The Los Angeles Dodgers failed in the World Series at the Houston Astros in seven games. However, despite the great disappointment, the team is well prepared for the future – although it doesn’t look like that from a superficial point of view.
Corey Seager swings into a groundout to the Second Baseman on the first pitch and the fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers of 2017 is sealed! The Astros cheer, the Dodgers remain only the great void in the first game 7 of a World Series in the time-honored Dodger Stadium.
A feeling you already know in Chavez Ravine. The disappointment was already great in the previous year, but after six games of the ALCS in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, however. On home ground, in addition to that in the ultimate last game with empty hands, I think it will hurt a lot more.
They had gone into the Classic case with their 104 victories as a slight favourite, especially since they were probably better in terms of personnel. Especially in the Bullpen, the story looked clear on paper. And, as was to be expected, this became a big factor.
However, with regard to the Dodgers in a negative sense, as the team’s great strength became a great weakness thanks to questionable decisions by manager Dave Roberts. Especially in the middle part of the series the pen was noticeably overworked and therefore ineffective. One reason for this was the partly weak start, especially that of Yu Darvish, who had been engaged with similar expectations as Verlander in Houston. But the Japanese player collapsed twice, and neither in Game 3 nor in Game 7 did he get six outs.
So you dig a deep hole for your team, which had far-reaching consequences for the course of the series. A Brandon Morrow was in some cases at the end of his rope. His low point was game 5, in which he had allowed four runs without an out and thus relinquished the interim lead. In the same game, Kenley Jansen was defeated because he had to pitch two innings again and hadn’t done so many times in his career.
But these are all details that will be forgotten over the next six months. In the Big Picture, however, it remains to be seen that the Dodgers will also be a failure in 2017. Not only among those responsible, but also in the public perception.
Since the acquisition of the franchise by the Guggenheim Group around Magic Johnson, no MLB franchise has burned more money than the Dodgers. Looking at the last four seasons alone, the Dodgers paid over a billion dollars to their players. Even the Yankees, the croesus of the last 20 years, have “only” spent 862 million.
It is possible that the Dodgers will be the only team with a payroll of more than $200 million in 2018. However, they have won nothing for 30 years now.
It seems that people in Los Angeles are still trying to hold onto the old road with all their might – putting a lot of money into free agents and hoping that this will be a huge success. The champions of the last eight years, however, no longer operated according to this principle.
Rather, they relied on good native plants and selective reinforcements from outside, which did not cost the world. The 2010 Giants team, for example, had the charm of a remaining ramp, garnished with strong “homemade” pitching. The current Dodgers-Weg, on the other hand, worked last year in 2009 with the Yankees, who had shot out almost 400 million dollars of contracts before the season – contracts that they had only got rid of this winter. They haven’t won anything since then.
Now it’s not that everything would be bad with the Dodgers’ team. The majority of the top performers are not yet among the high earners and will not reach this level for any longer. For the best Dodger field player, Shortstop Corey Seager, you will even be allowed to determine the salary yourself. The same goes for Super-Rookie Cody Bellinger and the surprise of the year, Chris Taylor.
The really high salaries are paid for contaminated sites. First Baseman Adrian Gonzalez is still entitled to 22 million, a pitcher Scott Kazmir to 17.6 million for some reason, and Brandon McCarthy, who was last used as a “mob-up”-reliever, will receive 11.5 million next year.
However, if these treaties are deducted, then things will not look that bad. In that case, the troops have a squad full of young, highly talented personnel who are under long-term team control. In addition to the forces known so far, other youngsters are also pushing ahead with power. The biggest name in the farm system is probably Pitcher Walker Buehler, which many people expect to see soon in rotation.
Symbolic of this strong system is the fact that the Rookie of the Year in Cody Bellinger will most likely also be presented in 2017, with a probability that the Rookie of the Year after Seager 2016. There is probably no better testimony to the youth work of a team.
This Bellinger hit 39 homeruns, making him the third-best rookie in MLB’s history in this category – only Mark McGwire (49 in 1987) and a certain Aaron Judge (52 this year) produced more long balls in their first rookie season. However, Bellinger also surpassed Judges strikeout records in the postseason, which proves that Bellinger was just a rookie.
However, there is still room for improvement after Bellinger and his young colleagues have already played a major role in this season. In this respect, the Dodgers will continue to play for the title in the coming years. However, as long as the Payroll is taking on astronomical heights, the public will find it difficult to acknowledge the team’s achievements, even though the team is sympathetic to all its young savages.
This article was published without prior view by the Major League Baseball.