
Dodgers second-half storylines: What to watch for from the defending champions
They woke up to the All-Star break with chances set at 21.6 percent, albeit with an even wider gap over their next-closest competitor. The Dodgers haven't played all that well. They are banged up. 'Four days off,' Freddie Freeman said, 'comes at the right time.'
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Still, the Dodgers are in first place with the best record in the National League and a roster that projection systems remain endlessly bullish on.
Here are three storylines that matter over the final 65 games of the Dodgers' season:
He has been a productive player. He hasn't looked like one. His 2.4 Baseball Reference WAR this season is largely carried by his superb defense at shortstop, which is a sentence no one expected to type when Betts took on this unprecedented position change experiment in earnest this winter. His .696 OPS would be the worst of his career.
Betts has had sound reasoning in that, if he knew what was wrong, it would no longer be an issue. It's not as if he's striking out — he's actually done so less frequently (10.7 percent) than ever and at the eighth-lowest rate in baseball. But he's swinging more than ever to try to break out of this season-long slump, and getting much less out of it. His power numbers are way down (.381 slugging percentage compared to .491 last year). So is his average exit velocity (down from 89.9 mph to 88.5 mph).
Betts said he created bad habits trying to combat his decreased bat speed, something he's trained for in the past. Losing 20 pounds due to an illness right before Opening Day surely didn't help. His struggles reached a point this month when Betts got the proverbial Dave Roberts 'reset' day
Still, no one in the organization will tie Betts' decreased offensive production to his position change. Even if shortstop doesn't have as much of a mental wear on him as it did last year, when Betts produced an .892 OPS at the position, there's a physical toll. There are no plans to move him off the spot.
'I just can't see that you go out there and stick him in right field tonight and he's going to throw out two hits or three hits, or he goes to second base and he's going to go on a heater,' Roberts said this month. 'That's hard for me to kind of imagine. But it's a fair ask. I just don't see that as the case.'
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Still, there's reason to believe that Betts could use the All-Star respite as much as anyone.
'I think he's healthy,' Roberts said. 'I think he's strong. I think he's playing great defense. It's just trying to figure out his offense and the mechanics of it. He hasn't really gotten ahead by getting hot yet. But it's coming.'
The Dodgers probably need it. It's not likely they will pivot to something different anytime this season.
The Dodgers invested plenty into this bullpen over the winter, hoping to avoid Andrew Friedman's least-favorite activity: trading for relievers at the deadline. They likely will have to trade for at least one by the end of this month anyway. So it goes.
But adding a rotation piece, barring an impact one becoming available at the right price, doesn't seem to be as likely a move. So that means crafting an October rotation will include choosing from internal options.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is a first-time All-Star who has already topped his workload from his rookie season with 104 1/3 innings pitched. He's topped those workloads in Japan, and his shoulder issue from a year ago appears to be a thing of the past, but it's still worth monitoring how Yamamoto handles a full year's work. The Dodgers' cushion in the standings should give them the ability to be flexible, anyway. Only Yamamoto and Dustin May have made every turn through the Dodgers' rotation this season.
May's availability has been a pleasant surprise. Roberts said the right-hander will likely get shut down at some point in the second half for a respite. Though if fully healthy, it's fair to wonder if May (and his 4.96 ERA that ranks 10th-worst in baseball) gets bounced from the rotation entirely.
Health is still a major 'if.' Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow combined to make just eight starts in the first half. Glasnow made his return just before the break, but he must show he will still be standing in October. Snell is on a rehab assignment and will spend part of the All-Star break throwing three innings against hitters at the Dodgers' Arizona spring training complex. If both are healthy and pitching well in the postseason, they could join Yamamoto to form a formidable trio.
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Shohei Ohtani's role in the picture remains relevant. The Dodgers are being as deliberate as they can be with a guy who is essentially treating big-league games as a minor-league rehab assignment. Will he be built up for full starts before the postseason? Do the Dodgers even want that? He's looked incredibly effective in his short bursts, which creates the temptation to unleash a full-fledged Ohtani.
There are wild cards. Emmet Sheehan has hit the ground running, just more than 13 months removed from Tommy John surgery. If healthy and effective, it's hard to imagine a postseason pitching staff without him in it. Clayton Kershaw is pitching well and helped the Dodgers soak up innings, reaching his 3,000th strikeout along the way. Maybe Tony Gonsolin gets back and changes the math.
What is there to make of Roki Sasaki? This isn't the year anyone envisioned. But he's started throwing bullpen sessions this week. He's healthy enough for the Dodgers to start tweaking his delivery in hopes of unlocking what they believe can be an effective major-league pitcher. Roberts threw out a late August timeline for Sasaki, which is the first time there's been any remote clarity on what the rest of his season looks like.
The National League leader in batting average (and runner-up in OPS) hits in the center of the Dodgers' lineup. It's not Shohei Ohtani, who is in the midst of another MVP-worthy campaign. It's not Freddie Freeman, who torched the sport through May before cooling off considerably. It's Will Smith, who holds a 30-point lead over Freeman and Brendan Donovan for the NL batting title and has produced one of the finest starts to a season in his career.
'He's up there as far as being overlooked,' Roberts said. 'That's why he's vanilla. You know what you're going to get, but you probably don't appreciate it as much as you should.'
Smith floundered in the second half of 2024. Same goes for 2023. Each time, it involved a reason inherent to the catching positon: he was banged up. In 2023, Smith played through a broken rib that altered his swing mechanics. Last year, he played through a bone bruise in his ankle that bothered him up to this spring. The Dodgers have sought to give him extra rest this year as a result. It's part of why Dalton Rushing is up with the big-league club, and why longtime backstop Austin Barnes was discarded. The team wants to avoid a similar drop-off, meaning Rushing has essentially logged one start per series. Smith has caught three days in a row just five times all season.
It's worked.
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'It's very demanding because of the catching, right?' Roberts said. 'I do think us being mindful of how we're using him has kept him fresh.'
He's still played enough to keep him qualified for something baseball hasn't seen in a while: Buster Posey was the last catcher to win the batting title, while logging 114 games behind the plate in his 2012 NL MVP season. Joe Mauer did it three times — 2006, 2008, 2009. Before him? Only Ernie Lombardi (1938, 1942) and 'Bubbles' Hargrave (1926).
(Top photo of Will Smith: Eric Thayer / Getty Images)
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