Will the real 2025 Dodgers please stand up?

Yahoo

16 hours ago

Sunday's loss to the Toronto Blue Jays can only be described as equal parts baffling and infuriating, especially to any poor soul who ventured to Dodger Stadium. When the Dodgers lose in a manner they have only done five times since coming to Los Angeles, crimson flags should be flying with reckless abandon.
As an aside, that game against the Diamondbacks was literally game two of the 2019 regular season. It should be a near-mathematical impossibility to lose a game when the opposition is giving you that many chances to score, yet the Dodgers found a way to blow it on Sunday.
Even noted player's manager Dave Roberts came out swinging as he does, after the Dodgers' baffling loss on Sunday, while declaring 'there was no way we should lose this game.'
From calling out Shohei Ohtani pressing at the plate, swinging at ball four out of hand, to his being thrown out at third base to end an inning, to Michael Conforto missing a pitch '3-1, you get a pitch that couldn't be put on a tee much better, you gotta move it forward,' it's a stretch (pun fully intended) to think of the last time that the Dodgers' manager named names.
Do I expect the Dodgers to designate Conforto for assignment or adjust the batting order? No.
Accordingly, do I think this lot would have held onto 2008-Andruw Jones for dear life, depriving us of Mannywood? Probably. A disgruntled Boston slugger was traded this year, although his bat still seems to have been left in Beantown.
And yet the Dodgers' current predicament is a blunder of the team's own making. It was so easy to harrumph the Dodgers' trades at the 2025 trade deadline as inactivity. Classic British comedy might call it 'firm masterly inactivity.'
The Dodgers pushed Dustin May out (his words, not mine), and when sent on a trip to the market needing eggs and milk, the team returned with almond drink, no milk, and no eggs.
Expectations were that the Dodgers would acquire Stephen Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians at the deadline. When tasked with a response, no disrespect, but all the team could do was Call.
With the expanded playoffs, having true sellers like the Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins has been a rarity. Moreover, it was not just you — the trade deadline was at record levels of busyness in 2025, with 35 deals on deadline day and 50 total deals within 72 hours of the deadline.
Agita or skepticism abounded as to what the Dodgers did, from many corners, national, local, and here. The Summer of Michael Conforto would apparently continue, and the negative dividends are already paying out.
Earlier in the year, I chided everyone for whining that the Dodgers had broken baseball through their offseason acquisitions of the past two seasons. You make contract commitments that rival the gross domestic products of small Asian nations, and people will notice.
The Dodgers built a team based around an offensive engine of Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez, a rotation of stallions with Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Dustin May, and Tony Gonsolin, with a lockdown bullpen of Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, Kirby Yates, and Michael Kopech.
The best laid plans of mice and men — no one is whining that the Dodgers are ruining baseball anymore, are they?
Which makes the inconsistency across the board from the jump all the more baffling when you consider that the team had the best record in baseball for quite a while.
To be fair, stocks like Enron and WorldCom were highly valued, too.
Last month, if it was not the suddenly punchless offense, it was the poor pitching, or the poor defense, of the kerosene-drenched overextended bullpen. I will admit at some point during the Dodgers' dreadful July whether the team would be better served by selling off players in a mad dash to get below the luxury tax threshold.
The Dodgers had two choices: stand pat or go on a panic-filled shopping spree like the San Diego Padres or New York Yankees. Then the division lead persisted like a weed, making even entertaining the thought of a fire sale wildly inappropriate.
The entire exercise would have been unthinkable even as a thought experiment at the start of the year. I had it all planned out, too; I was going to lean into the cult classic, Margin Call, and folks would have gotten angry as I suggested to lop off a third of the payroll.
I was prepared to explain the legend of David Ayres against the Toronto Maple Leafs right before the 2020 NHL Trade Deadline. The story is too good to skip the legendary meltdown by Leafs superfan and podcaster Steve Dangle.
For an imperfect context in a baseball setting, imagine a scenario where the only person available to pitch in a playoff chase scenario is someone on call who has not pitched above rookie ball. That person has to pitch half of the game and is technically an employee of the team he is now pitching against:
Ayres was also a Zamboni driver, and the game was the last one before the trade deadline. Dangle once said the Ayres game was an exercise in watching 20,000 Leafs fans stop being fans in real-time. After Sunday's debacle, I think I can understand how that thought was not hyperbole.
I did not expect the Orioles or the Twins to channel Jeremy Irons and literally sell it all, but that sad bit of theater is best discussed elsewhere by those affected. I certainly did not think that all the Dodgers would have to show for themselves was a reunion with Brock Stewart. The prospects are intriguing, and Bobby Miller seems to actually be acclimating to the bullpen?
The Yankees are probably regretting their decision, as they are now closer to the fourth-place-we-play-outdoor Tampa Bay Rays than the division-leading Blue Jays. The Padres are now within striking distance of the Dodgers and are set to play the Dodgers six out of the next 13 games to complete the season series.
In a bit of theater, the likely-out-of-it San Francisco Giants will play the Dodgers seven times in September, which are games that suddenly will probably matter, much to my annoyance.
As a cruel twist of fate, I will be sitting in the left field home run seats with my mother for the Dodgers' next home game, which ironically is Blake Treinen bobblehead night.
Folks who know me know what's coming.
I never thought I would miss 2022-Joey Gallo, as he actually did something positive, but here we are. As I am locked into providing in-person coverage for at least ten games over the final six weeks of the season, I have a single request before Friday's game:
Will the real 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers please stand up?
Are they a sleeping juggernaut about to make a run, or are they destined to make another hilariously awful first-round crashout? No predictions yet, but enough with the five-times-in-68-years nonsense, please. I got a chill down my spine watching Sunday's game, which reminded me of the 2024 NLCS, which felt like walking over one's proverbial grave.
Nothing about this season, apart from my actual travels, has been easy, except the Dodgers' triggering the Jack in the Box promotion, which is now up to 95 times out of 118 games.