Slump may not matter for Dodgers
Dave Roberts played nine seasons in the minors before establishing himself in the big leagues when he was nearly 30, launching an itinerant 10-year career that preceded a five-year coaching stint and now his current role as the Los Angeles Dodgers manager.
In all that time, Roberts said he never endured a period as trying as the 2½-week stretch that concluded with the Dodgers’ 5-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night that halted an 11-game losing streak.
After all, the 1-16 skid had reduced L.A.’s division lead to “only” nine games.
It’s a reflection of the enormous pressure on the Dodgers to end their 28-year World Series drought that nearly being assured of claiming the National League West crown — they clinched a playoff spot Tuesday and have a magic number of eight — provided little comfort during the agonizing fortnight.
A World Series-or-bust mentality had taken over their followers as the Dodgers piled up the victories on the way to a 91-36 record — a stunning .717 winning percentage — through Aug. 25.
“I think people were maybe talking about our postseason chances in a way that was too deterministic,” general manager Farhan Zaidi said, “and this stretch has shown baseball is hard and unpredictable and humbling and maybe caused people to recalibrate their expectations.”
That might be one of the few positives to glean from a spell of futility that baffled even the club’s ample collection of executives.
The majors’ most prolonged losing streak this season and the longest in L.A. history also served to expose several worrisome spots that must be addressed before the Dodgers make their fifth consecutive trip to the playoffs. Two reached only as far as the division series, while the other two died in the NL Championship Series.
The chief concern might center on the rotation, which suddenly looks unstable behind ace Clayton Kershaw, the team’s only winning pitcher since Aug. 26.
All-Star Alex Wood has seen his velocity diminish and yielded a 6.35 ERA in his last three starts. Fellow left-hander Rich Hill has been steady, but other than his Aug. 23 near-no-hitter, has not pitched more than six innings in any start since July. Hyun-Jin Ryu and Kenta Maeda have had starts skipped.
Most puzzling has been Yu Darvish, acquired at the nonwaiver trade deadline to serve as a strong playoff No. 2 behind Ker- shaw. After a spectacular debut in Dodger blue, Darvish has produced a 6.94 ERA in five starts while continuing a maddening trend to run up his pitch count too early. It’s not clear now where he would line up in the postseason rotation.
A bullpen anchored by the unassailable Kenley Jansen, who has struck out 101 batters in 622⁄ 3 innings, showed signs of cracking as well during the slump. Setup man Pedro Baez was especially vulnerable, allowing six earned runs in his five September appearances and evoking jeers at Dodger Stadium.
On Tuesday, Jansen made a point of telling Baez to stay positive.
“There’s no reason to panic,” Jansen said of the teamwide collapse. “Nobody wants to lose 11 in a row, but these are things that happen in baseball. We were having an incredible season, and then this happened. It’s just a tough stretch.”
It also afflicted the offense, which produced an average of 2.4 runs in the 15 games before the series against the Giants, in part because lineup mainstays Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger missed time with injuries.
Roberts saw signs of a turnaround when the Dodgers overcame an early four-run deficit in an 8-6 loss Monday as well as in Tuesday’s four-run outburst in the fourth. Still, he warned of the need to improve situational hitting in October.
“That’s when pitchers bear down the most,” he said. “That’s when hitters tend to go out of the strike zone more. When you’re facing ones and twos in the postseason, when every pitch is more magnified, you can’t put enough importance on it.”
The Dodgers traded for outfielder Curtis Granderson, a veteran of two World Series and 51 postseason games, to add punch to the offense. Not long after his Aug. 19 arrival, they took advantage of the September roster expansion to reward several of their minor leaguers, boosting the number of active players to 39.
In search of explanations for the team’s sudden downturn, some have blamed a possible change in team chemistry created by the late additions.
Zaidi is not buying it. “We started struggling at the end of August before a lot of these guys even showed up. And to the point about chemistry, it’s still the same group of guys leading the clubhouse,” he said. “For me to find any theory credible, I would have wanted to have heard somebody talking about it on Aug. 25.”
Granderson, Jansen and Seager point to the vagaries of baseball and its 162-game season when asked to explain the slump, with Seager saying, “If this was May or June, it wouldn’t be talked about like it is now.”
And it might not be much more if the Dodgers resume a more normal path — say, start taking two out of three from most opponents after losing five series in a row — the rest of the way.