yeah, i don't get the dodger gloom. they should contend fer sure in this division.

No Dodger team, in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, has ever made the postseason three years in a row. None.

You can't really talk "postseason" for the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was pennant or nothing.

All "postseason" comparisons across time are absolutely meaningless b/c of the doubling and doubling again of the number of playoff teams.

Don't tell me somebody broke Mantle's "post-season" HR record until he hits all 19 in the World Series.

One can say that Mantle had an easier time amassing post season HR records because his team was in the World Series all the time because his team faced weaker AL teams in the regular season.

There probably aren’t any Dodger followers, including myself, that don’t wish the team had more talent entering the 2010 season, that don’t wonder if an opportunity to get over the top is being squandered. You always want your odds to be the best they can be. But they never are.

I have not read the full article. Nonetheless, I do not understand this passage. The Dodgers are one of the two most loaded teams in the NL. Does anyone disagree with this? Spare me the woe.

Don't tell me somebody broke Mantle's "post-season" HR record until he hits all 19 in the World Series.

How about if someone hits 19 home runs in the first round of the playoffs? Mantle didn't have to win 7 post-season games to get to the World Series...

No Dodger team, in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, has ever made the postseason three years in a row. None.

That's odd phrasing. How long does a "Dodger team" last? More than one season?

Fun fact - in their 109-year history, the White Sox have never made the postseason in consecutive seasons.

The Dodgers are one of the two most loaded teams in the NL. Does anyone disagree with this?

You MIGHT be able to make an argument that the Cardinals are better than the Dodgers, although probably not, and even if they are, it's because of star power (Pujols, Holliday, Carpenter, Wainwright), so "more loaded" wouldn't exactly be right anyway.

But in general, yeah, at worst, the Dodgers are one of the three best teams in the NL and I'm surprised that this isn't obvious to everyone.

The Dodgers lost Randy Wolf and O-Dog during the offseason and replaced them with Jamie Carroll and nobody. This could very well be the year that Kershaw becomes and ace and Billingsley will certainly be better than last year. But one of Elbert/Stults/McDonald/Haegar will need to pick it up (and hopefully it won't take too long to figure out which one is the man). Also Blake, Ethier, and Kemp are all coming off the best years of their careers thus far and are so at risk for regression (though Kemp looks like he has greater star potential), granted Martin should bounce back.

I would have to say the Rockies are the favorites for the N.L. West this season followed by the Dodgers. Arizona could also make some noise.

I don't think the Giants will do as well as last year, since they overperformed their statistics so much. But DeRosa and Huff will offset that somewhat. Still, I don't see them winning 88 games again.

And younger fans will certainly remember what happened to the Dodgers from 2004 to 2005.

*shudder*

I do not understand this passage.

Not sure I see the issue. He's saying that fans always want a team to be better. He's not saying the Dodgers' odds of making the post-season aren't good, just that they could always be better and fans want them to always be better. And that fans are never really satisfied.

Would the 2010 Dodgers be better if they had:

traded a major prospect or two for Halladay?
traded some good not great prospects for Lee?
traded squat for Vazquez?
found something better than the combination of Belliard, DeWitt and Carroll at 2B? (perhaps signing Polanco or Scutaro or trading for Uggla ... which was possible early this offseason)

I think the inescapable answer to each of those is yes. Moreover, in this particular case, I don't consider it at all far-fetched that the Dodgers could have made at least one of those moves.

As noted in #8, the Dodgers lost at least two very useful players that haven't been replaced by equal or better players (near as anyone can tell). They also lost good, late-season performances by Garland and Padilla (and Weaver? Milton?). They had, let's say, uninspiring performances at C, 1B and SS but those players are returning. None of that makes the 2010 Dodgers a bad team, it doesn't necessarily make them a worse team than the 2009 Dodgers (if there are improvements elsewhere), it doesn't mean they don't have a good shot at the playoffs, it doesn't even necessarily mean they aren't the most talented team in the NL ... but it pretty clearly makes them a worse team than they "could have been."

And to point out the obvious: fans would want the Dodgers to do all those things to be better in 2010 without sacrificing the quality of the 2011-15 Dodgers because, y'know, fans aren't known for their rationality.

On the Dodgers, they really were a strange team last year. Almost nobody performed as expected -- a lot did better, a number did worse. They got those nice late-season performances from Belliard, Garland and Padilla and got nice work out of Weaver, Milton and even Charlie Haeger! They had extremely good health -- even with Manny's suspension, they needed only about 1000 PA from the bench whereas a typical team needs 1200-1400 (and many need more than that). 7 of their 8 regulars easily passed the 502 PA and Manny would have without the suspension (a typical NL team has about 4-5 players hit the 502 mark). It's unlikely they'll get all those good breaks again.

Yet ZiPS projects them to be pretty damn good and I don't really have much disagreement with ZiPS. But I will be surprised if they are as healthy and it looks like they've got a pretty crappy bench.

Met Jon at the Winter meetings in 2004. Really nice guy (as was most everybody there not named LaSorda :) ). He was one of many that had to put up with my "eccentricities" though I fear Jay Jaffe got the worst of it. Nice to see him land the big gig.

the White Sox have never made the postseason in consecutive seasons.

The White Sox make it to the post season every year, sometimes as early as May.