The Dodgers’ Minor Roster Shake-Up
We’re a few hours away from Game 1 of the World Series, which means we have a few hours to analyze the World Series rosters that were released this afternoon.
The Astros are making no changes to their roster. The same 25 players who were a part of the ALCS roster will also have a World Series experience.
The #Astros have finalized their 2017 #WorldSeries roster: pic.twitter.com/yIgsDYAUTA
— Houston Astros (@astros) October 24, 2017
Perhaps the intrigue with the Astros’ World Series roster is whether A.J. Hinch will actually trust his bullpen, a subject Dave tackled earlier today. Also of some interest is the distribution of lefties and righties in Houston’s staff: only two of the former, Dallas Keuchel and Francisco Liriano, will be available for Hinch for the duration of the Series. Perhaps that’s a good thing: as I noted in a post examining the Dallas Keuchel’s Game 1 start, the Dodgers typically crush lefties.
So it’s more of the same from the Astros. The Dodgers, meanwhile, have made some changes.
#ThisTeam! Here's the #Dodgers' #WorldSeries roster. pic.twitter.com/aqRa4o3cjY
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 24, 2017
As expected, star shortstop Corey Seager returns to the team after sitting out the NLCS with a back strain. With the addition of Seager, L.A. gets another left-handed bat with which to combat the righty-heavy Astros. The Dodgers now have six left-handed or switch-hitting batters among their 13 position players
The Dodgers have also added a 12th pitcher in Brandon McCarthy, whose strikeout rate has dipped in 2017 but who can perhaps soak up multiple innings in a relief capacity.
What’s a bit of a surprise is their decision to subtract Curtis Granderson from the roster and add Joc Pederson. Pederson was left off the NLDS roster. He was a late add to the NLCS roster but was used sparingly.
The move is a bit curious, since the Dodgers acquired Granderson ostensibly to replace Pederson, who again struggled offensively in 2017, posting a .212/.331/.407 slash line. Pederson was dispatched to the minors in late August after hitting .156 during a 28-game stretch following the All-Star break.
Now Pederson, still scuffling with the bat — he’s logged just five plate appearances this postseason — replaces Granderson.
While Granderson has struggled in the postseason, going 1-for-15 with eight strikeouts and no walks over 15 plate appearances — he’s still a threat to change a game with one swing, particularly with the right-handed nature of the Astros’ staff.
Granderson has a 0.78 GB/FB ratio for his carer and a 0.67 GB/FB ratio this season. He was an air-baller before air-balling and launch angle were a thing. (Pederson posted a 1.35 mark this season.) If you want to be really optimistic about Pederson’s bat, he has made about the same amount of quality air contact per pitch (2.42%) as Granderson (2.47%), according to Statcast’s “barrels” and “quality contact” measures.
The Dodgers produced one of the league’s greatest reductions in ground-ball rate this season (-3.5 points) while also recording an increase in launch angle from an average of 10.0 degrees last year to 11.6 degrees this season, ranking 13th in the majors. The Dodgers are listening to Justin Turner.
But with another premium left-handed bat on the roster in Seager, it appears as though the Dodgers are trading Granderson’s superior bat — though only slightly superior in 2017 — for Pederson’s superior glove and defensive versatility.
Dave Roberts’ reasoning for adding Pederson to the World Series roster is likely the same as it was when adding him to the NLCS roster. He elaborated on that logic with the L.A. Times:
“Joc just gives us versatility,” manager Dave Roberts said. “The ability to play all three outfield spots, the athleticism on the bases. But also just to have that at-bat. So whether it’s off the bench, or to start, he just gives us that versatility.”
While not a particularly controversial decision — and perhaps even a sensible one — it’s a bit of a surprise to see a player replace his replacement on the most important roster of a baseball season. But with Seager back, the Dodgers can perhaps squeeze more value out of that position player spot with Pederson as a defensive and baserunning substitute. And with that, the rosters are set, and we are ready for what could very well be a fantastic series.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Can you blame them? Granderson has been awful since he was traded.
Yeah, Granderson has looked completely lost.
He is usually terrible. He floats his season numbers with hot streaks but day-in-day-out he is a really bad offensive player. Composite statistics don’t capture how consistently bad he is. If you are a non-contender, then you may be able to afford to have him in the lineup, but I am happy that LAD isn’t moving forward with him.
Yes, I can blame a team for recency-biasing their way into thinking four weeks of AB outweigh a decade-long career. The “pick one of Granderson and Pederson” decision is a bit of a toss-up in any case (my answer is it’s better to keep both and drop a bullpen arm, since Roberts has shown no willingness to use the back end of his bullpen anyhow, even in blowouts) but “how has he played since the trading deadline” is a dumb reason to do pretty much anything.
Well if you want to go by longer track records, Joc Pederson has similar overall numbers to Granderson over the last 2-3 years. So I don’t see any real case for going with Granderson over Pederson.
But Granderson, what the hell has gotten into him? He looked done at the beginning of the year and done at the end of the year, and somewhere in there he hit like an all-star…would you really want to let him play his way out of a slump in the world series? Eventually he will right the ship, but there are only a few games.
(I know what you’re going to say; you’d bank on him rebounding to his normal levels in this series. I am not so sure, and wouldn’t blame anyone who disagrees).
I’m not saying he should start, or even that I’d necessarily use him before Pederson in some situations. He certainly looks like he’s lost some bat speed and it’s probably reasonable to think he’s on the downslope of the aging curve now. But as a bat off the bench and outfield/DH/PH depth I’d have wanted him on the roster, myself, especially given Roberts’ clear unwillingness to use the back end of the bullpen.
I wouldn’t say that Roberts has an unwillingness to use the back end of the bullpen.
It is simply that the Dodgers haven’t been in situations that calls for it.
SP-Maeda-Morrow-Jansen is probably the optimal game plan for the Dodgers.
In the only game that the Dodgers lost in the postseason, Stripling, Watson, Maeda, Cingrani, and Fields were used.
lol yeah it’s not like they played two successive blowout games at the end of the NLCS or anything
In the last game, they knew they were getting a 5 day rest before the WS so no need to restrict usage.
And since when is 4-1 at end of 6th a blowout?
Remember, Roberts put up Stripling for 9th and resorted to using Jansen only after Stripling gave two consecutive hits.
I don’t know what others would have done differently.
He was good… quite some time ago. Nobody is talking about his career here. We are talking about what he is, which is worthless at this point in his career.
If you don’t fully trust Seager to handle things defensively, you might want to throw Taylor at SS more. And if you do that, then you probably would rather have Pederson in CF than Granderson or any of the other OF options.
Not sure I believe that adding McCarthy though is worth it to take Granderson off the bench. Although I guess with Maeda being used more as a traditional reliever and not a long-man option, that essentially left only Stripling as a long-man out of the pen, so they likely wanted a second multi-inning option in case if the games went deep or a starter didn’t last long.
Plus, it’s nice to have a real innings-eater other than Stripling. If we’re drubbed in a game, it would be a crying shame to waste even our lesser relievers.
We have seen hurt Seager at SS for a while now. It’s not that bad – maybe not even worse than Taylor, but it is really hard to compare. I know that Taylor is not a brilliant SS…
This is what I was expecting to happen, too. Roberts showed conclusively in the NLCS that he had no interest in ever using the whole bullpen, so, especially with Seager’s health an open question and the DH in three games, why not carry another position player?
Good point.
Beyond a potential late inning defensive substitution, that also could be Seager at DH with Taylor at SS and Pederson in CF for the games in Houston, or at least the 2 of those 3 with expected RH starting pitchers for Houston.
That alignment makes Granderson and Ethier fairly redundant even for DH games, as they were for much of the two prior series. There are only two of the eight games so far this postseason in which the Dodgers used both of them in the same game. One can debate Ethier vs. Granderson, and maybe that decision is being driven too much by the small sample of Ethier having one good game in the NLCS (Game 3).
Ethier as well as Pederson are relevant to the thought process for this roster, however.
Given Alex Wood’s second half struggles and what the Astros do to lefties, I think we’re going to see a surprising use of Brandon McCarthy in game 4, possibly in some kind of tandem start role.
I don’t think the Dodgers can afford to let the suddenly homer-prone Alex Wood go through the Astros lineup multiple times.
Given that the Astros have no scary lefties whatsoever, its possible McCarthy is simply more valuable due to being a RHP.
Remember the Dodgers were seriously considering using Wood in the bullpen and carrying Hyun-jin Ryu as the 4th starter, which was derailed by Ryu taking a line-drive off his pitching forearm in his second to last start.
McCarthy has been rehabbing his yips and has been pitching full speed for the ‘stay hot team’, the group of guys who aren’t on the roster but might be added in the future (like where Pederson was in the NLDS), and its possible he looks recovered enough to use.
I love those moves by the Dodgers. As bad as Joc has been, Granderson is just as worthless with the bat and not really a core member of that group while also being a poor defender. Joc has more pop than Grandy despite what any metric says. I wouldn’t trust either to not embarrass themselves at this point, but at least Joc can help in the outfield. I was always wondering why they don’t have McCarthy on that roster as well. He has been an anchor in that rotation for the first half the past few years, then he kind of fades away. If he is healthy, then he seems like a perfect bullpen candidate – he throws hard enough and generates groundballs… sounds good to me.
Why come to FanGraphs at all if you’re going to say stuff “despite what any metric says”?
I just assume that there is some select split or stat that tells whatever lie you want to believe, because there is. Its basic misuse of statistics, which is a plague. Nobody even quoted anything, I was being preemptive. There are enough splits and metrics here that you can make any assertion that you want and support it with facts. I was just saying that I don’t care for that counter-argument.
Believe it or not, you don’t have to swallow down all saber-metrics without thinking about it. Look at all the absurdities that get blogged about over the course of each month. Would I be better off just believing everything I read? Would this community be better if none of us thought for ourselves? It is people questioning things that created this movement, and here you go trying to chase dissenters away. There are too many people here that blindly follow along. You should be happy that not everyone does.
Hard hit rate, exit velocity, ISO, etc…these would be good ways to evaluate “pop.” No need to denigrate “metrics” here. Generally speaking you want more metrics rather than fewer to have convergent validity. And if they don’t agree, then you would want to delve into the methodology of them to figure out whether one or more of them are being used in an inappropriate context.
Ironically, refusing to look at *any* metrics to test your theory is also a form of confirmation bias.
Sometimes things are a lot more simple than people want them to be. Joc has big pop and that isn’t disputed, that I am aware of. I have seen it with my own eyes and I trust them. As I mentioned, I was just trying to preempt the argument. I am not in the camp that you need data to support what you already know. There are a lot of things that I don’t know and this isn’t one of them. I trust my eyes over most data when it comes to baseball. I have interest in data where I can’t use my eyes. Lots of people don’t know how to use their eyes, so data becomes the pinnacle of analysis for them.
I realize that your reply was meant to be helpful, so I apologize for the negative tone of my first reply. I realize now that I am kind of getting trolled and that kind of put me on the defensive.
Yes, you would be better off believing more of what you read. On the evidence of your posts one can conclude with a fair degree of confidence that most people who write things are smarter than you.
LOL I have buried several posts here. At one point I was probably the main person (at least one of the main ones) pointing out juiced balls.
I get what team you play for and that’s cool too. We don’t have to be enemies, but by all means continue with that simplistic view. Smart doesn’t have anything to do with this conversation FYI, but insulting me is in-line with what you have tried to do so far. What is the point that you are arguing with exactly? I don’t think there is one. As seen below, the numbers do support my opinion of Joc having power, so…
I feel like this article is overstating the difference between the two players both as a hitter and as a fielder.
Based on Granderson’s age and his recent struggles, it is not too hard to argue that Granderson is not a better hitter than Pederson and even if he was, the difference is really really small especially against right handed pitchers.
And as a center fielder, Pederson is average at best and his baserunning numbers have been consistently worse than Granderson for the past four seasons.
One thing that is not addressed is that Joc is a Dodger. He probably has a future with the organization. Its the right thing to do given the similarities. Joc may make it through 2017 to be a productive player going forward. Granderson is done. If they leave Joc off the roster, then he is probably toast – in a Dodger uniform at least. These are people, not numbers, and this is the right move.
I’m sorry but the whole discussion in this article on Pederson vs. Granderson makes no sense whatsoever. It is mentioned that Pederson has struggled, yet Granderson has struggled just as much. If you want to go back to last year, we find Joc with a 128 wRC+ and Granderson at 114.
Joc also averaged 96.1 MPH on balls hit in the air this year, which was 15th in the league and better than Springer, Sanchez, Contreras, Harper, Schwarber, and many other established power hitters. His dip in power looks mostly like a fluke to me. He also cut his K rate all the way down to 21% from last year’s 27.3%, which is one of the first things you notice on his player page. BABIP was an unlucky .241 too.
But of course you don’t even need to get into the details to see that Pederson and Granderson are highly comparable players overall. I personally think Joc is better, but it is pretty obvious that they are at least similar. It is certainly unwarranted to claim that Granderson’s bat is “superior” with so little supporting evidence.
I agree they’re very similar. I’d be loathe to say there’s “so little supporting evidence” to support that Grandy is a better choice. For 2017, Pederson came in at a 95 OPS+, while Granderson was, for the entire season, at 103. Pretty significant difference. Pederson was sent down to the minors when Granderson was acquired. And in all actuality, basing this decision on such a small sample size (his performance after the trade) while ignoring his 14 year career seems specious. But even while hitting .161 for LA, he homered 7 times in 112 at bats. That does not suck.
Hitting .161 does suck, a lot.