I spent the weekend pondering what to say about the Dodgers' magical Friday night in Mexico, where four pitchers combined to no-hit the Padres, only the 12th time in the history of baseball that a combined no-hitter has occurred. Unassisted triple plays are more common. People not getting the runs after eating a Dodger Dog is (barely) more common. Common is more common.
But then that moment passed and the media lickspittling about the magical "Dodger pitching tradition" passed with it. The bullpen shanked away a small lead on Saturday, and then yesterday, the Dodgers went 0-55 with runners in scoring position and got shut out by a 22-year-old Padres rookie.
Meanwhile, fate continued to take a meat cleaver to the Dodgers' hopes, landing Clayton Kershaw on the disabled list alongside Justin Turner, Corey Seager, Yasiel Puig, Logan Forsythe, and Hyun-Jin Ryu. That grim roll call, alongside the fact that nearly every player on the team has missed games because of e-coli poisoning this season, leads me to think that the Dodgers share a doctor with Donald Trump.
All this forces pretentious discussions of the Dodgers' "depth." President of Team Operations And Cost Cutting Andrew Friedman was on the broadcast the other night, blathering about how the team's depth is its "26th Man," as though no other team has a functional minor-league system. It's true that the minors have brought up Walker Buehler and Alex Verdugo, the only two players on the team with a discernible pulse, but the magical depth also led us to a lineup yesterday that had Austin Barnes batting 5th, Kyle Farmer batting 6th, and a mysterious fellow named Tim Locastro hitting 8th. "These guys just need a win to get their confidence going to get some momentum," Orel blathered from the broadcast booth, ignoring one obvious factor:
These Dodgers suck.
Fate, incompetent conditioning, and poor management have conspired to rob this team of a chance for a return trip to the World Series. The players will either be undergoing endless surgery or will be padding around their mansions in their stocking-feet come October. It's been a long time since Dodger fans have been forced to root for "guys who don't have a prayer in the long run," but that time has, at last, arrived. Last place is a real possibility. A 70-win season is also a real possibility.
We may have "depth", but we haven't begun to see the bottom.
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