Deceivingly Simple

 

If the Dodgers win another World Series this year, it will be the start of a new, Chiefs-style dynasty of a team just winning every year solely because no team can stop them by exploiting their most surface-level flaws. Looking at this team, 2 months before the postseason, I don't get the sort of 'nothing can stop them' feeling I got last year. A lot of this team is just succeeding because we expect them to and not really building on that. 

Mookie Betts is the biggest example of this. He's been healthy virtually all year, he's still great at shortstop, he's still a solid lineup presence. This year he is hitting .243 with a .690 OPS. Betts has never finished a season with an OPS lower than .800, something that will no doubt be brought up when he's eligible for Hall of Fame induction, and if he continues at this pace he'll fail to meet that mark that has seemed so easy his entire career. Hell, this would be his first season ever where he doesn't even hit .250. Everyone's given an off year or so, but the worry is that, with a good 7 or so more years left on the contract, Mookie Betts may be dropping off. His peak was excellent, and the hope is he still has some strong Dodgers seasons left, but to see mediocrity from Betts has to be odd. 

And look, between Ohtani, Freeman, Andy Pages and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, there are enough big stars pulling their weight this year that it can take a Betts or someone struggling. But that is a sign of a well oiled machine that has so many failsafes put into place that they can still succeed. You saw it happen with the rotation. They lost Snell, Sasaki, Glasnow and Gonsolin, and somehow they still carried on with enough guys like Dustin May, Emmet Sheehan and Landon Knack. Right now they have Glasnow back and surging, and the plan is for Blake Snell to return this weekend and hopefully had the second half he had last year. 

But...ultimately, just so much of this team is purely fine at the moment that even if these returning guys aren't as helpful as we're thinking, they very well might still get to a World Series on inertia. You're hearing all these stories of Ohtani struggling or a crucial Dodger getting hurt or a bad outing by someone who should be in Oklahoma City, and there they are still in first. Right now the Padres are creeping up, and are 4 games behind. We've seen the Giants or Padres come close to the Dodgers a couple times this season, and here they still are. It may be as simple as this Dodgers team just being so good that injuries that would derail other teams [Yankees mostly] just don't derail them.

I don't know if the Dodgers can make a World Series with this many injured starters, but they won one last year with a skeletal rotation and a lot of people clicking at the right time. It could happen again. I'm hoping it doesn't, but it certainly could.

Coming Tomorrow- Even on a team with a guy signed for like 10 more years, an infielder with a surprisingly lethal contact bat might be the most important guy there.