In a sport that rarely spawns dynasties, the Los Angeles Dodgers are world leaders. They are among the smartest teams in the majors, as well as among the richest. Aggressive but pragmatic. Decorated with star talent, but enhanced by considerable depth. His movements over the past half-decade have rarely been motivated by need, but more so to improve margins, or to seize opportunities or, when the time comes, gluttony. This low season has become a perfect snapshot.
While eager and tough divisional rival San Diego Padres and their hyper-competitive general manager, AJ Preller, worked to bolster a rising roster, acquiring a string of high-level starting pitchers, the Dodgers, arguably even better and more enduring today. In the long-term. , they waited for an opportunity they seemed to miss. When it actually got to them on Friday afternoon to duel the New York Mets for Trevor Bauer, the best free agent starter by a wide margin, they let it be known:
There we are, and then everyone else.
Remember this: Last year the Dodgers lost Kenta Maeda and Hyun-Jin Ryu, who finished second and third respectively in the AL Cy Young competition with new teams. They let Rich Hill continue his illustrious career elsewhere, got nothing off the set with David Price, who signed out of the COVID-shortened season, and still won the World Series, with a group of starting pitchers finishing. With the second lowest effectiveness in sports.
Bauer, who agreed to a $ 102 million three-year deal including exit options after each of the first two seasons, joins that group after his best season, bringing a fifth Cy Young Award to a staff that could have more in you. future. He joins a revitalized Price and a revitalized Clayton Kershaw, who rediscovered some of his best forms in his season at 32. He joins Walker Buehler, who could very well be the best pitcher in the game for the next three years . And he joins a collection of talented young poor led by Julio Urías, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, two of whom no longer have a permanent place in the rotation.
Teams across the league struggle with the jump in innings required for the additional 102 games on the 2021 schedule, but the Dodgers and Padres each have seven legitimate starting pitchers. All seven Padres – Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, Dinelson Lamet, Joe Musgrove, Chris Paddack, Adrian Morejon and MacKenzie Gore – expect to have 16.5 WAR, according to FanGraphs, according to ZiPS. All seven for the Dodgers – Kershaw, Buehler, Price, Urias, May, Gonsolin and now Bauer – project at 17.8.
The Padres employ eight position players who are expected to be over 1.5 in WAR by 2021:
Fernando Tatis 4.4 Jr .:
Manny Machado: 3.8
Ha-seong Kim: 3.0
Trent Grisham: 2.4
Jake Cronenworth: 1.9
Tommy Pham: 1.7
Jurickson Profar: 1.6
Wil Myers: 1.6
The Dodgers have seven (eight if Justin Turner returns, which seems more likely):
Mookie Betts: 5.9
Cody Bellinger: 5.4
Corey Seager: 4.7
Will Smith: 3.2
Max Muncy: 2.5
Gavin Lux: 2.4
Chris Taylor: 2.2
Last year’s Padres-Dodgers games provided some of the most memorable moments in baseball: Grisham homered Kershaw, Machado mocked a Brusdar Graterol, Bellinger stole an HR from Tatis in a massive venue, and it’ll be on TV all summer. . Choosing the best team seems impossible.
But maybe it is quite simple. Perhaps it is as easy as remembering that the Dodgers have added Betts, the game’s second-best player, to a roster that was already a favorite to win the World Series in 2020. And that Bauer, the current winner of the Cy Young Award of the National League, was added to a 2020 team that won everything after one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory.
Bauer finished the season of 60 games with a 1.73 ERA, beaten only by Shane Bieber, and fell within the top five in WHIP (0.79), strikeout percentage (36.0) and opponents’ OPS (.522), increasing that . Dramatically enough for many to wonder if their breakup was abnormal.
30-year-old Bauer entered the competition as the # 3 overall pick of a loaded draft class in 2011, performing more as a mid-rotation workhorse than a true ace, with an ERA of 3.99 and an average of 181 innings from 2014 to 2019. We can dismiss his 2020 season as the byproduct of a small sample, or an unconventional schedule that left him constantly dealing with weaker lineups in the Midwest, or his alleged use of the same foreign resources he once regretted of had, as evidenced by significantly high spin speeds. Or we can settle for an imaginative and meticulous worker who thrived in a welcoming environment with the Cincinnati Reds, and eventually returned before his late twenties.
Andrew Friedman did not issue a single nine-figure contract in his first five years as Dodgers president of baseball operations. After the 2019 season, with the most manageable payroll under baseball’s luxury tax, he made a strong but failed attempt to get hold of Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendón, then traded in for Betts, signing him for a $ 365 extension. million and saw him. Dodgers to a .712 win rate and their first title in 32 years.
Three weeks after a thrilling victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, Friedman joined the Dodgers broadcast and expressed a burning desire to repeat it in 2021. He echoed the mantra that populated the team’s SMS chains:
“Let’s be pigs.”
The Dodgers are here to eat.