PHOENIX – The best division race in baseball is unfolding in the National League West, though the Dodgers’ biggest challenge to extending their streak of eight consecutive division titles has not been who they thought it would be.
The Padres have been just as good as their roster talent would suggest – even with a recent skid, they are 10 games over .500 as the Dodgers arrive on Monday for their third showdown of the year. The battles have delivered: high tension, an elite level of talent and great moments from some of the game’s biggest stars.
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Yet, sitting in first place with one of the best run differentials in the game and production commensurate with their record are … the San Francisco Giants. They have elevated a race that included two of the sport’s most compelling clubs to what should be a three-team dead heat.
“For anyone to think that the Giants would be leading this division, I think would be a surprise,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Sunday. “But you give those guys credit.”
Farhan Zaidi is Giants president of baseball operations, and it’s hard to miss the similarities between the moves imparted on his club with the moves he made during his tenure as Dodgers general manager.
He’s built a club with very few, if any, glaring holes or areas with replacement-level production. He’s built a player development system that makes the existing players on the roster better, and Zaidi has found players and watched them turn into contributors they never had been before. That formula must sound familiar to Dodgers fans: Saturday marked the five-year anniversary of acquiring Chris Taylor, who has emerged as an integral part of the club’s postseason runs and ranks behind only Max Muncy and Clayton Kershaw among Dodgers players in FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement this season. How the Giants are built, and the number of wins they have already banked through mid-June, suggests they aren’t going away anytime soon.
But this week’s series between the Dodgers and Padres could still involve the two teams that wind up leading the division. FanGraphs pegs the Dodgers at 74.2 percent odds to win the NL West, followed by the Padres (18.2 percent) and Giants (7.6 percent), with the Dodgers’ win projection tabbing them to win by six games. They’ve managed to get this far – 17 games over .500 after a sweep against a Diamondbacks club that has lost 17 in a row – without several of their most important position players. They went a month without a fifth starter, absorbing bullpen games with remarkable efficiency. They still have as good a case as any club in baseball to win the World Series, as they did in 2020.
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“I think our guys have done a great job of just (continuing) to move forward and try to win baseball games,” Roberts said. “We got a long way to go. We got to keep playing better baseball.”
They’ve done so, for the most part. Their schedule has softened this month, but they’ve taken care of what’s in front of them. Their three-game sweep in Arizona, capped by a 9-8 win they squeaked out after leading by as many as eight runs. It marked the Dodgers’ 12th win this month, and their 10th victory in their past 12 games.
Now comes the test, a measuring-stick stretch as the Dodgers assess what moves need to be made at next month’s trade deadline.
So much of the Dodgers’ starting pitching depth is reliant upon Tony Gonsolin.
Dustin May, who found something in his ability to generate whiffs to match his explosive stuff, is out for the year after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Former Cy Young winner David Price hasn’t been extended out beyond one turn through the order all season, even when the Dodgers had a rotation spot to fill after May’s injury. Jimmy Nelson has shifted to more of a one-inning role and has an extensive injury history. Even the club’s top pitching prospect, Josiah Gray, has a shoulder impingement that prevented him from making a spot start big-league debut last month and still has him sidelined.
Then there’s Gonsolin, who missed the first two months of this season with a shoulder issue and has struggled to find his way back since coming off the injured list. The right-hander has proven to be an effective big leaguer on a per-inning basis over his first 27 career appearances (including the postseason) and was someone the Dodgers were figuring into their pitching plans even before May’s injury. When May’s surgery cleared an obvious role to fill, Roberts laid it out in ideal terms: use Gonsolin as a five-and-dive type of starter to at least shave some of the stress off a bullpen that had spent a month exhausted by occupying a rotation spot. Gonsolin hasn’t quite provided that yet.
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“It just hasn’t worked out as far as the efficiency once he’s got here,” Roberts said before Sunday’s game. “Some of it’s on Tony to go out there and be efficient and go deeper in games.”
Largely, it’s been command that’s felled him. He required 30-plus pitches in the first inning of each of his first two starts this season, limiting him to a combined 5 1/3 innings. He went 3 2/3 innings in Sunday’s 9-8 win over Arizona and appeared to correct some of the strike-throwing issues by pitching exclusively from the stretch. But the concerns continue, namely that he was limited to 45 to 60 pitches (he finished with 46) pregame and his velocity dropped from 94.6 mph on average in his first two starts to 91.8 mph on Sunday due to what Roberts described as “shoulder tiredness.”
Gonsolin said there was “not a high level” of concern about his continued shoulder issues and he “absolutely” should make his next start, with the shortened workload aimed at addressing the issue. But he struggled to get warmed up properly, and operating at a diminished velocity in short bursts creates a finer line to walk even if the right-hander keeps making starts.
Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior conceded Saturday, the day before Gonsolin’s start, that the right-hander is still working on getting built up. Given that Price and Nelson have shifted to bullpen roles and Gray is hurt, it’s left the Dodgers having to keep working through getting Gonsolin to full effectiveness.
“Tony’s a wild card,” Prior said. “We need Tony to step up and kind of be that guy that we saw last year. He’s had to battle through some things, and he’s not necessarily at his 100 percent because of what he went through with the shoulder and stuff. But hopefully, he’s trending in the right direction.
“We do need Tony to kind of step up and at least fill that void as of right now, until something changes.”
Starting pitching hasn’t been much of a problem for the Dodgers. But this raises that level of concern beyond the four main options who have carried them this year.
The Dodgers could be as close to full strength as they’ve been in quite some time, quite soon.
Cody Bellinger and Muncy could come off the injured list as early this week in San Diego, with Corey Seager set to start a rehab assignment by the end of the week. Those players represent three of the four most valuable Dodgers position players since the start of the 2019 season by fWAR (Bellinger 9.4, Muncy 7.9, Seager 5.9) and include a former NL MVP, the Dodgers’ best hitter this season and last year’s World Series MVP. Having those guys back for a stretch that includes facing the Padres, Cubs and Giants is particularly huge.
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Of the three, Muncy likely has the lowest bar to clear to have a regular impact. He has missed the least amount of time and said his IL designation was mostly a cautionary measure given his history of oblique issues. He even homered in the same at-bat after suffering the injury.
Seager has missed more than a month with a fractured right hand but has progressed well and took batting practice at Chase Field during the Dodgers’ weekend series. He indicated he’d still like to hit off velocity, be it against a machine or in a live BP session, before starting what could be a week-long rehab assignment.
Bellinger hasn’t had a real regular run of it all year, dating back to offseason shoulder surgery that limited him during spring training. He suffered a hairline fracture in his leg in the first week of the season and then went on the IL with a hamstring issue a week after he came back. Pair that with what has been inconsistent offensive production and swing adjustments over the past couple of seasons, and his output this year can be a question.
The Dodgers have hit even without having all those guys in the lineup much this season — they entered Sunday with the best team wRC+ in the National League and then put up nine runs in its series finale against Arizona — but getting those players back pushes the Dodgers’ roster into where they hope for it to be. More at-bats for players such as Bellinger, Muncy and Seager allow Roberts to utilize bench pieces such as Albert Pujols, Zach McKinstry and Steven Souza Jr. in more specialized roles. It allows the Dodgers to play the style that makes them so grating on opponents, and bolsters their odds in what will surely be a war of attrition as teams deal with league-wide injury spikes.
(Photo of Tony Gonsolin: Norm Hall / Getty Images)
