The end came swiftly for the best regular-season team baseball has seen since 2001. Too swiftly. The Los Angeles Dodgers lost their National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres. Their 111 wins didn’t save them, nor did their 14-5 record against San Diego in the spring and summer. They went 1-3 in the fall. And so they fell.
Even by the standards of a franchise that has made 10 straight postseasons and won 100 games in four of the past five seasons where that has been possible, the 2022 season seemed to be going particularly swimmingly. They posted the best team ERA despite injuries to Walker Buehler and others. They added Freddie Freeman into a potent lineup mix and finished with the best team OPS. They were the best version of themselves, and clearly the best team in baseball.
Manager Dave Roberts, brimming with well-earned confidence, guaranteed this team would win the World Series back in the spring. But he ran into the same harsh reality that dozens of other great teams have encountered in the playoffs: Any level of confidence is misplaced in a short series.
Unfortunately, the excellence that soared beyond even the Dodgers’ usual excellence just made it more shocking, more disorienting, when they were eliminated on Oct. 15. Dodger fans and local sports writers did not take it well. Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke called the loss “the biggest disappointment in Dodger history.” “In strictly a baseball sense,” he wrote, “this is arguably the lowest point in Dodger history.”
Biggest losers. Biggest failures. You name the negative superlative, and it was hurled toward the team that collected so many positive ones between April and … last Tuesday.
Alongside the disgust — surely genuine and understandably acute — came the blame. Directed at Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, the critiques targeted the bullpen, the roster construction, the decision to pull Tyler Anderson in Game 4, the entire methodology that produced 111 regular season wins and one measly playoff win.
Clearly, the Dodgers would prefer if the results were different. But does the misery offer lessons or pitfalls?
No, the Dodgers are not replacing Dave Roberts
Let me end the suspense here: The Dodgers are not firing Dave Roberts. The manager whose worst season at the helm so far involved 91 wins is “100%” coming back, Friedman told reporters on Tuesday.
Every Dodgers October exit summons a new referendum on Roberts, but this one is weaker than most. It was probably his most conventional turn at bullpen management, mostly by necessity. The biggest mistake was almost certainly a failure to use relief ace Evan Phillips in the decisive seventh inning of Game 4. Perhaps — PERHAPS — he could have put the Dodgers in better position by squeezing a few more outs out of starter Tyler Anderson.
But if he pushes all those buttons differently and gets a different result, it’s still only forcing a Game 5 with an offense that simply didn’t produce in this short series. There’s not much Roberts can do after he writes out the lineup that starts with Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman. Huge swaths of the order disappeared. And the team as a whole — which had the best offense with runners in scoring position during the season — came up empty when men were on base.
Maybe you find it difficult to judge Roberts because of the incredible talent level on hand, but managers who win this many games this often are clearly not leading their teams astray.
Blow up the bullpen?
Turning to face the ire directed at Friedman, we find a lot of consternation about the way the pitching staff was assembled. Los Angeles Times writer Dylan Hernandez said a review of the Dodgers’ practices should start with the “overarching philosophy implemented by Friedman that devalues starting pitching and calls for the use of an assembly line of relievers.”
It’s true that the Dodgers have been more careful with frontline starters than other teams, that they are attuned to the penalty pitchers incur facing a lineup two or three times, especially in the playoffs. And you know what? Usually they have had such an abundance of good arms that it made sense to pitch that way.
If the San Diego series had gone differently, we would all probably say they had that type of pitching staff this year, even without Walker Buehler. Tony Gonsolin broke out with a 2.14 ERA in 24 starts. Clayton Kershaw remained Clayton Kershaw when he was on the mound, with a 2.28 ERA in 22 starts. Julio Urias, once the poster child for overly conservative Dodgers pitching management, won the NL ERA title with a 2.16 ERA over 31 starts and 175 innings. Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney turned into significant contributors. Again: Best team ERA across 162 games. Plenty of things were working here.
What wasn’t working was apparent: Craig Kimbrel did not bounce back into his peak form, and the Dodgers were left without a real closer. Evan Phillips developed into a sterling relief ace, but perhaps not one who had proven it enough to change the gravity of a game plan. Maybe failing to treat Phillips that way was a flaw. Or maybe the Kimbrel misfire, combined with depleted starter depth, just left the Dodgers with a less dominant bullpen than they would like to have.
Building a great bullpen? I’m sure it’s on the Dodgers’ to-do list, but it’s not clear we would be discussing this at all if the almost unassailable, star-studded offense hadn’t dried up for a weekend.
Know when to hold ‘em
Everyone who invested their time and emotional energy in the 2022 Dodgers deserves to vent, to stew over how incongruous this team’s final moments were given its performance over the long summer. But when the venting is over, the proper conclusion is a simple one: The Dodgers should do everything in their power to be like the 2022 team every year.
They were absolutely amazing at winning baseball games, we can be positive of that. They failed to do that nearly as well as they are capable of against San Diego — and the Padres played to their immense potential. That’s going to be the final word on the 2022 club, and it’s going to sting, but the blame falls mostly on a bad roll of playoff dice.
That’s not to say roster decisions and managerial moves are above reproach. There are things the Dodgers would and should do differently. Friedman called the early exit an “organizational failure.” But any broad strokes or reactive moves designed to correct for three games in October would be wasted energy, resources devoted to winning a hand they’ll never be dealt again.
Maintaining the 2022 level of play for 2023 is its own challenge, and it won’t be easy. Walker Buehler is likely to miss the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Anderson and Heaney will re-enter free agency. Most crucially, Trea Turner will hit the market. How the Dodgers decide to proceed there could affect answers to other questions, like whether Cody Bellinger returns in center field, or whether they seek an external solution.
There are 10 straight playoff teams on the board now for the Dodgers. Nine came up empty in October, but that proven ability to get there still gives them a leg up on almost every other team. They fly higher, and yes, fall harder.
Still, the best thing the Dodgers can change to get closer to that elusive World Series glory is the calendar.