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LAkers 4 Life
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Joined: 12 Apr 2001
Posts: 14629
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 Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:37 am Post subject: |
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| lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
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SGV-Laker fan
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Joined: 23 May 2013
Posts: 8860
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:48 am Post subject: |
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| LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
what do you expect, we have someone with small market mentality running the team with a deep pocket. makes no sense at all. |
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oasisdude77
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Joined: 02 Oct 2007
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:57 am Post subject: |
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| LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | oasisdude77 wrote: | | 4stargeneralbulldog wrote: | This is just inconceivable that Roberts is brought back as manager. As other members here have pointed out, if the other elite franchises like the Yankees, Red Sox were in our situation with back to back WS losses and a 1st round exit, they would have fired the manager the next day.
I have a feeling by this time next year, we'll all be talking about what went wrong in the 2020 season. |
Yessir! It's become an annual October tradition. Will see y'all here same time next year!
Until Kershaw and Roberts are gone, this team will never win a title. But we can revel in all the division titles. |
I wouldn't say never. I think at this point they have to be marginalized so much that the Dodgers win it all despite them. And in team sports, that's a very rare thing to occur. |
We shall see. But so long as Kershaw is on this team and Roberts is our manager, I'm afraid we'll be watching Kershaw blow key playoffs games in the forseeable future. |
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loslakersss
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Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Posts: 11853
Location: LA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 10:21 am Post subject: |
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| oasisdude77 wrote: | | greenfrog wrote: | | loslakersss wrote: | | Remember in the early 2000's when we laughed at Sacramento celebrating division titles while the Lakers only celebrated NBA titles. Looks like we got our payback lol |
This org invented the silver ring ceremony, right? I'm almost glad they flamed out early so we can be spared another one of those. |
I dunno man. At least when we lost in the WS, baseball was over. It's going to suck seeing highlights of the next two rounds knowing we should be in it. |
I'm of the other camp. At least I can sit back and enjoy some exciting games (hopefully) without any stakes. The WC games and 2 of the other 3 DS series were fun to watch. |
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LongBeachPoly
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Joined: 14 Jul 2012
Posts: 16143
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 10:28 am Post subject: |
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| LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
I don't know if the Astros are a good example though. They were bad for so long that they were able to accumulate lots of talent.
They started with a clean slate and got rid of all of their bad contracts.
We were saddled with bad contracts. We never went through a period of totally wiping our slate clean like they did.
Right now, they have lots of cheap talent. One thing they've done well is they've been able to lock up some of this cheap talent.
They've locked up Altuve and Bregman. Correa they haven't been able to lock up. Same thing with Springer.
They've got Verlander locked up for 2 more years but it looks like they'll lose Gerrit Cole.
Eventually, they'll have financial issues just like us but they have a couple of years before then.
They had Altuve at $9.5M this year but his salary jumps to $29M next year.
Same with Bregman. $650k this year and $13M next year.
They have 2 more years of Correa in arbitration. So we'll see how they navigate these contracts financially. They're able to make more moves than us because they're set up better financially than we are. They're saddled with less bad contracts than we are.
Is that our fault? Yup. But when you're able to wipe the slate clean and just tank for a few years, that helps as well. |
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greenfrog
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:58 am Post subject: |
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| loslakersss wrote: | | oasisdude77 wrote: | | greenfrog wrote: | | loslakersss wrote: | | Remember in the early 2000's when we laughed at Sacramento celebrating division titles while the Lakers only celebrated NBA titles. Looks like we got our payback lol |
This org invented the silver ring ceremony, right? I'm almost glad they flamed out early so we can be spared another one of those. |
I dunno man. At least when we lost in the WS, baseball was over. It's going to suck seeing highlights of the next two rounds knowing we should be in it. |
I'm of the other camp. At least I can sit back and enjoy some exciting games (hopefully) without any stakes. The WC games and 2 of the other 3 DS series were fun to watch. |
I actually will be rooting for the Nats the rest of the playoffs. |
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adkindo
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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| LongBeachPoly wrote: |
And that's the thing. Can you spend 5 minutes on something and label it as "realistic"? |
I mean it is just message board thoughts....I did not put it on my letterhead. Btw, don't you guys have a decent amount of bad or dead money coming off the books this offeseason? |
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Steve007
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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| loslakersss wrote: | | Remember in the early 2000's when we laughed at Sacramento celebrating division titles while the Lakers only celebrated NBA titles. Looks like we got our payback lol |
Fortunately we’re not crying about the umpires the same way they cried (and STILL continue to cry about the referees)). |
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LongBeachPoly
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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| adkindo wrote: | | LongBeachPoly wrote: |
And that's the thing. Can you spend 5 minutes on something and label it as "realistic"? |
I mean it is just message board thoughts....I did not put it on my letterhead. Btw, don't you guys have a decent amount of bad or dead money coming off the books this offeseason? |
Yes, it is just a message board. And you did not put it on letterhead.
But it is a discussion. And as with any subject, the quality of the discussion depends on how much time/thought you put into it.
If you want to spend 5 minutes and talk about "realistic" moves that the Dodgers can make this offseason, well...
The 5 minutes you spent on the subject reflects the quality of the discussion that you're going to get from it. You get out what you put in.
For a discussion seeking "realistic" moves that the Dodgers can make, most of the suggestions were on the "unrealistic" side.
(And since we're timestamping our posts now, I spent 1.5 minutes on this reply) |
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Steve007
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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If Roberts gets replaced and the team doesn’t win it next year (and the year after, etc.), won’t fans be eager to replace the next manager? Not saying I want Roberts to stay, but this situation reminds me of the way people felt about Don Mattingly. The team kept choking when he was the manager too.
Even Lasorda who actually won a couple of times made horrible mistakes as a manager.
Seems like picking managers is like picking the best option that people are going to hate. |
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nickuku
Star Player
Joined: 09 Jul 2010
Posts: 7844
Location: Orange County
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Steve007 wrote: | If Roberts gets replaced and the team doesn’t win it next year (and the year after, etc.), won’t fans be eager to replace the next manager? Not saying I want Roberts to stay, but this situation reminds me of the way people felt about Don Mattingly. The team kept choking when he was the manager too.
Even Lasorda who actually won a couple of times made horrible mistakes as a manager.
Seems like picking managers is like picking the best option that people are going to hate. |
People are fine with losing. I don't think people are okay with stupid decisions.
Both Mattingly and Roberts are horrible when it comes to lineups and in-game decision making.
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JerryWest_44
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Joined: 22 May 2004
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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| LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
The Dodger braintrust has to know the 106 wins has a lot to do with the opposing National Division pitching and teams. The team as-is is fine if your competing against the National Division but if you want to win the chip we're going to need top-notch pitching, savvy disciplined batters who can show their best when their best is needed and a manager who uses his head & not his heart. |
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ChickenStu
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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^
Yeah, I don't want them to just trade all the prospects and spend a billion dollars on free agents. But a happy medium should be attainable. The Dodgers are basically Yankees West when it comes to being a financial juggernaut, yet they don't seem willing to go into the luxury tax, even when the penalties were wiped away so there wouldn't be a repeater tax. This in spite of the fact that over half of their fanbase can't even watch regular season Dodger games unless they are getting them streamed somehow. I like the idea of keeping most of your young talent, but there's no reason that a shrewd GM couldn't move players every once in a while for a major upgrade to the current big league product, as well as making a big free agent expenditure, which of course does not cost you anything in the way of prospects/assets.
Think of it this way: the Dodgers were already big favorites to advance to the World Series out of the NL going into this postseason. Now imagine Gerrit Cole in the rotation along with Buehler. They would have been prohibitive favorites. That move is out there, if they were just willing to spend big bucks. Even more than Rendon, who is really, really good, Cole would move the needle much more in terms of postseason impact. |
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ExPatLkrFan
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Location: Mukdahan, Thailand
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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This may be true but what does that say about the Astros and Yankees records are they inflated too? The AL had 3 100 win teams but they also had 3 100 loss teams and 3 more with 90 or more losses. This doesn't include the White Sox who only lost 89 games. So almost half of the AL was horrible but the Dodgers are the only ones that are feasting on weak teams. I don't think heir record was inflated they just made some really bad decisions in the playoffs.
I also agree with whoever said using August and September as a tryout camp is a big mistake. Yeah rest your guys who needed it but but try to keep doing what got you that lead. Bellinger for one needed more rest down the line but they continued to play him almost everyday. By the end of the season he was looking pretty haggard out there and I think this contributed to his late season slump. The announcing team mentioned that he has a hard time keeping weight on and I think it showed in the latter 3rd of the season. |
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LongBeachPoly
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Joined: 14 Jul 2012
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| ChickenStu wrote: | ^
Yeah, I don't want them to just trade all the prospects and spend a billion dollars on free agents. But a happy medium should be attainable. The Dodgers are basically Yankees West when it comes to being a financial juggernaut, yet they don't seem willing to go into the luxury tax, even when the penalties were wiped away so there wouldn't be a repeater tax. This in spite of the fact that over half of their fanbase can't even watch regular season Dodger games unless they are getting them streamed somehow. I like the idea of keeping most of your young talent, but there's no reason that a shrewd GM couldn't move players every once in a while for a major upgrade to the current big league product, as well as making a big free agent expenditure, which of course does not cost you anything in the way of prospects/assets.
Think of it this way: the Dodgers were already big favorites to advance to the World Series out of the NL going into this postseason. Now imagine Gerrit Cole in the rotation along with Buehler. They would have been prohibitive favorites. That move is out there, if they were just willing to spend big bucks. Even more than Rendon, who is really, really good, Cole would move the needle much more in terms of postseason impact. |
Yeah having Cole would definitey be great. I don’t see starting pitching as one of our bigger weaknesses.
If I would rank it, I’d rank our weaknesses as:
1) playoff hitting
2) relief pitching
3) managerial decision making
4) starting pitching
On another note, is Gerrit Cole the best starting pitcher to ever hit free agency (taking into account age and performance)
Off the top of my head and in no particular order, you have:
1) Randy Johnson
2) Greg Maddux
3) Kevin Brown
4) Greinke
5) Scherzer
6) Price
7) Barry Zito
8) CC Sabathia
I think Gerrit Cole might be the best/most sought after free agent pitcher ever
I can see him getting 7 yrs $235M+ |
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leor_77
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Joined: 23 Mar 2012
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Didn't even think of it till now...Can't really root for any of the 4 remaining teams. I would have pulled for ATL. |
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Steve007
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Joined: 21 Jul 2006
Posts: 13224
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Wow. And I thought the Dodger hitters struggled against Sanchez. |
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ChickenStu
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Joined: 25 Apr 2015
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Location: Anaheim, CA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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Regarding our biggest weaknesses, you have a huge advantage when you have the advantage in a postseason game with the starting pitching matchup, and, again, stuff plays in the postseason. Whatever the regular season difference is between Cole and Kershaw in the regular season, it's enormously higher in the postseason. Dominant starting pitching is by far the most important factor in the postseason. Now, that's not to say that you don't need many other things to go right. You do. But imagine the Dodgers with Cole.
A lot of teams are probably doing just that. But not a ton can realistically afford him. |
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LAkers 4 Life
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Joined: 12 Apr 2001
Posts: 14629
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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| LongBeachPoly wrote: | | LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
I don't know if the Astros are a good example though. They were bad for so long that they were able to accumulate lots of talent.
They started with a clean slate and got rid of all of their bad contracts.
We were saddled with bad contracts. We never went through a period of totally wiping our slate clean like they did.
Right now, they have lots of cheap talent. One thing they've done well is they've been able to lock up some of this cheap talent.
They've locked up Altuve and Bregman. Correa they haven't been able to lock up. Same thing with Springer.
They've got Verlander locked up for 2 more years but it looks like they'll lose Gerrit Cole.
Eventually, they'll have financial issues just like us but they have a couple of years before then.
They had Altuve at $9.5M this year but his salary jumps to $29M next year.
Same with Bregman. $650k this year and $13M next year.
They have 2 more years of Correa in arbitration. So we'll see how they navigate these contracts financially. They're able to make more moves than us because they're set up better financially than we are. They're saddled with less bad contracts than we are.
Is that our fault? Yup. But when you're able to wipe the slate clean and just tank for a few years, that helps as well. |
Good points. However, the credit must still go to Jeff Luhnow for his plan to tank hard to accumulate high draft assets and develop them into the team that they have now. And then complement that roster with impact players.
And that's the thing with the financials regarding the Dodgers. They did not manage it as smartly as they thought they did and have been trying to be creative to get out of them. But worse were the crappy short-term deals that they made to try to bridge the gap between being competitive while developing their prospects. Do too many of them, and now you've got too much dead money on the books that hinder your front office's ability to grab impact players that will cost a lot. |
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LongBeachPoly
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Joined: 14 Jul 2012
Posts: 16143
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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| LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | LongBeachPoly wrote: | | LAkers 4 Life wrote: | | lakersken80 wrote: | My guess is that we are so close to winning it all, we shouldn't be rocking the boat.
Ok, lets assume that is true....
However, every year there are teams that are going to the playoffs that keep exploiting the same weaknesses that the Dodgers have failed to fix. |
And that's the mentality that's holding them back. The astros have shown the propensity to make big changes to their roster in order to compete for more titles. The Dodgers should have been doing the same thing. I get wanting to be competitive on the field and keeping a top notch minor league system to replenish reinforcements, but at some point the front office owes it to the fans to bring in real impact players. |
I don't know if the Astros are a good example though. They were bad for so long that they were able to accumulate lots of talent.
They started with a clean slate and got rid of all of their bad contracts.
We were saddled with bad contracts. We never went through a period of totally wiping our slate clean like they did.
Right now, they have lots of cheap talent. One thing they've done well is they've been able to lock up some of this cheap talent.
They've locked up Altuve and Bregman. Correa they haven't been able to lock up. Same thing with Springer.
They've got Verlander locked up for 2 more years but it looks like they'll lose Gerrit Cole.
Eventually, they'll have financial issues just like us but they have a couple of years before then.
They had Altuve at $9.5M this year but his salary jumps to $29M next year.
Same with Bregman. $650k this year and $13M next year.
They have 2 more years of Correa in arbitration. So we'll see how they navigate these contracts financially. They're able to make more moves than us because they're set up better financially than we are. They're saddled with less bad contracts than we are.
Is that our fault? Yup. But when you're able to wipe the slate clean and just tank for a few years, that helps as well. |
Good points. However, the credit must still go to Jeff Luhnow for his plan to tank hard to accumulate high draft assets and develop them into the team that they have now. And then complement that roster with impact players.
And that's the thing with the financials regarding the Dodgers. They did not manage it as smartly as they thought they did and have been trying to be creative to get out of them. But worse were the crappy short-term deals that they made to try to bridge the gap between being competitive while developing their prospects. Do too many of them, and now you've got too much dead money on the books that hinder your front office's ability to grab impact players that will cost a lot. |
No doubt I don’t want to take credit away from Houston’s FO.
But they did have the option of just totally tanking. The Dodgers never did.
When new ownership took over, they had to spend to get the new TV deal. They took on some bad contracts that saddled us for a long time.
There were some bad contracts that took forever to get off the books.
Kemp, Ethier, AGon, etc.
We barely got Kemp’s contract off the books this year.
But, this FO is certainly not without fault. Lots of bad FA signings and International signings.
They also made their own bed.
It’s ironic but going cheap has proven to be expensive for this FO. |
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LongBeachPoly
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Joined: 14 Jul 2012
Posts: 16143
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| ChickenStu wrote: | Regarding our biggest weaknesses, you have a huge advantage when you have the advantage in a postseason game with the starting pitching matchup, and, again, stuff plays in the postseason. Whatever the regular season difference is between Cole and Kershaw in the regular season, it's enormously higher in the postseason. Dominant starting pitching is by far the most important factor in the postseason. Now, that's not to say that you don't need many other things to go right. You do. But imagine the Dodgers with Cole.
A lot of teams are probably doing just that. But not a ton can realistically afford him. |
No doubt Cole is a bigger advantage than Kershaw.
But we lost a game where Kershaw gave up 3 early runs then settled down to pitch 6ip. The offense never scored any runs.
Contrast that w/ yesterday when Strasburg gave up 3 early runs then settled in to pitch 6ip. Difference is their offense delivered.
We lost game 5 w Buehler giving up 1 run over 6.2 ip.
Could Cole have done better if he had Kershaw backing him up?
Our starting pitching didn’t let us down this series. Our bullpen, hitting n managerial decisions let us down.
Cole would be great. But he’d be upgrading arguably our strongest position.
Cole wouldn’t be a Kershww replacement. He’d be a Ryu n Hill replacement. In order to sign Cole, you have to let Ryu n Hill walk
So the rotation would have been Cole, Buehler n Kershaw. And there’s no guarantee Roberts doesn’t use Kershaw to back up Cole
I mean, you can build a pitching staff to give up 1 run every single start. That’s one way to win. It’s an extremely difficult road w little margin for error.
Or you can build a more well rounded team where you can still win even if ur starter gives up 3 runs |
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ExPatLkrFan
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Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 3984
Location: Mukdahan, Thailand
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Just heard from my Red Sox buddy that they are targeting Friedman to replace Dombrowski. Apparently his contract is up. Thoughts on a possible replacement? |
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Vishnu
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Posts: 16558
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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I’ve seen reports. No one seems to think he’ll leave. While the Red Sox are obviously a good brand, the Dodgers are a great situation for him with the foundation he set up. Also, I imagine ownership can break the bank for him as there’s no luxury tax for front office salary.
Last edited by Vishnu on Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:16 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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JerryWest_44
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Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 25324
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| ExPatLkrFan wrote: | | Just heard from my Red Sox buddy that they are targeting Friedman to replace Dombrowski. Apparently his contract is up. Thoughts on a possible replacement? |
That's been on the table for awhile... |
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ChickenStu
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Posts: 31912
Location: Anaheim, CA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I wouldn't be crying any tears if Friedman leaves. And no, I'm not a spoiled fan. Yes, he's done some great things, but I think this regime's weaknesses have truly played a big part in why the Dodgers don't have a ring during his tenure. |
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