Momentum, Talent and Depth

And all the other nonsense you’ll hear before we play our first postseason game…

Momentum is defined as Mass X Velocity.  In this case, the mass is the longest lineup and the deepest pitching staff in the game.  Velocity is the 111 wins in a season.  No one has more momentum than the Dodgers.

And so it begins.  As a Dodgers fan, it really irks me the negativity of the National Media toward our favorite team and we’ll have more of that from the Likes of Chris Russo, John Smoltz, and Harold Reynolds in the coming days before we play our first series.  Instead of all the National Broadcast types coming together to celebrate such a historic season, we get “The Dodgers are overrated and the Braves are the best team in the NL” out of the mouth of Harold Reynolds who might as well be Kurt Bevacqua. A big mouth that couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a “F$#&ing Boat!”.

Let me start off by saying that Harold Reynolds is a chump and a loser.  He’s a chump for the comment he made without backing it up with facts.  He’s a big mouth, do-nothing, participation trophy loser of a ballplayer.  But, like many these days, he fails upwards. 

He does broadcasting for a living, even though he doesn’t speak eloquently, much less effectively or even competently.  As a player, he somehow won a couple of all-star appearances because the Mariners were so bad they didn’t have anyone else to send on a team that needed a minimum of one representative. He somehow won three Gold Gloves while committing 17, 19, and 18 errors.  (Gavin has nine errors this year, and he has the yips!)  He stole 35 bases one year, his second-highest total in his career, and was caught 29 times that same season!  He played parts of 8 seasons before finally having a winning season in 1991, finishing in 5th place with 83 wins and 79 losses. He spent just one other year on a winning team (85-win 1993 Orioles) and never played in a single postseason game. 

Excuse me, Harold, but you’re hardly an expert on good teams and/or winning.

Harold Reynold is one of those guys who just says stuff.  He comes up with a narrative with little thought or analysis put into a problem or situation to come to a reasonable conclusion based on logic or fact.  We get a lot of that these days, and there are plenty of examples right here at the home of LADodgerTalk.

One of my personal favorites is the notion of Gavin Lux being a bad fielder.  Yes, he’s had some problems throwing, but labeling him with the “Yips” is beyond an exaggeration.  It’s slanderous.  To say we’ve seen enough of him at shortstop to know he can’t play there or has failed more than once is equally ridiculous. 

Gavin Lux has played 502.1 career innings at Short Stop so far in his career, just a little more than a 1/3rd of a full season, and owns a .968 fielding percentage at the position. All the while doing it as one of the youngest shortstops in the league with a DRS of 1 on that total while being shuffled in and out of the second base and the outfield while doing it.  Yet Trea Turner, basically a lifetime shortstop with 1386 innings of nothing but Shortstop this year and a veteran at the position, has the same DRS in almost three times as many innings.  His 969 fielding percentage is just 001 points higher.  Somehow, everyone thinks Trea is a great defender, or at least “Above Average,” yet the same people say we have seen enough of Lux.  This is a false narrative.  I don’t know who started it.  I remember AC constantly bashing Lux because he thought the Dodgers should draft Bichette.  Yes, that same Bo Bichette that has 23 errors at SS this year and has a -16 DRS.  That’s funny!

Moving on to the Braves.  Somehow, the Braves are more “Battle Tested” and have momentum on their side, making them scary.  So, how are they battle-tested?  The Dodgers would be in the midst of a Dynasty if it were not for some postseason shortcomings.  Every team plays their best and puts their best lineup on the field when they play us.  They don’t rest their regulars when they see us on the schedule. 

This year, the Dodgers are 50-27 against >.500 teams.  The Braves are 40-37.  Does that look “Battle Tested” to you?  Yes, the Braves recently swept a struggling Mets team with aging pitchers looking a little gassed and an injured Starling Marte.  But, at the beginning of August, they lost 4 of 5 to the same Mets team and finished the season 10-9 against them.  That is hardly any kind of dominance.  The rest of their division is pretty bad, with the absolute worst team in the NL, the Nationals, with 107 losses! And don’t forget about the 93 loss Marlins.  Conversely, our worst teams had 94 and 88 losses.  In all, our division notched 423 wins as a whole, while the East tallied 413 wins and the pitiful NL Central had just 377.  So tell me, who’s battle-tested?

And what about momentum?  Since September 1st the Braves have won 21 games.  How many games do you think the Dodgers won during the same timespan while clinching early and having nothing to play for?  If you guessed 21 games, you would be right.  So much for momentum. The Dodgers were on cruise control, and the Braves had to battle for the Division title, and yet their win totals were the same during the stretch run. The Braves having momentum is a lazy boast without actually doing the homework.

As for our poor closer-less bullpen?  A worry for some for an unknown reason.  The Dodgers set team records for most pitchers recording a save (12) and most pitchers recording more than one save (6).  I told you this bullpen would be historic if healthy.  They weren’t healthy, yet they were historic anyways, even after losing Treinen and Hudson for most of the year.  They currently hold the second-best ERA, best WHIP, and best Average Against.  The pitching staff as a whole is so good they can take their top 13 ERA leaders and have NO ONE with an ERA above 3.10!!!  That would include a full five-man rotation and seven relievers that have had saves this season.  If you were to include Andre Jackson into that mix, the highest ERA on the staff would be 2.84.

The Dodgers scored 40 more runs than the next-best offense and still managed to give up five fewer runs than the next-best pitching staff.  They lead the MLB in both of these categories.  Their run differential is almost 100 runs (94, to be exact), better than the next team.  But, “The Dodgers are too dependent on their top three, and it’s stars, not the depth that’s needed for the Postseason.”?  This is an opinionated boast as I’ve ever seen.  If we’re smart enough to play our best performers, our lineup is better and much more dynamic than any other team. Just look at these numbers!

When Muncy and Bellinger are the two worst hitters on your team, you know you’re stacked!

No one had heard of Rosario before last season, and no one had heard of Arozarena the year before.  It takes a couple of guys to get hot and others to play a role.  The Nats got that in 2018 when Adam Eaton and Trea Turner set the table for Soto and Rendon.  In 2020 it was the Mookie and Seager show and was the only good postseason Seager had during our current run of success.  There are a lot of ways to get the job done.  Generalizations are just observations without the fortitude to check them with facts.

There are no perfect teams.  That’s true in any team sport.  But, this team is as close as a team has been to perfect for maybe 100 years.  You just don’t win 111 by accident.  If you honestly think this team isn’t the best in the league this year, you’re not too sharp, Harold Reynolds and the rest of you!