Dodgers Dugout: Is the Dodgers’ win-loss record a mirage?

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell, and on this Memorial Day, let us remember what is truly important: not whether the Dodgers win or lose, but those who died in service to this country so we can sit around and worry about the Dodgers.

The Dodgers are 33-22, on pace to win 97 games, have a 5½-game lead in the NL West and the sixth-best record in baseball (second-best in the NL, tied with Atlanta, which just lost Ronald Acuña Jr. for the season with a torn ACL). In light of their recent offensive slump (they are 7-8 in their last 15 games, scoring 3.7 runs per game in that span), how much of that record is a real reflection of how good they are?

The team with the best record in the NL, the Philadelphia Phillies (38-16) share one thing with the Dodgers: Neither have played a game against a team that is in first place. They are the only teams in baseball that have yet to do that.

Here’s how the Dodgers have fared against teams this year, with run differential against that team included.

vs. Arizona, 3-3 (+3)
Atlanta, 3-0 (+14)
Chicago Cubs, 1-2 (-6)
Cincinnati, 3-4 (-4)
Miami, 3-0 (+11)
Minnesota, 2-1 (+4)
New York Mets, 1-2 (+3)
San Diego, 3-5 (-2)
San Francisco, 5-1 (+14)
St. Louis, 3-1 (+9)
Toronto, 2-1 (+10)
Washington, 4-2 (+13)

Against teams that are .500 or better, the Dodgers are 14-9 (.609) with a +24 run differential. Against teams below .500 they are 19-13 (.576) with a +45 run differential. They have played a soft schedule, but have actually done better against winning teams. They play to the level of their opponent. And they are only 11-9 (.550) against NL West teams, when they usually clean up against their own division.

A look at their record against NL West teams in previous years:

2023: 34-18 (.654)
2022: 54-22 (.711)
2021: 50-26 (.658)
2020: 27-13 (.675)
2019: 51-25 (.671)
2018: 45-32 (.584)

The Dodgers play only 52 games against the NL West this season. It’s a strange schedule. They play San Francisco June 28-30 and July 22-25 and then don’t play them again. Meanwhile, they play Colorado 13 times the rest of the season, including six of the last nine games.

At their current pace, the Dodgers would be expected to go 29-23 against the NL West. You have to go back to 2018, when the Dodgers finished with 92 wins, to find a record close to that “bad.” They’ve won 100 games in a season every full year since then (and were certainly on pace to in 2020). (Gee, I’m using a lot of parentheses in this newsletter.)

Let’s see how the Dodgers have done in other situations:

Home: 19-11
Road: 14-11

March: 4-2
April: 15-11
May: 14-9

Extra-inning games: 3-3

One-run games: 6-5

Blowout (win or lose by at least five runs): 10-4

Interleague: 4-2

Record in one-run games is often a sign of a quality team. The teams that succeed often in those are usually the teams that do all the little things right and have a good bullpen. Let’s look at how the Dodgers have done in those games the last few years.

2023: 16-15
2022: 16-15
2021: 24-24
2020: 7-5
2019: 27-22
2018: 22-22

Hmmm, perhaps we see at least one reason why the Dodgers struggle in the postseason. They are used to bludgeoning their opponent with their offense, so when the postseason comes around, and the games get tighter, the Dodgers get tighter.

The Dodgers of the last few seasons have never been good at situational hitting and manufacturing runs. I’m not talking about bunting. No team does that anymore, and few players are able to do it well. The White Sox and Cardinals lead the majors with nine each. The Dodgers have two. No, I’m talking about the things that often go unnoticed that can hurt them in the postseason. Take, for example, Saturday’s loss. The Reds brought reliever Sam Moll in to pitch the eighth inning. It was Moll’s third consecutive game, and he hadn’t pitched in three consecutive games in two years. Chris Taylor, the number nine hitter in the lineup, leads off. Now, a hitter there might think to himself, “Hey, this guy might tire easily today. The best hitters are coming up behind me. I’ll try to work the count and see if we can tire him a bit.” But, Taylor swung at the first pitch and flied out. A complete waste of an at-bat.

Remember Kirk Gibson backing out of the box before the full-count pitch from Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series? As he backed out, he was remembering the words of scout Mel Didier. Before that game, the Dodgers were going over the A’s pitchers and what to look for. Didier recounts, “When we got to Eckersley, and it was my turn to speak, I used my best Southern drawl and said, ‘Pardners, you can bank on this as sure as I’m standing here. If you’re a left-handed hitter and you get in a tough, tough situation with Eckersley, he’s going to throw you that back-door slider.’”

Well, when the count went full on Kirk, the players tell me that everyone on the bench was whispering, ‘Back-door slider,’ and Kirk told me later that he stepped out of the batter’s box and kind of laughed and smiled to himself because he could see me standing there talking about it. He said: ‘Mel, I knew what I was going to get, picked it up as soon as it left his hand and hit it as hard as I could.’ ”

You have to wonder if anyone even told the Dodger hitters that Moll would be working his third straight game for the first time in two years, and depending on the game situation, it might be wise to work the count.

And that brings me to the bigger point here. The Dodgers are going to win the division. They will make the postseason. Will they win the World Series? I have no idea. And neither do you. But I do know that they make it awfully difficult on themselves by not always doing the little things right, like situational hitting.

Ohtani has sore hamstring

If you noticed Shohei Ohtani running at less than full speed during the triple he hit during Saturday’s game, there’s a reason.

Dave Roberts said after the game that Ohtani has a bruised right hamstring.

“It’s more of just kind of managing that hamstring,” Roberts said. “But today was better than yesterday. And we just need him in there. So we didn’t want to push it. ... It was in the homestand where he got hit when he was on first base on a throw over, and it hit him in the right hamstring. And I think that’s where it kind of started. So, the good thing is that it wasn’t a strain. It was a contusion that we’re just trying to manage.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I might sit him a game or two just to be on the safe side.

Losing streaks

The almighty, invincible (at least, that’s what many told me before the season) Dodgers have lost five in a row. Not a time to panic yet, but as we’ve discussed many times in this newsletter already, the bottom of the lineup is going to kill them if they don’t figure out a solution. Anyway, here are the longest losing streaks each season since they started making the postseason in 2013:

2024: 5
2023: 4 (finished 100-62)
2022: 4 (111-51)
2021: 4 (106-56)
2020: 2 (43-17)
2019: 6 (106-56)
2018: 6 (92-71)
2017: 11 (104-58)
2016: 6 (91-71)
2015: 5 (92-70)
2014: 3 (94-68)
2013: 8 (92-70)

The team that had the longest losing streak in that span is the team that many consider the best: 2017. They lost 11 in a row and 16 of 17. That’s why it’s far too early to panic. Concerned, yes. Panicked, no.

Dave Roberts cares

Were you wondering why Dave Roberts went to the mound Sunday after Yohan Ramirez hit two batters with pitches, and basically embraced him? Jack Harris asked him after the game:

“He’s emotional and cares, and he’s trying to impress with a new ballclub,” Roberts said. “I just tried to reassure him and give him some confidence, love on him a little bit, and try to take a little bit of pressure off.”

“You just see the player, and you kind of feel what he’s got going on in his brain, in his heart, all that stuff,” Roberts added. “Sometimes I’m sure — I’ve never thrown a major league inning — but you feel like you’re on an island. So I wanted to show that we were all behind him.”

Ramirez hit two batters in Friday’s game too and has hit seven batters in 17.1 innings with three teams this season.

A computer strike zone?

Those of you hoping for a computer-called strike zone will have to wait a while longer. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said that he doesn’t expect something like that in the majors until 2026 at the earliest. And Manfred would rather see it as a challenge system, where the batter can dispute a strike call, rather than a computer making all the calls (which sounds like a great way to slow down the game again).

“There’s a growing consensus in large part based on what we’re hearing from players that the challenge form should be the form of ABS, if and when we bring it to the big leagues, at least as a starting point,” Manfred said. “I think that’s a good decision.”

An interesting part of Steve Henson’s story: Since the beginning of the pitch-tracking era in 2008, MLB umpires have improved their accuracy in calling balls and strikes every year, according to FanGraphs. Accuracy has spiked from 81.3% to 92.4%. Expressed another way, incorrect calls have been reduced by nearly 60% in 15 years.

The Fangraphs study also noted that before pitch tracking, umpires were much better at identifying balls than strikes, meaning that the improved accuracy of the last 15 years has increased the number of strikes. That likely is a contributing factor to the current cumulative batting average of .240, the lowest since 1968.

“If the league were to implement a robo-zone tomorrow without changing the strike zone at all, the offensive environment would instantly get even tougher,” Davy Andrews of FanGraphs wrote a year ago. “I’m not trying to scare anybody away from our techno-future, but maybe we should all watch Terminator one last time before we flip the switch.”

Are you in favor of an automated ball-strike system, or would you prefer it to remain with the umpires? Vote here and let us know.

Injuries

Dodgers currently on the IL, with the hoped-for time of return:

10/15-day IL
reliever Ryan Brasier (June)
reliever Joe Kelly (unknown)
Starting pitcher Bobby Miller (early June)
Third baseman Max Muncy (mid-June)
Closer Evan Phillips (early June)

60-day IL
reliever Connor Brogdon (unknown)
starting pitcher Tony Gonsolin (2025)
reliever Brusdar Graterol (unknown)
pitcher Kyle Hurt (after All-Star break)
starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw (August)
starting pitcher Dustin May (late 2024)
starting pitcher Emmet Sheehan (late 2025)

Up next

Monday: Dodgers (Gavin Stone, 4-2, 3.60 ERA) at New York Mets (Tylor Megill, 0-2, 3.00 ERA), 1:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, 1020 KTNQ

Tuesday: Dodgers (Tyler Glasnow, 6-3, 3.09 ERA) at New York Mets (*Jose Quintana, 1-4, 5.13 ERA), 4:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, 1020 KTNQ

Wednesday: Dodgers (*James Paxton, 5-0, 3.49 ERA) at New York Mets (*David Peterson, first game of season), 1:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, 1020 KTNQ

*-left-handed

In case you missed it

How the Dodgers’ Alex Vesia found his way back into a high-leverage role in the bullpen

Dodgers’ James Paxton has found success despite missing a key ingredient

Robots calling balls and strikes in MLB? Rob Manfred says ABS system unlikely in 2025

And finally

Vin Scully hosts the game show “It Takes Two.” Watch and listen here.