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Is Dave Roberts managing for his job in 2024?
That seems … well, weird to write. Remember, the Dodgers’ manager has the fourth-best managerial winning percentage in the history of baseball, .630 (753-443) in his nine years at the helm, and the three men in front of him were managers from the Negro Leagues: Bullet Rogan, Vic Harris and Rube Foster. Rogan and Foster are in the Hall of Fame.
Additionally, five of Roberts’ Dodger teams have won 100 games in a season, including the last three in a row. And while the haters think of 2020 as a bogus championship, consider that the Dodgers’ 43 victories and .717 winning percentage in that pandemic-shortened season would translate to 116 victories over a full schedule – and, may we add, they waded through four postseason series that October and played the last three in a bubble. You spend three weeks or so not allowed to leave your hotel except to go to and from your workplace, and see how well you perform.
That’s the case for Roberts. The case against, as lots of Dodger fans will remind us: No full-season championships. Two losses in the World Series (though, as we all know, 2017 comes with an asterisk). One loss in the National League Division Series. Two losses, the last two years, in the wild-card round.
And do we even need to bring up all of those pitching decisions that have gone awry through the years? Pitchers fail, manager gets the blame – even if he’s following the front office’s script. It’s been true as long as this game has been played.
All of this, plus more than $1 billion in free-agent signings over the winter, and it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that the pressure is really on the affable Roberts now, though you’ll never hear that from this front office in so many words. But this team is built to win it all. The signings of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow were a visceral reaction to October’s three-game flameout against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
And if you are expected to win, and you don’t, guess who gets the blame?
Even now, before a regular-season pitch has been thrown, the pressure might already be on Roberts. Consider the evolution from “I just keep expecting it to get better” to “I don’t know” to “permanent, for now,” in just a three-day span in Arizona, as the defensive play of Gavin Lux at shortstop was shoddy enough to force the switch of Mookie Betts to short and Lux to second. And then consider the sight during Monday’s exhibition against Cleveland, of second baseman Lux and shortstop Chris Taylor letting an infield looper drop and Roberts dropping his head in seeming exasperation in the dugout.
Dave Roberts looks like he’s had enough with the Dodgers infield defense
— Doug McKain (@DMAC_LA) March 11, 2024
The idea of Betts pinballing from right field to second base and then to shortstop in that three-day span smacks of desperation, whether by the manager or by the executives above him. (My guess would be the latter.) And in how many other ways might there be a quick trigger if things don’t go well?
This must be what it was like in New York in the days of Yankee hegemony, minus the sporadic outbursts from the owner’s suite. There will almost certainly be no Steinbrenner-esque eruptions from Dodgers chairman Mark Walter, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman or general manager Brandon Gomes. But there will be immense expectations and immense pressure, on everyone in the organization.
The top three in the Dodgers batting order could someday be represented by a row of Hall of Fame plaques. The bullpen, flawed in years past, seems as strong as it’s been in a long time. The starting pitching? There are still some questions as the season begins, but it will be a far stronger rotation down the stretch assuming that Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw are healthy and pitching to their capabilities.
Bottom line? There is no more patience, nor should there be, with the concept that the postseason might be, as Oakland A’s executive Billy Beane memorably called it, “a crapshoot.” This is not Premier League soccer, where if you dominate the regular season you’re the champion, period. In this country and this sport, the postseason is where careers are defined – and not just those of players.
This, more than any Dodgers season in recent memory, isn’t even “World Series or bust.” It is instead “Parade or bust.” And if the procession isn’t rolling through downtown L.A. on an early November afternoon with adoring crowds cheering their heroes, I think we know who will take the fall.
That said, and with a full understanding of the mercurial nature of baseball’s postseason, I don’t think we will be observing a managerial vigil next fall. Nor do I think we will be grousing about yet another “organizational failure,” as Friedman candidly described it after last October’s flameout.
Yes, the postseason is unpredictable enough. Yes, we know strange things can happen as a season progresses. (Few would have guessed last spring, for example, that Aaron Judge would miss more than a month after running into the right-field bullpen gate at Dodger Stadium and injuring his toe, and that the Yankees’ 25-33 record without him would doom their postseason hopes.)
But that MVP-MVP-MVP top of the Dodgers’ lineup – sounds like a chant from the cheap seats, doesn’t it? – should reduce the chances of a mass slump at the worst possible time. The dynamic of Betts, Ohtani and Freddie Freeman back-to-back-to-back will make the rest of the lineup better. And while the Dodgers shouldn’t have to slug their way out of trouble, this lineup should reduce the stress on their pitching staff.
That said, maybe the best thing for them would be to not win 100 games in the regular season again, but to save something for the postseason and make sure their studs are ready and efficient for the most significant part of the year.
And yes, I’ve been known to pick them to win it all in the recent past. This time I mean it. Nor am I alone. The smart guys in Las Vegas, and other places where odds are established, also like the Dodgers to be the last ones standing.
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They’ll figure out how to handle that first-round bye as division champions They’ll face the rival Giants in the Division Series – sorry, Padres and Diamondbacks fans, but Bob Melvin’s presence in San Francisco will boost the Giants into the No. 2 spot in the NL West. This time it won’t take a fifth game of a best-of-five, or a disputed check-swing call as ended the 2021 NLDS, for the Dodgers to advance.
They’ll face an old friend in the NL Championship Series in Cody Bellinger. But the Chicago Cubs, riding an NL Central title and an upset of Atlanta in their NLDS, will fall in six. And the Baltimore Orioles will be the World Series opponent, but this isn’t 1966 and these Dodgers won’t be held to two runs in four games.
Yes, there will be a parade – the first one in 36 years – to make up for all of those, ahem, “organizational failures.”
Otherwise, there will be significant fallout. (Also, hopefully, a big “404” for item not found awaiting anyone who tries to access this column after the fact.)
jalexander@scng.com