NEWS/RUMORS/AROUND MLB Thread

i'd just rather not go to canadia to play our national past time
that's not what baseball is aboot

 

Becasue they'd kick our ass?

 

fun stat of the day...

• Had Kershaw pitched 13 more innings, he could have allowed 10 more earned runs and still finished with the best ERA in baseball.

source: truebluela.com

 

There's never been a team like these Dodgers — ever
by Jayson Stark | ESPN Senior Writer — 6 hours ago



CHICAGO -- As we learned again Sunday night at Wrigley Field, it isn't hard to understand how the Dodgers win when the guy they send to the mound is named Clayton Edward Kershaw.

But here's the part of the Dodgers' winning formula that America might find a little tougher to understand: How the heck did they win those other 74 games this year? How is it possible that the Dodgers had a better record this season after Kershaw got hurt (50-35) than they had before (41-36)?

We ask these things because, now that Kershaw has finished evening up the National League Championship Series at one win apiece -- by becoming the first pitcher to beat the Cubs in a 1-0 postseason game since Babe Ruth -- it's time for the Dodgers to go back to doing what they do best until Kershaw's turn comes around again.

And by that we mean ... um, don't worry, they'll figure out something.

There has never been a first-place team in the history of baseball quite like the 2016 Dodgers. You understand that, right? I posed that question to their trusty president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, on Sunday night. Even he didn't attempt to spin it to make it seem as if this team's championship saga was nothing out of the ordinary.

"I would say the answer is definitely not," Friedman said succinctly, "because we set a record for disabled-list placements. So therefore, the answer is definitely not."

Yes, the Dodgers placed 28 different players on the disabled list this season. That would be more than any team in the past 30 seasons. And since records for this sort of thing weren't kept before then, that puts them in uncharted territory -- at least for that period of history in which territory was charted.

And because pretty much everyone except Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully wound up on that disabled list somewhere along the line, the Dodgers also found themselves doing stuff that we can guarantee no other first-place team has ever done. For instance:

Never once, at any point over the past 3½ months of the season, did the same five starting pitchers go around their rotation twice in the same order. Not once. Over their last 90 games. How is that possible?

Well, it's possible because this team ripped through 15 different starting pitchers over the course of the season -- after using 16 in 2015. Just so you understand what that means, before last year, only one other team in the history of division play (the 1989 Giants) had made the playoffs in a season in which they had to use at least 15 starters. Now the Dodgers have done it two seasons in a row. Because, well, of course they have.

And because they were constantly in some sort of scramble mode, Dave Roberts became the first manager in history to have to remove two different starting pitchers, in the eighth inning or later, even though they were working on no-hitters at the time. Then again, if you're busy reinventing the whole concept of what constitutes a "starting rotation," that fits right in, doesn't it?

And since all those starters were doing so much coming and going -- especially the "going" part -- Roberts set another record, making an unprecedented 606 pitching changes. Meaning this guy logged more mileage, just going back and forth to the mound, than your average Uber driver.

But it wasn't just the pitchers who were coming and/or going. This team used 55 different players, tying the franchise record for most in a season. It also made 216 roster moves. I know because I counted them all up myself. That comes to more than eight a week. And we remind you, they did that in a season in which they won the NL West. Amazing.

"You know, we talked about it all during the offseason and spring training, about our feeling that our hallmark of this team was going to be our depth," Friedman said. "We just didn't really want to showcase it as much as we did."

It was always their assumption, Friedman said, that over the course of any season, "things happen." But even they never could have anticipated all THIS would happen. Nevertheless, it was always part of Friedman's team-building philosophy to be ready when those things did happen. And the Dodgers wouldn't be here, still playing, without the forethought that went into that.

"On one hand," Friedman said, "you can say, 'Oh, we had some injuries. Woe is us.' Or you can have as much depth on hand, to be able to plug in with good, capable major league players."

So those capable fill-ins just kept on coming. Unless they were going, that is. So after a while, the few veteran players who somehow managed to stay healthy pretty much got used to the idea that every time they looked up, the last two or three or four players on their roster weren't going to be the same two or three or four players who were there last week. Or possibly 15 minutes ago.

At least, said third baseman Justin Turner, "we knew who everybody was. Probably the only guy who we hadn't really met before he got here was when [Andrew] Toles came up. But we'd all heard about him."

Then again, there are other teams out there that constantly rotate players through those last few roster spots for the sake of flexibility. But what made these Dodgers especially unique was the fact that, well, they didn't even really HAVE a starting rotation.

Asked whether it would seem almost impossible to finish first with a team that never used the same rotation twice in a row over a 3½-month period, Turner couldn't help but laugh.

"It would," he said. "But we did."

A few feet away, in his own clubhouse, stood second baseman Chase Utley. Five years ago, he played on a first-place team in Philadelphia in which the same five dominating starters went around the rotation over and over and over again from April through September. And that was the way that team won. Then again, it's the way teams have won in baseball for the past 100 years. So if Utley thought that's the way life would always work, who could blame him?

Now, Utley plays on a team that's the exact opposite, in which the same five starters never went around the rotation. He couldn't help but see the irony.

"You wouldn't draw it up that way," he said. "But whatever works."

But even though it did, improbably, work, Friedman admits there were many days his group sat around the office wondering what pitcher was going to start tonight or tomorrow or next Thursday.

"We had meetings on it constantly," he said.

Asked what he remembered about those meetings, Friedman smiled and reported: "They were long. And often."

Those meetings went on for months and months and months. As the Dodgers plugged one hole after another -- and somehow kept winning.

"And then," Friedman said, exhaling dramatically, "Clayton came back."

Did he ever. When Kershaw rejoined the rotation in early September, no one knew just what he would be capable of the rest of the way. But they're now finding out. Boy, are they finding out.

Kershaw has pitched in four games in this postseason. The Dodgers have won them all. They've had to play three games in which he didn't appear. And they've lost them all.

So that brings us to where they stand in this NLCS -- where, barring more emergency relief heroism, Kershaw won't be able to pitch again until Game 6, back in Chicago on Saturday. And you might think the Dodgers know exactly how the three games in between will go. But if that's what you think, we are forced to ask: Are you familiar with their work?

They're pretty sure they know who is starting Game 3 on Tuesday. Unless, of course, Rich Hill's blister has other ideas. And they're fairly certain who is starting Game 4 on Wednesday. Unless, that is, Julio Urias has to fill in for Hill in Game 3, or has to stomp in to pitch some emergency relief at some point.

And they're absolutely positive that Kenta Maeda will start Game 5 on Thursday. They just can't be positive he'll even make it into the fifth inning -- seeing as how he hasn't done that in almost a month.

So that about sums up the current state of the Dodgers' rotation: non-Kershawian division. But when you've won 91 games during the regular season -- and four more in the postseason -- doing it this way, this is no time to sit back and reflect on how ridiculous that is. It's a time to just keep finding a way to win. And survive. As always.

"It just goes to show," Utley said, "that there are a lot of different ways to win a ballgame."

Yep. No kidding. And the most different way ever to try to win a World Series.