If there’s one thing Andrew Friedman can remember right now after his club slipped to third place in June and was struggling to find momentum, it’s this: the last Dodgers president to have such a flagging pitching team was none other than Hall of Famer Branch Rickey.
Rickey’s 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers lost 91 games and had a team ERA of 4.68, representing only a brief drop for a franchise that had won the pennant three years earlier and would win the pennant three years later.
Pitching has been an integral part of the Dodgers’ identity for more than a century. No active franchise has a better pitching history or all-time ERA than the Dodgers at 3.53.
But after the Dodgers were defeated by the Giants at home on Sunday, their club ERA sits at 4.66. Despite the return of several members of a pitching team that has topped the sport in the ERA by almost half a heat over the past four seasons (a 3.07 ERA from 2019 to 2022), their level of performance has not only been disappointing but also historical , and the club suffers as a result.
The Dodgers have lost 17 of their last 28 games, their worst loss in half a decade and one of the worst losses Friedman has overseen since he took office as the team’s president of baseball operations in 2015.
“I understand that nothing looks particularly good in this mess. And I share that sentiment,” Friedman told The Athletic on Monday, with the Dodgers now closer to fourth-place in the NL West (they have a 3-1/2 game lead over a Padres club who are disappointed) than on top -Place Diamondbacks (four games).
“But I believe this team is capable of much more and I believe that going forward we will prove that by playing better and more consistent baseball. … I think it’s an imperfect storm of bad luck and we’re not playing very well.”
There is at least one major culprit.
“It’s totally out of character for us not to pitch well, and in a lot of ways that’s what we’ve experienced,” Friedman said.
“We haven’t reached the level we’re used to,” General Manager Brandon Gomes said this weekend.
“Coming from a collective group,” pitching coach Mark Prior said last week, “we didn’t pitch the ball well.”
That doesn’t mean there’s a prevailing theory as to why. The Dodgers have stated publicly and privately that the fights are the result of an accumulation of different causes.
They are worn out from injuries. The only member of the Dodgers rotation to make each of his scheduled starts for the first two and a half months of the season is Clayton Kershaw. Opening day starter Julio Urías has not played in a month due to a thigh strain, although he is expected to return at the end of the month. Dustin May is out for the foreseeable future with a flexor muscle strain that required an injection of platelet-rich plasma. Ryan Pepiot, a promising pitching contender who made it on opening day, hasn’t pitched with a skewed problem all year. Tony Gonsolin had to miss the first month of the season with a sprained ankle and since his return has seen his side regress while struggling to get back on his feet between starts. Daniel Hudson, who was a key substitute a year ago before suffering a cruciate ligament rupture, has not made a pitch this year but is expected to return later this month.
Those injuries, Friedman says, “had meant that in some cases we could be more confident in our depth, while also being more focused than we anticipated.”
Others just didn’t make a good pitch. Signed to absorb the losses of Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney in free agency, Noah Syndergaard had a 7.16 ERA in 12 starts before landing on the injured list. Yency Almonte and Alex Vesia, who each emerged as key wheels in the Dodgers’ bullpen a year ago, have ERAs of 6.30 and 8.00. Each represented individual success stories and enabled cost-effective production—a formula the Dodgers have repeated this season with none other than Shelby Miller (a 2.40 ERA in 25 appearances). Though rookie Bobby Miller has started in the majors, another top-pitching contender, Gavin Stone, has been sent back to the minors for a reset after just three starts in the big league.
The results: a starting rotation that ranked 16th in baseball and 21st in pitched innings with a 4.38 ERA, and a bullpen that outperformed every club except Oakland with a 5.04 ERA A’s. These are connected in a way. Friedman lamented the rotation’s inability to consistently go deep into games, which overwhelmed the bullpen and tightened a group that was already struggling to generate much momentum. Better starts, Friedman said, “would provide a lot of stability” and allow the bullpen to follow the established scripts he deftly piloted with several of the same players a year ago. So have defensive improvements — although Friedman and manager Dave Roberts highlighted the strength of outfield defenses, infield defenses bear some of the blame for a group whose defensive efficiency has fallen from first to 11th (a raw percentage). number of balls in play converted to outs).
Gomes said the “confidence” in the pitching team’s ability to figure things out was “still there.” Citing periods when various components of the club, including pitching, came together, Friedman said “the narrative was like 180 degrees of it” as the Dodgers went 14-4 through late April and early May to a season-best 12 games over .500 and hinted that there won’t be any major overhauls any time soon.
“If we didn’t feel like there was a compelling track record for the guys that are struggling and levers that we think we could use to get them a lot more success back then they wouldn’t be here,” he said Friedman.
But as optimistic as Friedman is about the Dodgers’ roster he’s put together, the needs of the team have changed somewhat. The payroll declined this season as the Dodgers paid no more than $13 million to a free agent not previously on the roster. The organization preached this winter that their pitching team would help absorb some of the natural volatility that would arise as young players from the vaunted farm system were introduced to the roster. Rookies like James Outman and Miguel Vargas, who made the squad on Matchday One, had their ups and downs in their first few seasons. Others like Miller, Stone, Michael Busch, Jonny DeLuca and most recently Emmet Sheehan have all signed up for the big league roster.
Instead of staff bearing the burden, they often had to win despite their pitching. Only the Braves in the National League have racked up more runs than the Dodgers, but even that hasn’t been enough to get them out of this crisis.
“In spring training, I didn’t expect that we would be aggressively looking for pitching in July. I think the focus has shifted given the injuries and where we are right now,” Friedman said, warning that the market won’t gain much momentum for about a month before the Aug. 1 close. “There’s no question that (targeting pitching) is more likely than it was in March.”
The Dodgers remain fairly optimistic about the roster they’ve assembled, even at a time when some of their cracks have surfaced. There is some justification behind this. This season there are many mediocre clubs in this sport that are unclear in a month’s time as to who is buying and who is selling. Even as the Dodgers weather this slump, they remain in the postseason position at 39-33. FanGraphs post-season odds still place Los Angeles as the club most likely to win the NL West for the tenth time in eleven seasons. These predictions assume only the Braves and Rays have higher odds of winning the World Series.
However, this optimism can only be justified to a certain extent. To be the team they want to be, the Dodgers must first play — and pitch — this way.
“We still have a lot of faith in this roster and the level of talent,” Friedman said. “Obviously we’re a lot more talented than we’ve played before. … But now it’s up to us to prove it and show it.”
(Photo by Clayton Kershaw, left, and Andrew Friedman: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)