
Average ish: puig (projected for 3 but after last year he won’t get enough PAs plus he might not be as good anyway), gonzalez, Barnes, Forsythe, Thompson, segedin, toles, Urias, Kazmir, Jansen
So the Dodgers match the cubs in the superstar category and maybe even beat them in the average ish player category but they clearly lose out in the very good category (and two of them in hill and maeda have quite some risk too so it very well could be just 3 very good players).
The Dodgers are very good and could beat the cubs but still imo there is a pretty big gap between the stars and the rest, you got two superstars, 3 to 5 very good players (depending on the luck, but hill is a risk,turner had his physical problems too and and maeda must prove he is really a 3 win guy, even grandal has his risk ) and then a ton of average guys.
The cubs on the other hand have to relatively unrisky superstars,and about 8 guys who are relatively sure bets (compared to the Dodgers who have fewer and more risky guys) and then some average guys albeit a little fewer than the Dodgers.
Again it doesn’t matter how you get the wins and the Dodgers could win a lot but still a lot on the dodgers hinges on about 7 very good players of which at least 3 (hill, turner,grandal) have an elevated risk.
The Dodgers depth is good but only as long the key guys don’t get injured, especially in the middle infield they basically have no real mlb ready depth in their highly touted farm or the majors.
The cubs could easily replace even bryant (put in baez) or rizzo (put in schwarber) but the Dodgers could not replace grandal, turner, seager or kershaw at all). The cubs couldn’t really replace arrieta or Lester either but they would still have two very good starters left.
So the Dodgers are a good team but maybe not as good as they look on paper if they eveneed only have average injury luck.
8 months 3 days ago
how exactly was I wrong in my assesment? I admit that I might be a bit biased toward the cubs but I think it is true that the cubs have more reliable 3+ WAR Players.
what I did not predict was bellinger (thought he would arrive in 2018 as many prospect analysts did) and schwarber faltering (which nobody predicted).I also might have overrated the sustainbility of the cubs defense.
Overall I don’t think the cubs are much worse than the dodgers if at all. the cubs played 670 ball in the second half and even their first half struggle was mostly related to bad luck (280 in the first half with almost equal BB, K, ISO).
maybe I’m really becoming irrational in Playoff time but while I think the dodgers are a very good Team I don’t think they are really superior to the cubs.
I think that we can pretty confidently state that the Dodgers are the favorite if they wind up against the Cubs in the next series. This is not last year’s Cubs, and the Dodgers have been a juggernaut for most of the year. Of course, the Cubs can beat them, but there’s very little rational argument that the Cubs are as good as the Dodgers this year.
What a perfect example of an ad hominem.
What no one seems to take into account on the late season swoon by the Dodgers is Roberts lineups. Know he was auditioning but batting Granderson so much and putting him in the #1 spot, then cleanup was totally stupid. His he will come around just doesn’t fly. Playing Grandal over Barnes another dumb choice. Grandal hits fairly good from the left side when no one is on but a choke specialist with runners in scoring position, especially with a man on 3rd with less than 2 outs, give you odds that he will strike out. Playing these 2 in critical spots of the lineup can cause the whole lineup to implode, which they did. Another factor to the swoon was key players hurt. Granderson reminds me of Roberts(or upper management) putting Hatcher out there with the game on the line. Granderson looks totally inept at the plate and his defense is less than average.
Only the Dodgers storming through the security on horseback, and cannon balling into the Diamondbacks swimming pool, could have made it sweeter.