All Ball
Dodgers’ dismal future, Goff doesn’t disappoint, Mustangs/Sea Hawks Brag Bowl
Casey Pavlik hopes to lead the Mustangs into the playoffs, with a victory of Redondo on Friday. Photo by Ray Vidal
by Paul Teetor
Saturday night’s disappointing and incredibly frustrating 4-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves in game six of the National League Championship Series was much more than just the end of a disappointing and incredibly frustrating season.
It was the end of a golden but ultimately disappointing era in Dodgers baseball.
The era when the Dodgers won eight straight Western Division championships but couldn’t win a ninth straight title this year ,despite tying the franchise record for wins with 106.
The era when a core group of players headed by pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen, and infielders Corey Seager and Chris Taylor and Justin Turner were able to dominate the National League and make it to the World Series five times but emerge with only one title. Even taking into account that the Houston Astros cheated the Dodgers out of the 2017 World Series title, all those empty trips to the championship round took a lot, emotionally and spiritually, out of both the Boys in Blue and their hopelessly devoted fans.
Now four of those five key players are free agents this winter, and the 36-year-old Turner is only under contract for one more year.
All four free agents are likely to leave LA. Each has their own situations and their own reasons for possibly leaving, but the common denominator is simple: money.
The Dodgers, with $260 in million player salaries this season, had the highest payroll in the major leagues. Despite the $8 billion they are due in TV rights over the next decade, they are already indicating that such a lavish payroll is unsustainable.
Kershaw, for example, has been a shadow of his once-unhittable self the last couple of seasons. He’s still effective when he’s healthy enough to take the mound – good enough to be a third or fourth starter on a contender — but he’s increasingly spending more time on the injured list than on the active list. Why would the Dodgers continue spending $31 million a year on a part-time pitcher with a tired arm whose best days are further and further behind him?
His departure will likely be handled amiably as a mutual parting of the ways, with both parties saying nice things about each other at a carefully scripted thanks-for-the-memories press conference.
His reluctance to publicly commit to staying in LA is a huge hint that he’s headed home for Texas, where he will spend his final few seasons with the soon-to-be World Champion Houston Astros before putting on his Dodgers jersey to give his Hall of Fame acceptance speech.
It’s a damn shame that the last image Dodgers fans will have of the once-great pitcher is of him hanging around the dugout and spitting on the floor while watching his teammates struggle to overcome their lack of starting pitchers — while one of the greatest starters ever was standing right there but out of action, yet again.
Jansen is in a similar situation, though it’s not quite as certain that he is out of here. Once the pre-eminent closer in the major leagues, he slipped so badly in the three seasons before this one that Manager Dave Roberts no longer automatically went to him in high-leverage situations.
But this year, aside from a mid-season slump in which he blew three straight saves, Jansen regained much of his mound mastery and expanded his repertoire beyond the cutter that made him so dominating for so long. But unless he’s willing to take a steep cut from his $10 million a year salary, he’s likely to be pitching somewhere else next year.
Then there’s Taylor, the undisputed MVP of the Dodgers 13-game postseason run this year. The utility player – he can play all nine positions except pitcher and catcher – was just a handy guy to have around during their long National League run of domination. Then he had a bi-polar season this year – such a hot hitter during the first three months that he made the All-Star team, and then such a cold, unproductive hitter over the last three months that he was dropped from the starting lineup for the do-or-die wildcard game three weeks ago.
But his name is now engraved in Dodgers history thanks to his walk-off home run to win that very same wildcard game. Oh, and his three-homer game that won game 5 of the NLCS against the Braves earned him the too-cool-for-school nickname of CT3.
You just know some team desperate to convince its fans they are trying to win is going to offer him a big raise in the form of an above-market contract – he currently makes $5 million per — that will be tough for him to turn down and even tougher for the Dodgers to match.
Which brings us to Corey Seager, perhaps the most confounding of all the potential departees. He’s so good, and so young – still only 27 — and such a powerful hitter and smooth fielder that he’s that rarest of species – a genuine slugging infielder. It’s hard to understand why he would ever want to leave LA – or why the Dodgers would watch him leave without offering him the sun, the moon and the stars to stay. He is, after all, one of the few home-grown stars on the team.
Yet when the Dodgers traded for Trae Turner just before the trade deadline, that was one of the backstage rationales whispered to the media: Turner would be a ready-made replacement if and when Seager left town.
Of course, the bidding for Seager – who made $7.6 million this year — is expected to start at $300 million for 10 years, so it’s understandable why the Dodgers might not want to pay fair-market value.
But that kind of thinking is short-sighted: he’s the kind of foundational player who will be worth every penny as time goes on and average salaries escalate. Last year when they won the World Series, he was the team’s MVP thanks to his timely and powerful hitting. This post-season he twice hit 2-run homers in the first inning to get the Dodgers off to a fast start.
Money issues aside, team insiders say the real problem is that Seager wants to play alongside his brother Kyle Seager, who plays third base for the Seattle Mariners. If that really is the case and the brothers are determined to be teammates, then there’s nothing the Dodgers can do to stop him.
His potential replacement, Trae Turner, was a complete bust during the Dodgers 13-game postseason run, barely hitting .200. Granted, he won the NL hitting title with a .328 batting average, even though he played the first half of the season with Washington.
But in the postseason he lunged at every sinker and out-of-the-strike-zone curve ball that came his way and stood passively while staring at grooved fastballs and hanging curves just begging to be smacked for a base hit. Even worse, he looked like the classic singles hitter – lacking power and opposite field hitting ability. Speed on the base paths is his only obvious physical asset, but if you’re only hitting .200 or less that speed is not a factor very often.
Thirteen games are a small sample size by which to judge Turner, but it says here that letting Seager go and replacing him with Turner would be a monumental mistake that would haunt the Dodgers for years to come.
There’s another important free agent, future Hall of Fame pitcher Max Scherzer, but he’s in a different category altogether. First, because he only joined the team in mid-season at the trade deadline, coming from Washington along with Turner for a bunch of the Dodgers best minor league prospects. And second because he did something in the hours prior to game 6 that you very rarely see: even though he would have been pitching on five days’ rest, he begged out. He simply told Roberts that his arm felt dead and that he couldn’t start in the biggest game of the season.
It came as such a shock that the team had to cancel its usual pre-game press conference with the team’s starter, an event that had already been placed on the schedule.
In doing so, Scherzer inadvertently revealed one of the ugly truths about pro sports, especially those sports that have guaranteed long-term contracts, like baseball and basketball: the fans care a hell of a lot more about the games than the players do.
The players have lost that golly-gee-whiz, I’ll-run-through-a-wall, take-one-for-the-team mentality that they started out with in high school and college. In the pro game, it’s all about the bucks. Championships are nice, but cash is king. And when you’re a 37-year-old pitcher with heavy mileage on your arm, you know you only have one bigger contract coming your way unless you find the same Florida fountain of youth that Tom Brady discovered in Tampa Bay.
So who can blame Scherzer, really, for declining to pitch? He was putting himself and his family first, and who among us can honestly say they wouldn’t do the same. After all, there was a real chance that going 4 or 5 innings in game six would blow out his arm once and for all and kill his market value this winter.
All Ball will be shocked if Scherzer signs to come back to the Dodgers this winter, or if he is even offered a contract. He was unhittable in his first seven starts, then started to wobble, and finally bugged out when the team needed him most. That is not the kind of track record that motivates a team to hand an aging star a huge multi-year contract, which is what Scherzer will get from someone, most likely one of the Dodgers Cali arch-rivals, either the Padres to the south or the Giants to the north.
Which brings us to Manager Dave Roberts and his use of what started the season as the most loaded pitching staff in the major leagues. They had three Cy Young winners in Kershaw, David Price and Trevor Bauer. They also had two other guys who qualified as staff aces: Walker Buehler and Julio Urias, who ended the season with the best record in the majors at 20-3.
How they ended up losing to a far inferior team that only had 88 wins during the season is a mystery with many answers. It starts with the reckless, bone-headed decision to hand Trever Bauer a 3-year, $102 million contract last winter despite all the red flags warning that he was a screwball, a knuckle-head, an internet predator and a genuinely bad person. We don’t have time to rehash the Bauer bummer, but anyone who wants to read the lurid details should check out our column from last June entitled Dodger Dog.
Every year that the Dodgers don’t win the World Series, it’s become fashionable to bash Roberts for his mis-management of the pitching staff. And it was worse than ever this year: by late October he was using closers to start games and starters to close games out.
But the truth is that Roberts himself is not making most of those too-clever-by half decisions like putting established starters Urias and Scherzer in high-leverage relief situations. They are being dictated by GM Andrew Friedman, and the self-appointed baseball geniuses who populate the front office. Among those execs, common sense, understanding your player’s personalities and reacting to what you see on the field minute-by-minute, inning-by-inning takes a distant second place. Up there, analytics and data are king.
And by taking the human element out of the game, they set the Dodgers up for failure. Twice, they told Roberts to start Buehler on three days’ rest. And twice Buehler went only four innings as the Dodgers lost both games.
Twice Roberts inserted Urias for mid-game relief, and twice Urias gave up the winning runs.
All Ball has no doubt Roberts did not agree with those decisions, but acting as the front man for the front office, like a good soldier he tried to convince the media that they were his decisions and that there were sound baseball reasons for them.
Which leaves one more pending free agent to deal with: Roberts himself. He has one more year on his contract, but has indicated he would like to sign an extension before next season. All signs are that it will get done this winter.
Where else could the team find a more perfect modern manager: player-friendly, media-friendly, and willing to fall on his sword to prevent his bosses from being held accountable.
And there’s one more reason this most recent Dodgers golden age likely came to an end Saturday night. All those trades the Dodgers made to get guys like Scherzer and Turner and Mookie Betts cherry-picked all the low-hanging fruit from the Dodgers farm system. In the last two years they’ve gone from having the highest rated farm system in terms of prospects to the 15th rated. Some of those departed players, like Alex Verdugo for the Red Sox, are already making a name for themselves.
Then there’s the two reserve players who were also part of that winning core, Kiki Hernandez and Joc Pederson, who left last winter when the Dodgers refused to meet their price.
Hernandez hit two postseason grand slam homers for the Red Sox before they finally lost to the Astros, and Pederson hit a huge homer for the Braves against the Dodgers, a key hit that helped them advance to the World Series.
So Pederson will play in the Series again this year.
His old team?
It may be a long time before they make it back to the Fall Classic again.
Trading Places: Goff, Stafford follow the script perfectly
Even before Rams star defensive back Jalen Ramsey intercepted the wobbly pass from Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff in the Rams end zone, you could practically see the thought bubble forming above Rams Coach Sean McVay’s brush-cut spiky blond hair: “See! See! See, this is why we had to get rid of the guy. Now he’s their problem!”
Ramsey stepped in front of the ball coming in like a wounded duck, tucked it under his arm, ran a few yards down the field and quickly hit the ground with two minutes left in the game to secure the Rams’ 28-19 victory over the Lions Sunday afternoon.
It was a surprisingly competitive win that pushed the Rams record to 6-1 and left the Lions with an 0-7 record.
It was a game, and an ending, that could not have been scripted any more perfectly by McVay, Rams General Manager Les Snead, or the Rams PR department. Goff, who was exiled out of LA last off-season because of his nasty habit of throwing interceptions and fumbling the ball at the worst possible times, had given the Lions a 10-point lead early in the game.
The rest of the game at SoFi Stadium featured the blood-thirsty crowd hollering for Goff to do what he had done so many times to the Rams over the last three seasons: blow the lead and the game with a last-minute screw-up.
And sure enough, right on schedule, he came through. His numbers, as usual, were respectable: he connected on 22 of 36 passes for 268 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. But also as usual, he found a way to lose a game that his team had worked so hard to win. It was that very trait that drove McVay out of his mind and finally forced him to pressure the front office to do whatever it had to do to pull off the rare quarterback-for-quarterback exchange with the Lions.
The premium the Rams had to pay to dump Goff and his $110 million in guaranteed money on the Lions was two first round draft picks. Time will ultimately tell us how much those two picks would have helped the Rams, but for now the Rams obviously got the better of the trade.
Matthew Stafford, the guy the Lions sent here in exchange for Goff and the two draft picks, was his usual efficient self. He hit on 28 of 41 passes for 334 yards, two TD’s and no interceptions.
Cooper Kupp caught 10 balls for 156 yards to continue leading the league in receptions. It is clear that he and Stafford have developed a chemistry and a connection that he never had with Goff. It is also clear now that Goff’s presence and inability to throw a tight spiral to just the right spot was holding Kupp back.
Next week the Rams face another cupcake as they travel to Houston to take on the 1-6 Texans, the only team in the league with a worse record than the Lions. After that, though, they will be tested by the Tennessee Titans, the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers in succession.
One thing is for sure: the Rams will be a lot more confident going into that tough trio of games with Stafford calling the signals instead of Goff.
Every week that goes by, that Goff-for-Stafford trade is looking better and better.
Never more so than last Sunday.
Mira Costa and Redondo ready to Rumble
Start spreading the news: both the Mira Costa and Redondo football teams will head into their annual backyard brawl Friday night coming off wins.
The Mustangs pulled to within one game of a .500 record with a hard-fought 30-18 road win over Peninsula Friday night, while the Sea Hawks racked up their second win of the season by beating Santa Monica 26-14.
The 4-5 Costa team will host the 2-7 Redondo team in the eagerly anticipated annual showdown.
The Mustangs survived a serious scare in the form of an 18-0 comeback after racing to a 30-0 lead over host Peninsula. Senior quarterback Casey Pavlick threw a 21-yard TD pass to Cole Crotty to get the scoring started, and senior running back Matthew Kraskouskas chipped in with a 5-yard TD run. Just before halftime senior linebacker Brett McCalla made the biggest defensive play of the game when he intercepted a pass and took it back 85 yards for a Mustang TD.
Once Costa got its 30-0 lead, the Panthers showed real heart in fighting back to within 30-18. But in the end it was too little, too late.
Redondo, meanwhile, produced its best offensive effort of the season in putting down Santa Monica. They would love nothing more than closing out their difficult season with a two-game winning streak.
On the other hand, Costa will be extra-motivated to win because a .500 record will probably get them into the playoffs.
May the best team win.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER