Dave Roberts warned them.
Speaking to his team in the first days of spring training, the Dodgers manager pointed out that no team had repeated as World Series champions since the New York Yankees won three in a row at the dawn of this century (1998-2000).
Teams would come at the Dodgers with their best every night, Roberts said. The Dodgers would be playing with a target on their backs even more than they did as defending National League champions in 2018 and 2019.
Then the injuries started.
In the fifth game of the season, center fielder Cody Bellinger suffered a hairline fracture on a play at first base, the first of two leg injuries that would cause him to miss 56 games in the first half. The Dodgers haven’t had their core group – Bellinger, Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, Justin Turner and Max Muncy – in the same lineup together since.
On May 1, dynamic young right-hander Dustin May was lost for the season with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. The Dodgers replaced him in the rotation with a series of bullpen games as Tony Gonsolin sat out the first two months of the season with a shoulder injury.
On May 15, Seager took a pitch off his right hand and suffered a fractured fifth metacarpal. The 2020 NLCS and World Series MVP has missed 52 games and counting.
At the All-Star break, the Dodgers had placed 24 players on the injured list at least once (ninth in MLB, via Spotrac) for a total of 1,000 days (seventh) and more than $24 million in salary (sixth).
Not included in that list is the ongoing situation involving Trevor Bauer. Currently on administrative leave while MLB and the Pasadena Police Department investigate allegations of sexual assault against him (which Bauer has denied through his representatives), the most well-paid pitcher in the game has not thrown a ball for the Dodgers since June 28 with no certainty he ever will again.
They went 5-15 during a stretch of April and May and were no-hit in June (by the Cubs’ Zach Davies and friends). If it were easy to repeat as champions, someone would have done it over the past 20 years.
“There were a lot of ups and downs,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman acknowledged of a team that went 13-2 out of the gate, lost 15 of the next 20, won 13 of 15 again, lost six of nine, won 10 of 12, lost four in a row, then won nine in a row and finally reached the All-Star break winning just three of their last seven.
“Where we are currently, we’re happy with the pace we’re on. It’s just the way we got there was a little rocky. I guess the good thing is that we don’t feel we played all that well in the first half and we have those wins in the bank and feel really good about the way we line up heading into the second half.”
They have good reason to.
Despite all the challenges, the Dodgers are 21 games over .500 (56-35) with the second-best record in baseball, on pace to win 100 games – if not the record 116 of overheated preseason projections.
And there is reason to be optimistic that the Dodgers will have their expected every-day lineup together soon. Seager could return as early as next week.
“We’re getting close to getting back to full strength on the offensive side,” Friedman said. “And the hallmark of our offense coming into the year was the length of the lineup in that there was no real falloff. Obviously with all the injuries … we had a lot of nights when we just weren’t as strong in the back side of our lineup as we’re accustomed to. I think getting back to full strength, we’re going to have a really good major-league hitter hitting in the eight hole, which will at least help mitigate those ups and downs.”
The starting rotation is far from full strength. The Dodgers reached the All-Star break with just three starters healthy and available – Walker Buehler and Julio Urias (both on pace to pitch more than they ever have) and Gonsolin.
David Price is in the process of moving back into a starting role and Friedman said he is “very” optimistic three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw will rejoin the rotation in short order. Top prospect Josiah Gray missed two months with a shoulder injury but has pitched six scoreless innings in two starts since returning this month and will almost certainly be seen in Los Angeles at some point in the second half.
Bauer might not be.
“We have to handle July – especially in light of not having August trade waivers anymore – in a way to protect us against injury or anything else that might come up as best we can,” Friedman said, only tangentially touching the Bauer situation.
Indeed, the need for pitching reinforcements is as glaring as any need the Dodgers have had heading to the trade deadline under Friedman – with the exception of the 2018 acquisition of Manny Machado to replace Seager at shortstop (while the latter recovered from Tommy John surgery).
“In spring training we felt really good about our depth and even naively talked about whether we’d be in position to potentially trade a starter in July – and, man, was I off,” Friedman said.
“I think augmenting our pitching is something that is definitely front of mind for us. If it’s a starter, that’s ideal. But we can’t just manufacture a starter that’s available and fits. So if it’s strengthening the ’pen that’s something we’ll look at as well. That’s primarily where our focus will lie in the next two weeks.”
The Dodgers will be among the teams represented at a workout by veteran left-hander Cole Hamels in Texas on Friday. The 37-year-old Hamels has pitched just 3-1/3 innings since 2019 due to an assortment of injuries and it is very uncertain how soon he would be able to build up the arm strength suitable for starting games in the big leagues. And one thing the Dodgers don’t really need is another limited pitcher whose starts would be bullpen games just without that pre-applied label.Finding a starting pitcher on the trade market will also be problematic with nearly every team that considers itself a contender shopping in the same aisle – an aisle that could be stocked with the likes of Kyle Gibson, Michael Pineda, Danny Duffy and, possibly, Max Scherzer.
“I know right now it looks a little bleak in the starting rotation,” Buehler said on Media Day at the All-Star Game this week. “But Andrew has never been afraid to get guys to help us. … We’ll strap it together and put it together. Whatever we have to do to win.
“Right now, I wouldn’t bet against us.”
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Dodgers enter season’s second half with serious pitching concerns - OCRegister
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