The Dodgers have a pitching problem, which is delightful.
They currently have on their roster exactly two (2) reliable starting pitchers: Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jack Flaherty. They also have Landon Knack, who has been up and down but often adequate, and Bobby Miller and Walker Buehler, who have had lots of theoretical value this year, and very little on the field.
Otherwise, Gavin Stone is out for the year. Tyler Glasnow is out for the year. James Paxton got traded to the Red Sox but, not wanting to miss all the fun, is out for the year. Clayton Kershaw is out for the rest of the regular season, and is personally optimistic that he will be able to pitch in the postseason, even though that doesn’t look overly likely.
Okay, well, that last paragraph suggests that delightful might not be the right word, considering that I’m not actually happy that any of those guys are injured, but until they invent a delete button for computers, I’m stuck with what I’ve written.
I don’t want to make it seem like the Dodgers are helpless: they have a strong bullpen, with multiple guys having excellent years. But without enough reliable starters, those guys will get ground into dust in October, if they don’t get ground into dust in September trying to push the team into October.
That seems like poor roster design, right? This is a team without enough starting pitchers, and so why did they not simply get more? The first response to that is that they did, acquiring Flaherty at the trade deadline. The second response is that Stone and Glasnow were healthy at the end of July, and so the team figured that they had enough depth.
The third response is that front offices just don’t try that hard anymore.
(AJ Preller and Dave Dombrowski excepted, of course, and really, only them)
Why is Blake Snell still on the Giants? I don’t mean that I’m sad he’s around; Snell’s been pitching exceptionally well lately, of course, and it’s fun to watch games he pitches. That’s actually worth a lot, even for a team that won’t play in October. But there was a time in baseball, and it wasn’t that long ago, when multiple competitive teams would have gotten into a bidding war to trade for last year’s Cy Young winner who looked great and didn’t have that many innings on his arm this season. They would have been chucking prospects at the Giants until Farhan had no choice but to accept. The team would have gotten worse this year, but since they weren’t winning anything anyway, hey, no big loss.
The Dodgers, as mentioned earlier, could have used a starter. The Yankees could have desperately used a starter. The Orioles…you’re watching this Orioles roster, right? On Tuesday, Dave Flemming said that Albert Suarez — Albert Suarez! He was on the Giants seven years ago and wasn’t anything special! — was pitching like their ace right now (their actual ace, Corbin Burnes, could not be reached for comment). You think they couldn’t use Blake Snell? You think they wouldn’t like to have two Cy Young winners at the top of that rotation for their playoff run?
Of course you don’t think that. You’re smart and cultured, which is why you subscribe to my newsletter. Great job, you.
But it’s not worth it to try. At least, I’m sure, that’s what all the business people are saying. It’s not worth it to trade prospect capital for a rental in order to marginally improve your odds of winning series that are crapshoots. Prospects don’t hit very often, but when they do, you’re paying so little money for so much production that financially, it’s worth it to be a little worse this year just for the chance of having them around for the next six years. If you knew that player was going to be around for a long playoff series, then the calculus might change — teams make a lot of money from being in the playoffs — but without that certainty, it’s just too risky. What if you give up the next Luis Castillo and all you get is Casey McGehee?
And for the marginal teams, like the Giants, it’s not worth it to sell. You never want to be the team that gives up on a playoff picture that you’re still in, which they were in July. You don’t want to go down in history as the modern version of the 1997 White Sox, who traded their best starter, their closer, and their oldest pitcher to the Giants for six prospects. It worked for the Giants, who won the division that year. The White Sox got Keith Foulke, who was a good reliever for them for several years, and five guys who didn’t work out, but at the cost of their reputation and the possibility of a playoff run.
Now just about every team looks at that trade and sees that they might be the White Sox. Because there are six playoff spots, in July you don’t have a good sense of who will catch fire and seize one of them. Someone will get hot in August and someone will fall apart. What if you were the team who would have gotten hot? What if this was your chance? You can’t take the risk that it is, but you also can’t take the risk that it isn’t, so you’d better not trade any of your best prospects, because when they hit, you’re paying so little money for so much production that financially, it’s worth it to be a little worse this year just for the chance of having them around for the next six years.
Not only does this make the trade deadline a lot less fun, but it also means that the playoff race is less exciting. Are we really supposed to get excited about a race for sixth place between the Braves and Mets, when the biggest acquisition either of them made at the deadline was Jorge Soler, only available because the Giants wanted to get out of his contract while the ink was still drying? Are we supposed to get excited for the Dodgers to throw out bullpen games in the NLDS? Is this what we want the game to be? Is this entertaining?
This is the future of baseball. This is no longer where the game is headed; this is where it is. And it’s worse. It makes the product worse to remove incentives for teams to make themselves better. We’re seeing that in the NL, with a boring playoff race, and in the AL, it’s fun to see a hard charging Tigers team try to seize the last spot from the Twins, but it would be more fun to see division races that go down to the wire between teams that tried desperately to make themselves better because they had to win their divisions to make the playoffs.
I don’t want to make it seem like there aren’t any exciting things happening in baseball right now, because of course there are. Shohei Ohtani, of course, is closing in on 50-50. The Brewers have a young, fun, and exciting team. The Mariners, defying years of tradition, are going to finish in eighth place in the AL six-team race instead of seventh, as you would expect. It’s all very novel.
But the core of the game, the thing that brings people in and gets them excited for the crown jewel event of the World Series, is the playoff run, and for all but four teams, it’s just not that interesting. This is a consequence of both changes in the playoff structure and front offices getting more interested in business than baseball. Either way, though, it’s making the sport less fun down the stretch, even if I am enjoying that the Dodgers can’t find starters.
"Are we supposed to get excited for the Dodgers to throw out bullpen games in the NLDS? "
YES! PLEASE!!
"This is the future of baseball. This is no longer where the game is headed; this is where it is. And it’s worse. It makes the product worse to remove incentives for teams to make themselves better. We’re seeing that in the NL, with a boring playoff race, and in the AL, it’s fun to see a hard charging Tigers team try to seize the last spot from the Twins, but it would be more fun to see division races that go down to the wire between teams that tried desperately to make themselves better because they had to win their divisions to make the playoffs."
I couldn't agree more. It's always surprising to me to hear Giants fans stating that they like the current playoff format better because of 1993 and 2014. To me, I would much rather watch regular season division races and only division winners in the playoffs. Even though I didn't like the outcome, 1993 is still one of my favorite seasons of all time... the last great division race.