The Los Angeles Dodgers have baseball’s highest payroll, its best pitcher, its best prospects on both sides of the ball, and (arguably) its brightest front office star running the whole show. On paper, they should be the class of the MLB, competing for the best record in baseball en route to an awesome Clayton Kershaw– Jake Arrieta matchup in game 1 of the NLCS.
Instead, they are 23-23, 4.5 games behind the Giants for the lead in the NL West and losers of 6 of their last 10. With his dominance last night, Clayton Kershaw lowered his season ERA to 1.48 and lengthened his stretch of posting a sub-2 ERA to a staggering 1115 innings. If he doesn’t provide the team with a guaranteed win every 5th day, he comes closer than any body else in the game today. But past Kershaw, this is not a very good team.
In fact, without Clayton Kershaw, fangraphs says the Dodgers would be 3.8 wins worse, a below .500 team and one that might trail Colorado and Arizona in the NL West right now. I think it’s reasonable to say that so far this season, the difference between a 4th place Dodgers team and a 2nd place Dodgers team is Kershaw.
The Dodgers’ pitching staff is 3rd in all of baseball with a 7.3 WAR, but Kershaw accounts for 3.8 of that (for the non-mathematically inclined, that’s a full 50%). Without him, the Dodgers would fall to between 16th and 18th, right around where the Indians, Royals, and Marlins are.
Coincidentally, 16th is right where the Dodgers’ offense ranks in WAR with just 5.7. Of those wins, rookie Corey Seager, baseball’s number 1 prospect coming into the season, leads the team with 1.6. He’s followed by ancient second basemen Chase Utley with 1.3 and Joc Pederson, who strikes out in more than a quarter of his plate appearances, with 1.
Notably missing from those top 3 are Adrian Gonzalez and Yasiel Puig. Gonzalez, is striking out at a higher rate than at any point in his career, save for a cup of coffee he had with Texas more than a decade ago, and is a 0.1 WAR player, posting just a 105 wRC+, making him an average first baseman. Puig’s streakiness this season has been well documented and he’s looking more and more like a super-talented flash in the pan than a real All-Star caliber player, which is a serious problem for LA because, despite their payroll flexibility, this is team built around just a couple stars and seriously lacking any real depth.
On offense, Gonzalez and Puig were expected to carry the load. There was some real excitement this spring around Corey Seager because he had the potential to be a big third piece. Obviously, that plan has failed. Still even if it was working perfectly and all three of those guys were mashing, the Dodgers have way too much riding on the likes of Justin Turner, Kike Hernandez, and Trayce Thompson. It’s true that all three of those guys can be good in spurts, Hernandez started off hot and Thompson has had some big homers lately for instance, but none of the three has any business as a starting position player, especially not on a team with such high aspirations. All three can contribute, to be sure. But the fringy batting lines and marginal WARs they’ve currently all posted seem to be pretty well in line with what they’re capable of doing in the MLB and point to bench roles and pinch hitting duty more than anything else.
The problem of lineup depth is compounded by veterans who are making the team worse. Howie Kendrick is not the player he once was. He homered this past weekend for the first time this season and his average, on base, slugging, and WAR have all fallen off a cliff this season. While his BABIP suggests that he might rebound a bit, his wRC+ of 62 is pitiful at second base and a 32 year old middle infielder seems just as likely to be in steep decline as off to a slow start.
There’s no debate about Carl Crawford; he isn’t even a shadow of the player he once was. In 22 games as a part time outfielder, he’s managed not to homer nor steal a base and his batting average is jusssst over the Mendoza line. He’s been worth .7 wins less than a replacement level left fielder and his wRC+, a stat in which 100 is average, stands at a paltry 35. It’s no wonder Trayce Thompson has played in 15 more games than Crawford. And Crawford is making roughly 46 times more money than Noah Syndergaard.
The guys who have been counted on to be regulars in LA have underperfomed so badly that backups need to step in ahead of them, leaving those players exposed and leaving the Dodgers with a very weak lineup. The problem isn’t Puig and Gonzalez. Well, it is but they’ll likely come around and if they don’t, given their salaries that’s a whole different issue. The problem is everyone else. The Dodgers don’t have a starting caliber third basemen or a competent offensive catcher and somehow the plan all along was to platoon two creaky and declining second basemen all year. Things could be looking much worse in LA if Chase Utley hadn’t hit so well over the first two months.
All this is on the front office.
So much was put on the loss of Zack Greinke to the Diamondbacks this past winter and that has cost this team – just look at the first couple paragraphs about Clayton Kershaw’s outsized importance on the pitching staff. But all that talk overshadowed a roster full of holes. The Dodgers are above average in centerfield and shortstop, two vital positions, and theoretically above average in right field and at first base. Chances are they’ll start to heat up over the summer but they’ll be carrying a lot of dead weight down the stretch. Andrew Freidman and the rest of the front office needs to be planning now to build a rotation behind Kersahw and Kenta Maeda, a bullpen ahead of Kenley Jansen, and a full starting lineup. Clearly, counting on aging and overpriced stars in a few places can’t compensate for black holes elsewhere. Clayton Kershaw can’t do this alone.
-Max Frankel
