The Big Trade that the Dodgers pulled off Aug. 26 loaded that team with hot shot players Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford and $260 million in additional salary.
It was designed to propel the Dodgers to win the National League West and, ultimately, the World Series. “We want to win now,” said Dodger co-owner Magic Johnson.
But since that Saturday in August the Dodgers have played worse, winning 10 of 26 games for a .384 winning percentage. That compares to the club’s pre-trade .543 winning percentage.
...What does this all mean?
That sometimes, just sometimes, money doesn’t buy wins. And that is music to the ears of anyone who likes to think that their club is not out of the playoff race just because the player payroll is not in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In fact this season a number of baseball’s big spending teams were disappointments, including the Miami Marlins, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins and New York Mets.
Still more examples show that the Baseball Gods sometimes smile on low-budget teams. The Oakland A’s, the game’s notorious penny-pinchers, are close to getting a postseason spot. They might just beat out the free-spending Angels.
Repoz
Posted: September 24, 2012 at 03:56 PM |
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1. snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster) Posted: September 24, 2012 at 04:06 PM (#4244558)Hah, hah.
The Twins were certainly a disappointment, but are the 13th and 14th highest payrolls really "big spending teams?"
they've looked worse than that, that's for sure. matt kemp is the poster boy for this. he has really looked out of it. i'm sure it's mostly because he's been so banged up, but gosh he looks like he can't do much of anything, esp. at the plate.
Bad for the Dodgers = Good for baseball (and all the rest of the universe, for that matter)
Duh.
Yea.. im not sure i dislike the Dodgers enough to give McCourt any kind of credit. The dissonance is hurting my head.
Kemp badly banged up his shoulder in the collision with the wall in Denver and it really messed up the mechanics of his swing. He has been hitting a little better, but not all that great.
Assuming that the injured Dodgers pitchers come back next year (Billingsley is the biggest question mark), the team should have a strong rotation. And presumably Adrian Gonzalez won't be infected with James Loney Disease, which apparently is vector-borne. The vector being first base at Dodger Stadium.
If Gonzalez hits .250 with no power next year, then I think you can say it's a bust, but not based off of a few weeks.
Are you saying, good sir, that a reporter for a San Francisco publication might be biased against the Dodgers?
Ramirez had an 848 OPS from the time he was acquired through the end of August. He's been in the 600 neighborhood since. And he's been a very poor shortstop.
Regardless, the offense's failure has pretty much been a team effort. Ethier has been pretty good. Luis Cruz has had some timely hits so people will remember him fondly.
But, aside from that, Dodgers games have been very painful to watch. Even Sunday night's win was a slog.
But great to listen to.
Some of the other cleanup hitters for the Dodgers this year have been:
Jerry Hairston
Bobby Abreu
Scott Van Slyke
Juan Rivera
James Loney
June was the killer month for the Dodgers. They batted .212 and scored 83 runs in 28 games.
I thought it was another article on Jose Lima's wife.
The Big Trade that the Dodgers pulled off Aug. 26 loaded that team with hot shot players Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford
ummm... everybody (even Ned Colletti!) knew that Crawford was out for the year so they knew they weren't loading the 2012 team with him. I'm also not sure anybody was really expecting Beckett to be load-bearing (?) but maybe they were. AGon has been an obvious disappointment. Still, hard to blame him for Kemp's collapse.
It's ceratinly fair to say that the Dodgers took some big gambles and so far they have lost big. And they're already committed to $181 M next year which is staggering unless they are just going to ignore the salary cap.
or a 200 QEQA.
As much as I enjoy watching the Dodgers crash and burn, I agree. This was not much of an analysis.
It's ceratinly fair to say that the Dodgers took some big gambles and so far they have lost big. And they're already committed to $181 M next year which is staggering unless they are just going to ignore the salary cap.
Do you buy the Jonah Keri argument that LA is going to do just that, given their huge investment in the club and the huge local TV contract to come?
To me, the "win now" was obvious hyperbole as applied to 2012, given that one of the big assets (Crawford) was out of action. No one but a total fanboy would say a comeback in the NL West was likely even with the trade, considering that there was only a little over a month for everyone to get hot.
The team could go one of two ways
- be the modern Yankees, who do compete every year on a high payroll with very clear-eyed roster moves and trades, giving everyone on the team a contributory role.
- be the early 1990s Yankees, who clogged their roster with random veteran dross a la Mel Hall, Andy Hawkins, Danny Tartabull, Steve Balboni, et al.
The "what to do with Juan Uribe" dilemma is in effect for this last part. Also, if Beckett shows no signs of a rebound in 2013, will they continue running him out there?
It does make a lot of sense for them to make a show of investing in the team since they're on the cusp of a new TV contract, but there's a real chance that it's more by a tactic to drive that TV deal up than a long-term strategy to win ballgames by outspending everyone. I'm sure they'll continue to be among the league leaders in payroll, of course, but there's definitely a lot more financial justification in spending like the Yankees right now than there will be once that deal is set in stone.
Huh? The Dodgers were 3 games out when the trade was made, with 36 games left. I think they were still in control of a wild card spot. They were 12-9 in August to that point -- not on fire, but not cold either (that's a 93-win pace). Hanley was there, Kemp was back, Kershaw was healthy. The Giants were dealing with the loss of Melky. Surely a "comeback" was at least plausible in a non-fanboy sense.
I mean, unless you're defining "likely" as >50%, in which case... yeah, I guess.
A Moby Dick reference!
Beckett has pitched fine, but the concern going forward is that Adrian Gonzalez didn't rebound, and is now confirmed to be having a mediocre year. They have potentially taken on a lot of dead weight here.
I don't buy it. I imagine they'll spend big the next year or two, then when they calculate what the luxury tax bill is three or four years down the line they'll go "Holy ####!" and pull back. Like every other team in baseball.
Because if the newly rich Dodgers are hamstrung by deadweight contracts, it helps competitive balance.
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