Bring Me The Head Of Dave Roberts And Everyone Else

I suppose you could put together a spectacular "lowlight" reel for the first quarter of the Dodgers' turd of a season, featuring relief pitchers giving up mammoth go-ahead home runs, batters looking at called third strikes down the middle, Justin Turner getting hit on the hand, a foul river of effluvia bursting all over the field during the last preseason game at Dodger Stadium, all narrated by Orel Hersheiser's droning voice about how "these hitters just need to get hot and get in a rhythm." It has been, from day one, an endless disaster.

But, first and foremost, when this kind of season happens, you need to fire the manager. On Saturday night, the Dodgers were beating the seemingly lowly Reds 3-1. They had two runners on in the bottom of the 5th, with a chance to blow a game open for once. Dave Roberts chose to bat the pitcher, Ross Stripling, who'd been throwing great that night. Fine. Then Stripling struck out.

In the top of the inning, Stripling struck out the first batter he faced. Then Roberts decided to bring in a lefty to face a righty or a righty to face a lefty, it doesn't matter. What matters is that he let a pitcher, who was doing fine, bat in the bottom of the inning, blew a chance to score, and then almost immediately yanked the pitcher in the top of the inning. The "relief" pitcher, J.T. Chargois, gave up a single, botched a double-play ball back to the box, and gave up a three-run homer. Roberts STILL left him in after that, and then Chargois gave up back-to-back doubles, and the Dodgers were down 5-3, which ended up being the final score because the team is incapable now of scoring more than three runs. Good job, manager.

The Reds had the worst pitching staff in baseball coming into the weekend at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers scored three runs three times and one run one time, and ended up getting swept. Now, the Dodgers will not fire Roberts, because nothing is more important to the Dodgers than public relations, and it's bad public relations to fire a manager, even though he literally just bungled away a midseason game to the worst team in the National League. Except that the Reds are no longer the worst team in the National League. The Dodgers are. I thought this was supposed to be fun, baseball!

In 1983, The St. Louis Cardinals finished 79-83 the year after winning the World Series. They started out the season horribly and never recovered. That is the only antecedent I can think of for the Dodgers circling the drain and washing out to sea in mid-May. At this point, 79 wins would be a happy ending.