The Dodgers Are Looking Strong as they sit nine games over .500 with just a week before the All-Star break, things are going about as expected for one of the elite clubs in the National League. However, the way the Dodgers have gotten to a 46-37 record isn’t quite the way they had planned in the beginning of the season.
The Dodgers have allowed the third-fewest runs in the NL up to this point. Instead of the pitching staff being dominated by Clayton Kershaw, it has really been a team effort put forth by the starting rotation to deliver this performance.
Kershaw has certainly been good; just not historically elite like he was in past seasons. He has allowed a team-leading 11 HR, and his 3.08 ERA is the highest he’s had in a season since his rookie year in 2008. He is still Kershaw though. He has 13 QS in 17 appearances, has a K/9 of 11.61 and has a microscopic 1.04 WHIP.
Thanks to the injury to third starter Hyun-Jin Ryu, the Dodgers needed other arms to step up. Zack Greinke has been as good as advertised and is having one of the best seasons of any NL starter. Second-year man Mike Bolsinger has also been an asset on the mound this season. He lost his rookie eligibility by just 2.1 innings last season for the Diamondbacks, and this year he has kept an ERA at 3.09 through 12 starts. There has also been the resurgence from veteran arm Brett Anderson who is arguably having the best season of his career. The former Athletics ace has battled through numerous injuries throughout his seven-year career and hasn’t been able to put a full campaign together since he was a rookie. In 2015, he is halfway there.
With Kenley Jansen and pitching very strongly out of the bullpen, the Dodgers have found all the pieces on the pitching side of things to overcome the loss of Ryu and the “down” season by Kershaw.
On the offensive side of things, there wasn’t a pundit alive who foresaw the Dodgers producing runs the way it has been. Yasiel Puig has missed roughly half the season with an injury and has just recently returned to the lineup. But instead of infusing the team with pop, Puig’s return has unsettled the roster a bit. He still has pretty good numbers, but Puig has almost been an afterthought in terms of production, the same goes for Jimmy Rollins.
Rollins has been worse than an afterthought. He’s been a disaster. The longtime Phillies SS has been so bad this season he has already cost the Dodgers close to a full win in fewer than 300 AB. It is looking like a sad finish to an otherwise illustrious career.
Picking up the slack has been a number of names that no one expected. Justin Turner and Yasmani Grandal have combined to produce 4.2 WAR with their hitting alone.
Turner is a 30-year-old journeyman who never did anything in his five years before reaching the Dodgers. He was stellar in limited time last season and now seems to have picked his game up yet another level. At some point the magic may run out. He had an otherworldly .404 BABIP last season. His BABIP is once again pretty high in 2015, so that seemingly should bring his slash lines down a bit eventually. But the team will continue to ride him as long as he’s hot.
The same goes for Grandal. Grandal is still just 26 years old and may have finally put it all together to live up to his former first-round draft pick status. Or, this is a case of small sample size playing in his favor. In the more than 200-game sample of his time with the Padres, Grandal was a good hitter who couldn’t get on the field enough. Now he is on pace to shatter his previous highs in playing time while also increasing his production. It opens the door for a worrisome finish to a story whose beginning we have seen before.
Veterans like Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick and Andre Ethier are helping to boost the offense as well with very strong seasons.
And then there’s rookie outfielder Joc Pederson. Pederson is 10th in the NL in WAR, yet he’s exceeding all expectations despite a low AVG. He is the only player in the top 20 in WAR to be batting below .260, and he is all the way down at .234 right now. Despite the lower AVG, Pederson is still seventh in the league in OPS thanks to his wonderful eye at the plate and 56 BB. Unlike some of the other bats, Pederson was thought to possibly be this good, just few expected the excellence would come his very first season. Besides leading the Dodgers in HR, BB and WAR, he also has more SO than any of his teammates. In today’s game that isn’t nearly the detriment it once was, but discipline is the one place he can still work to improve.
To close out the first half of the season, the Dodgers face the Phillies this week in a 4-game set, followed with the Brewers for a 3 game series. Even if the performances drop of those beating expectations for the Dodgers, there is plenty of room for others to step up and bring the team’s level of output back to even. Regression will work in both directions for the Dodgers in the second half of the season, and it should keep them near the top of the NL West standings and in position to battle for a pennant.
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