Five Changes That Must Happen Immediately
Change #1 Of these four players, only one can be in the lineup at a time: Kike Hernandez Logan Forsythe Joc Pederson Curtis Granderson They are rally killers. Write those words down. Live by them! Change #2 Justin Turner moves to the #2 spot in the batting order. Corey Seager moves to the #3 spot. Yes, I know they want to split up the lefties, but Cody and Corey don t
Change #1
Of these four players, only one can be in the lineup at a time:
- Kike Hernandez
- Logan Forsythe
- Joc Pederson
- Curtis Granderson
They are rally killers. Write those words down. Live by them!
Change #2
Justin Turner moves to the #2 spot in the batting order. Corey Seager moves to the #3 spot. Yes, I know they want to split up the lefties, but Cody and Corey don’t have issues with LH pitching. Here’s the rationale behind my suggested move: Justin Turner is hitting .328 with a .418 OB% but he is not a big RBI guy for whatever reason. He has 64 RBI in 454 plate appearances. That is an RBI every 7.09 PA. Compare that to Nolan Arenado who usually hits third for Colorado. Nolan has 116 RBI in 587 plate appearances. That is an RBI every 5.06 plate appearances.
As much as I love Justin Turner, he is just not a big RBI guy and you need that from the #3 spot in the order. Flip Justin and Corey in the batting order. I think the run production would pick up with Corey hitting 3rd. This is not an indictment upon J.T. – just something that is not to be ignored.
Change #3
Chris Taylor becomes the full-time Centerfielder. He is better, faster and smarter than Joc. Centerfield should belong to him. He is much more capable of running down balls in the gap that Joc is. Alex Verdugo is too slow for CF. I would also install him as the #5 hitter.
Change #4
Platoon Austin Barnes and Logan Forsythe at 2B. Forsythe plays against LH pitching. Barnes plays against RH pitching. Farmer should be back up today or tomorrow so the backup catcher’s spot is covered. Forsythe should never see the light of day against a RH pitcher. He should have to leave the dugout and go to the clubhouse when a righty is on the mound. He is hitting .198 against righties but is at .298 against lefties WITH A .439 OB%. He should leadoff against LHP. On the other hand, Austin Barnes has reverse splits against RHP. He is hitting .361 against RHP WITH A .475 OB%.
Barnes and Forsythe should be the Dodgers’ leadoff hitters – they get on base against their pitching splits almost half the time. Isn’t that what you want from a leadoff hitter? Hello? What’s up, doc?
Change #5
Yu Darvish goes to the bullpen. Whatever he is doing or not doing – it isn’t working. Let him come in for Maeda or Ryu in the 5th or 6th and pitch 2 or 3 high quality innings. Give him a chance to succeed in smaller slots. Maybe he comes back to the rotation as he works out his mechanical issues… maybe he doesn’t. We are trying to win a World Series here, guys! Deal with it. We have 5 good starters without hi – Kershaw, Wood, Hill, Ryu and Maeda. Change is sometimes good… and necessary. Whatever he is doing right now is not working. Play it by ear.
That my five step plan. The lineup stays the change at the leadoff spot:
- Barnes/Forsythe 2B
- Turner 3B
- Seager SS
- Bellinger 1B
- Taylor CF
- Puig RF
- Grandal C
- Verdugo LF (if he needs platooned, use Segedin)
Roll that lineup out there for the next 10 days, Doc! See what happens. Let Farmer start at C against LH pitchers. I don’t often tell the Manager what to do, but I am today. Listen up, Doc!
- Gutierrez will not return this year… well, his career is likely over. Too bad. A healthy Franklin would have helped immensely. FAZ knew they were taking a risk and it didn’t pan out. Not the first time… nor will it be the last!
- It looks to me like A-Gon is Gone. His back is still flaring up. The experiment is likely over. There’s a pretty strong possibility that he won’t play next year.
- Tony Cingrani and Tony Watson as looking very strong. I have more confidence in them that than Avilan.
The Dodgers “flipped the switch” for a while last night. Darvish didn’t deliver. We wait for another game for the wins that will start again. .715% was unsustainable, so is .000!
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Discussion (54)
Disagree, not disagreeable
When you come back to reality, you MAY find:
Bunting is for morons.
Barnes’ glove isn’t to be trusted at 2nd evidently.
You don’t give up on talent like Darvish, especially when you have the best record in the land.
It looks like the Verdugo experiment is over.
I like your lineup but I would put Turner 5th and Taylor 2nd. I’d rather have Taylor’s speed near the top of the lineup, while Turner would be good protection behind Belly.
I agree with you Bobby. I could not understand why Granderson did not bunt Kike over with Cory on deck. I don’t know if it were Doc or Curtis, but it sucked that we could not play small ball when we needed to.
Brooklyn has said for years that a team is never as good as they look when things are going good, or as bad as they look when they are playing like we are now. While this is true, it seems like our offense has lost its way. We are no longer stringing good at bats together. Where is the selectivity and patience we showed during our run. We have gone from a strong relentless offense to the offense we had in the early 60’s without the pitching.
I believe that we will eventually come out of this funk and maybe we were bound to go through something like this just because of the law of averages. In any case we need to start winning again and soon.
Yu looked better. He got a bit unlucky in that 5th, but at least he looked better than before. Let’s see how he improves on that.
At this point, Granderson is providing no value. I’d rather give Verdugo experience and he can’t do worse than Granderson.
Last night, Doc showed stubbornness again. Kike on 2nd, nobody out, and Granderson up. Why not have him bunt Kike over to 3rd?? Why let him flail away. Horrible manager move, or non-move.
Baez came back after his walk. The fans also came back after the boos with cheers. Let’s see how Baez does today/tomorrow.
Barnes is a player. He must start every day now, either at 2b or C. Start CT3 at CF every day, and let Verdugo or Etheir get a shot at LF. It’s clear Granderson hasn’t earned any more playing time
I like your #5 idea mark,maybe the answer to our problems.
I agree with all except the last one. I would change that to scrapping the 6 man rotation. Darvish didn’t throw poorly last night. He did let his pitch count get high. Joc not catching a ball that should have been caught is a bigger problem. Granderson playing soccer with a ball in LF didn’t help either. Roberts said the same thing. The walk to Lucroy was bad but other than that the only ball hit hard was by Blackman.