Muncy on my Back

 

Every so often, I amusing myself by pronouncing Max Muncy's name incorrectly. Max Munky. That funky Muncy.

Anyway, Max Muncy. 7 home runs and 15 RBIs in his first few weeks of 2023, and his 7 homers was the mark til Patrick Wisdom and Pete Alonso passed him. Muncy, like usual, is hitting mostly for power, playing decent third base, and not really thinking of hitting for average, and because he's so good at hitting for power, this works for him. He's routinely passed into the 4s and 5s in WAR, just on his hitting prowess alone, and the Dodgers, even with the amount of versatile hitters on the roster, need a guy like that. Put him on, he mashes, end of story. I never thought Muncy would be that guy, because he's just an unassuming A's farmhand that wandered over in free agency, a lot like Chris Taylor honestly, and he's been a staple ever since. 

It's very much a sign of a team with a new approach that the power guys, like Muncy and J.D. Martinez, have been taking the reins most prominently so far. The people on this roster known for contact hitting, like Miguel Rojas, David Peralta and Chris Taylor, are all having slow starts so far, and the real winners have been the power guys. Hell, Trayce Thompson was the star of the first week or so, and all he had to do was blast a bunch of homers. He's since trailed off, because...yeah, he was going to. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman still have things to do on this team, but they're not as well valued as the power hitters, including James Outman, who's been off to an excellent start.

This isn't a wholly concerning development, but it just means that after limiting power hitters to just a sliver of the lineup, this is now gonna be a riskier, potentially less-altogether-smart Dodgers team, just getting by on a lot of power hitting and pitching obliteration aside from just putting the ball where they ain't. It's an interesting tactic, one that really owes itself to a regime change as some bits of the 2010s teams continue to fall and the newer, more promising young players [like Outman and Miguel Vargas] begin to spring upward. It's not working as well as the last several seasons so far, but I'm not exactly expecting the Dodgers to miss October. At least not yet.

With all this flux, it's odd to me that the rotation is behaving the way it is. Gonsolin, Buehler and Pepiot are hurt, so we have this wild combination of Kershaw, May and Urias with...Noah Syndergaard post-velocity and Michael Grove. It's odd. It's not odd that the first three are doing so well, especially Kershaw, but Noah Syndergaard in his current state is just an extremely odd pitcher, because he still gets the better of opponents but does so while giving up way too many hits. I'd honestly love it if Kershaw had a nice, full season for the road, to give us one complete offering from his post-glory years, but he's gonna do what he does, so it's nice that he's doing so well right now. 

Odd Dodgers team. Until they get to full mach-beat-everybody they're gonna be weird and trying different things and I'm gonna have to get used to it. They're good enough now, but it intrigues me as to what they're gonna evolve into.

Coming Tomorrow- Used to be one of my favorite non-Yankees, so it's kinda funny how this all turned out.