DODGERS 2017 NEWS/RUMORS/AROUND MLB Thread

Darvish a luxury add for baseball's best team
LA's 3.25 rotation ERA is tops in MLB
by Mike Petriello | MLB.com — 31 minutes ago

The Dodgers entered Trade Deadline day as baseball's best team, on pace for an unbelievable 114 wins. They left it having added the best starter available in Yu Darvish (plus useful lefty relievers Tony Cingrani and Tony Watson). The team that didn't really need anything got everything, and they did it without losing top prospects Alex Verdugo, Walker Buehler or Yadier Alvarez. No matter what happens in October, you can't say they aren't trying to go for it to break a nearly three-decade run without a title.

What, though, did the Dodgers get in Darvish? He's a huge name, but he's also got a career-worst 4.01 ERA and was shelled for a career-worst 10 earned runs in his final start before the Deadline, so it's not as though he comes without risk. But remember, the National League West was wrapped up weeks ago. It's more likely the Dodgers set the all-time NL record for wins than it is that they blow the lead to Colorado or Arizona. What Darvish does in August and September will be nice, yet largely irrelevant.

Instead, this deal is entirely about October. It's about insurance for ace Clayton Kershaw, currently on the disabled list, and Alex Wood and Rich Hill, each extremely talented yet with limited track records as far as durability goes. And if all three are happy and healthy when October comes, it's about preventing the annual dilemma of "Kershaw on short rest in Game 4 or gambling on a lesser starter," though even in this case, those "lesser starters" -- Kenta Maeda, Brandon McCarthy, and Hyun-Jin Ryu -- are all appealing options.

Plenty will be made about adding a righty starter to a lefty-heavy rotation, but that's really overblown, given the days off in short playoff series. (Again, the rest of the regular season doesn't matter all that much for the Dodgers.) The Dodgers didn't need depth, because they have plenty of depth, and already had baseball's best rotation. If they were going to add, it was going to be someone worth pairing with Kershaw.

But is Darvish still that dominant ace, given his current numbers? Let's find out.

The good news, first, is that his velocity is just fine, important to note given that he missed all of 2015 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. If anything it's up, from 92.4 mph in 2014 before he was hurt to 93.3 mph last year and 94.1 mph this year. Plus, there was potentially an easily fixable reason for the Marlins debacle, since he was reportedly tipping his pitches, especially his fastball. And, in the start immediately before the Miami game, he struck out 12 Rays.

What's especially interesting about the Tampa Bay game is how it happened. Famous for his wide assortment of pitches, Darvish threw 56 four-seam fastballs against the Rays, the third-highest frequency of his career, and according to the since-traded Jonathan Lucroy, that was no accident.

"He's been using his fastball up and really, really trying to get away from using his offspeed stuff so much, and it's just making him more effective," Lucroy said. "I mean, you saw the strikeouts just pile up."

"I recognized that my velocity was a little bit up," Darvish said through a translator. "I think it's because of making a little adjustment with the release, and then also the way I work out. After the All-Star break, it's coming out as a result."

With the Marlins apparently sitting on the fastball thanks to Darvish tipping it, he threw just 23, and he got rocked. The increased fastball usage is important because it mirrors exactly what we said about Darvish last summer. At the time, we noted not only that Darvish planned to use the four-seamer more, but that it had extremely high spin. High four-seam spin is highly correlated to swinging strikes, and Darvish remains near the top of the leaderboard, with some big names.

Four-seam spin leaders, starting pitchers, 2017
2536 RPM — Justin Verlander
2512 RPM — Yu Darvish
2506 RPM — Sonny Gray
2504 RPM — Tyler Chatwood
2497 RPM — Max Scherzer

Any team would love Darvish, of course, but the Dodgers collectively have baseball's third-highest four-seam spin rate and have collected arms who love to throw high fastballs. We're thinking Darvish is going to fit in just fine here.

So what's the bad news? The whiff rate is down, largely because his vaunted slider isn't collecting strikeouts like it once did. (Usually with a swinging strike rate in the 17 percent to 20 percent range, that's down to 13 percent this year, with five homers off it, after just 10 in his entire career before this year.) The home run rate is up, from 0.81 per 9 in 2014 to 1.08 last year to 1.31 this year, though that largely mirrors the increase across the sport. And the Statcast™ quality of contact metrics say he really has been hit harder, going from elite (top five of 181 last year) to merely above-average (44th of 153 this year). It would be inaccurate to say there's no concerns.

But the upside here is obvious. It can't hurt that he's going from the American League to the National, where he'll face the pitcher and not the DH. It can't hurt that he's leaving the shockingly weak pitch framing of Lucroy (rated second-weakest by Baseball Prospectus) to the elite skill of Yasmani Grandal (rated second-strongest). We saw, after all, how leaving Grandal affected Zack Greinke in Arizona in 2016.

That's what the Dodgers paid for, anyway: upside. They didn't need Darvish, not really. They were just fine without him, which is why they weren't willing to give up their top trio of prospects to get him. But this is clearly their year, and they weren't about to let this year's team head into October without every possible asset at their disposal. If Darvish adds value in October, the deal will be worth it. If he doesn't? They might be good enough anyway.

 

Yu Darvish guarantees nothing, but Dodgers look almost unbeatable
by Bradford Doolittle | ESPN Staff Writer — 5:40 pm

The 2017 postseason began on the last day of July -- at least it did in the National League. And if the Los Angeles Dodgers are the regular-season team no one can beat, they now look almost as unbeatable as we peek ahead to the playoffs.

Let's get the obvious caveat out of the way. No team -- no matter how powerful on paper they are, no matter how many regular-season wins they roll up, no matter how overpowering their run differential might be -- is guaranteed a thing when it comes to October baseball. Luck, randomness, small sample size, frame it however you like, but always remember that their role in the playoffs is so strong that any single series result can hardly be called a surprise.

A quick history: Of the 15 best teams in the divisional era (since 1969) based on Pythagorean winning percentage, only four went on to win the World Series. These Dodgers, by the way, are on pace to move to the top of that list. Their Pythagorean percentage (.685) translates to a 111-win team over a full schedule. Their odds to win the NL West before Monday's trade deadline stood at 100 percent. After the deadline? Still 100 percent.

There was only one needle for Dodgers president Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi to move on Monday: the playoff needle. The addition of top-of-the-rotation starter Yu Darvish and bullpen lefty Tony Watson had nothing to do with staving off the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks and everything to do with matching up against the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals.

The Dodgers are as all-in as a contender can be, which is not surprising for a franchise that has spent more in payroll than anybody over the past few years and have not been to the World Series since 1988.

Let's start with Darvish, who is coming off his worst-ever outing. He allowed 10 runs in 3⅔ innings on July 26 in a 22-10 loss to Miami in his final Texas start. His game score (6) was easily the lowest of his 122 career starts, and Yahoo's Jeff Passan reported he had been tipping his pitches.

That wasn't an ideal way for Darvish to finish his time in Texas, but it would be wrong to focus too heavily on it. Still, Darvish has largely been up and down the past two seasons. Here is a quick comparison of how he stacks up against his new Dodgers rotation mates since the beginning of the 2015 season:

Darvish slots in with Rich Hill and Alex Wood by most measures -- on a different tier than Clayton Kershaw. Assuming a healthy Dodgers rotation for the playoffs, you could pencil in either Darvish or Hill for Game 2 to follow Kershaw, with Darvish likely getting the nod because he works deeper into games.

For further context, consider my system for rating starting pitchers by tiers. In that system, Darvish slots as a No. 1. Kershaw is on the exclusive "ace" tier, along with Boston's Chris Sale and Washington's Max Scherzer. Wood and Hill are both No. 2s. No one else on the L.A. roster rates as high as a No. 3.

Compare the new probable rotations of the three leading NL contenders by that system:

Dodgers
Clayton Kershaw (A)
Yu Darvish (1)
Rich Hill (2)
Alex Wood (2)

Cubs
Jon Lester (1)
Jose Quintana (1)
Jake Arrieta (1)
Kyle Hendricks (2)

Nationals
Max Scherzer (A)
Stephen Strasburg (1)
Tanner Roark (2)
Gio Gonzalez (3)

The Dodgers' staff was built upon depth both in the rotation and the bullpen, with Kershaw and superstar closer Kenley Jansen serving as the foundation pieces. But when you get into the postseason, those depth guys look a lot less impressive when you start matching them up against the rotation mainstays of the other prime contenders. That's no longer a problem for the Dodgers, who can go toe to toe with whoever survives the likely Cubs-Nationals matchup in the division series.

As for the relievers, before their deadline deals, the Dodgers' primary lefty relievers were Luis Avilan (3.30 ERA in 30 innings) and Grant Dayton (4.94 ERA in 23⅔ innings), both of whom have been on and off the disabled list this season.

According to ESPN Stats & Information research, Watson's 2.43 ERA since 2014 ranks 11th among all relievers, and he has logged time as a closer. Watson has been good against hitters from both sides of the plate during his career, but his OPS against lefty hitters (.569) is outstanding. (Tony Cingrani, also added on deadline day, is more a depth option and has been hit pretty hard this season.)

Think of it like this: You're in the sixth or seventh inning of a close game against the Nationals or Cubs. Men are on base. It’s too early for Jansen, and one of Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy, Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber or Jason Heyward is due up. If you're Dave Roberts, who are you going to call? Watson, Dayton or Avilan? Yeah, it's probably Watson, and that’s why this move was an important upgrade for L.A.

Just to be clear, in my mind the Dodgers were the World Series favorites when the day began, and they would have remained so even if they had not made a single move on Monday. That's the case even taking into account the moves the Cubs and Nationals both made to upgrade their own rosters. But the addition of Darvish and Watson not only improves the matchups for the Dodgers in a postseason showdown, it actually increases the gap in roster value L.A. enjoyed before all the various deals were completed.

What do you get the team that has everything? More. When it comes to the crapshoot that is the MLB postseason, more is always better.

 

Dodgers biggest trade deadline winner? Astros biggest loser?

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/...ers-dodgers-yankees-knock-it-out-of-the-park/

 

lol joc

Joc Pederson ✓@yungjoc650 Jul 31
Monday hit me like...
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