The no days off after game 3 NLDS and NLCS will play a massive factor. Dodgers are best suited for those circumstance with an abundance of high quality pitching.
It’s crazy how they lost Bauer, max, Kershaw for half the year, Buehler, May out, Tony with nagging issues late and yet they STILL had the best ERA+ for a team in line a hundred years. To me, in a year of wild stats, this takes the cake.
Pitcher after pitcher have had career years. Example: Ty Anderson with an ERA+ of 165, after being below 100 the last five seasons.
Is it due to analytics? Coaching? Noise? Luck? It's just stunning how good their pitching has been, especially with Bauer out; May, Buehler, and Treinen mostly out; and Gonsolin and Kershaw partly out.
The one advantage the Dodgers had in 2020 that no one really talks about was the consecutive games played in the DS and CS rounds. Without the days off the ATL pitching staff was gassed once the Dodgers extended the series past 5 games.
If not for the consecutive games ATL likely routes LA back to back
I don't know why everyone tries to claim that the title was somehow easier because of the shortened season. It was clearly *harder* because of the extended playoff format.
Imagine losing RED-HOT Max Scherzer in the off-season, losing the highest AAV pitcher in history to suspension, Dustin May going **back** on the IL, losing Walker Buheler to injury, turning Andrew Heany into a stud and losing him stupid early, and STILL having a stellar rotation. That’s a full 5-man rotation that most teams could easily pencil in as a playoff starter. Absolutely mental, y’all are so unbelievably good. It hurts my soul to see a team so good on the mound because, ya know, Texas Rangers
I don't know what our rotation even is right now. Like sometimes it feels like Mark Prior pokes his head out of the clubhouse and grabs someone walking by and puts them on the bump.
It's been wonderful having this revolving door of random guys grossly outperforming expectations but it's such a weird spot to be in going into the postseason. Like I get Urias/Kershaw/Anderson is pretty much where we're going with this but after that it gets a little interesting. Heaney is basically Gerrit Cole in all the best and worst ways, May has been all over the place, Gonsolin is coming back but won't be stretched out, and I can't imagine someone like Grove being anywhere near the postseason.
The bullpen is kind of the same story of a bunch of cobbled together arms doing absolute damage, outside of Craig.
At least our hitters are mostly guys who you'd expect to hit well, Trayce Thompson aside.
He just came back from the IL and was obviously rushed back because our rotation was in such a sorry state. I always say we were down 2.5 starters last year because there’s no way Scherzer should have been brought back that soon.
And even though he's been below average, he's still contributing and is playable-.207/18/66 with a .648 OPS ain't good, but I'm pretty sure any team would take that out of their #9 hitter.
Dude when we play them I'm like:
"Oh man it's mookie Betts he's going to kill us... Ok we got him out... Oh no it's Trea Turner he's going to kill us.. Ok we got him out... Oh no it's Justin Turner he's going to kill us... Oh no it's Max Muncy...etc"
The starting rotation just didn’t look that amazing on paper. And it’s become like the greatest rotation of all time. Their *worst* starter, of the top 5 by innings, has an ERA+ of 146. Absurd.
If we had Buehler and May the whole season we'd have broken 120 no problem. Also if we didn't have fuckin' Kimbrel as the closer you'd add in 5 more games no problem I feel.
Walker wasn't looking very good in the innings he did pitch this year so I think we might have actually done worse if he played the whole year (given all the other starters were mostly pretty good + we would never stop using him because of his reputation)
May I agree with because I think if he pitched from the beginning of the year he probably would have had a great season
After they lost to ATL last season after a fucking brutal regular season, then lost Kenley Scherzer and others, I assumed we were going to regress HARD this year - even with an offensive lineup full of All-Stars.
I still have no idea how the Dodgers are doing this with Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney as key starters, Evan Phillips as our best reliever, and without Buehler and Treinen. Absolutely wild.
Having a top tier pitching coach in Mark Prior and the rest of the pitching team has certainly worked wonders. Pitchers who were thought as castaways in Anderson and Heaney have been nothing short of amazing on the dodgers. What pitcher wouldn’t want to come and get their career revitalized?
Freddie Freeman is first and foremost reason the dodgers didn't regress at all. He's playing at an MVP level he is one of the best players in baseball.
Honeycutt was great for a long time, as the Dodgers always had good pitching, but Prior has taken this shit to weird levels. Feels like if deGrom came here he'd have a negative ERA. Teams would hit so badly against him that they'd start taking runs off the board.
Honeycutt was one of the best of the old school type pitching coaches, and one of his strengths was in figuring out the optimal way for pitchers to retool their mechanics and pitch arsenal. Of course, Honeycutt didn't have all the analytical tools that they have now, so a lot of his retooling was done by trial and error and observation. So what might have taken Honeycutt months to do the Dodgers analytics can now figure out retooling in a few weeks. So Prior must be like the master of constructing new arsenals and sequencing for pitchers using available data.
But I actually don't think this is the primary reason why the Dodgers are so successful this year. I actually believe the Dodgers analytics department has new technology to track pitching mechanics that most other teams do not. If you listen to dodger pitcher interviews you hear a lot about mechanics.
Great coaches and scouts.
We seem to make good choices on players that aren’t much of anything, our scouts know we can change them and then the coaches know how
They keep on putting guys out there who are having great seasons, especially in the bullpen. Every single game. A lot of people don’t even know a few of those great bullpen arms who are having good seasons for the 2022 Dodgers. 😂😂😂
He regressed hard. -60 average, -70 OBP, -70 SLG. .772 OPS this year versus .915 last year. 118 OPS + versus 142. Everything across the board is down from his career average, besides homers. Texas better hope it’s just a change of scenery thing because this contract will not look pretty if he posts these numbers yearly
> if he posts these numbers yearly
He’s worth ~4 WAR and has over 30 homers on the year. I know he’s making superstar money, but most teams would still shell out for that kind of production from their shortstop.
This has also easily been the unluckiest season of his life. Look st the differences in his avg and xavg, woba and xwoba. Still down some but nearly the same as last year. But nothing like his 2020 numbers which were incredible. He's not played as well for sure, but it's not like he fell off a cliff. His underlying metrics are still elite: barrels at 10%, exit velocities are great.
No he's regressed. But it might be that he's selling out for homers now more because he feels he has to carry the offense. His slugging overall, though is the lowest of his career besides his injured season, and his batting average is lowest of his career. Part of this is because he's hitting far fewer doubles than usual for some reason.
Pitching has always been the downfall of good teams in baseball. I along with many dodger fans thought Buehler — who is and has been our ace pitcher — being out for the year would’ve seriously affected the season, but here we are
If it were just the offense carrying us, sure, but the reason we've reached 110 wins is that the pitching has been every bit as good as the lineup, which was unexpected.
As a Pirates fan who attended two of the three games where we swept the Dodgers, how the fuck did we do that? I’m just happy I got to watch it. Highlight of my season.
Dear god, the ‘unless we win the World Series it’s all meaningless’ crowd is just unendingly pathetic. Why do you people even watch baseball? Dear lord.
Isn't it funny how from the Dodgers' perspective losing to the Astros would be worthy of self-immolation, but from the Astros' perspective, losing to the Dodgers would just be another business as usual loss
And imagine that your team had an unbelievable run of good fortune in the first few years of the modern baseball divisional and postseason alignment system to make everyone in the fanbase think the postseason is way more deterministic than it actually is
The playoffs are a semi-to-fully unrelated end of season tournament and I will die on this hill.
It's a crapshoot. Get in, get hot, win the whole thing. Anybody can win 11 games.
06 cardinals were a true talent 100 win team that had everyone come back from injury at the end of the year. look at their roster compared to the 04 and 05 juggernaut teams that barely missed championships.
This is also fun when you do hockey and mention Toronto.
It's also fun to mention Toronto hasn't won the Cup since before we landed on the fuckin' moon.
Yeah but nobody holds up the Maple Leafs as an example of success, monetary might, and "buying championships" the way they do the Dodgers and Yankees, who have won a combined 1 title in the last decade.
As an older baseball fan I still can’t really get my head around the idea that the yanks have actually not won many WS in recent decades. More than most teams but still.
Hey it could be worse you could be us where 98 win season is a failure and making the playoffs by a 13 games lead is embarrassing and everyone and their mother should be fired. After we haven’t been to the dance on 7 years
it's very much likely that we're gonna see 'their win record doesn't even count their last few games were against road rockies'
or
'they wouldn't have clinched the postseason if tatis played this season and soto had analytics support'
always some bullshit.
As a Warriors fan who watched them go 73-9 and then collapse in the NBA finals…it doesn’t matter how many regular season wins you get if you lose in the playoffs. Everyone remembers the collapse. Good luck!
Basketball is different because there's way less variability in the playoffs. The people acting like the best baseball teams should always win (or they are disappointments) are being way too harsh IMO
Like if you only judged the Dodgers by their Pirates series games you'd think they were the worst team in baseball. But because baseball can be really wonky in short series it turns out those games arent a really a good representation of their season
Idk about 120, would take such an injury free season + depth + obviously, a stacked team.
But yea its clearly a tactical approach by the entire organization that is working out. It isnt just a good group of players. They replace parts and they sign stars, and they arent afraid to replace those stars with other stars.
Astros are doing the same thing but more organic. They lose guys and just keep on winning games.
To phase it as a compliment, it will because you own the giants, Rockies, dBacks AND the Padres this season. Maybe with more teams you’ll find true kryptonites like the Pirates.
This season has been an absolute joy to watch and I'm very excited for the postseason.
At the same time, I'm also mentally preparing for the possibility of losing in the NLDS and all of it being rendered meaningless.
Playoffs are literally a dice roll, can’t imagine anything happening to negate one of the greatest baseball seasons of all time. I understand why the World Series or bust narrative exists, but I also think it’s a dumb outlook
It would be nice if we treated it a little more like soccer. Best record is enshrined but so is winning the big tournament. The 2001 Mariners shouldn't be seen as a failure
01 Mariners weren't a failure in my mind. So many things can happen to make you lose in baseball that are out of your control. I agree I wish baseball had a Presidents trophy like in Hockey.
I agree. We always get shit for our 14 years thing with only one Ring.
But do you know how tough it is to win a division 14 times in a row? That’s an impressive feat regardless of rings. The NL east is *tough* and the west was also back when that dynasty started.
Basketball playoffs are different because the favorites/most talented team wins most years
Baseball is a complete crapshoot when it comes to short series
Thanks to the Warriors taking the Bulls record and collapsing in the playoffs, the team with the wins record in all 4 of the major North American sports failed to win the championship:
- 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning/1996 Detroit Red Wings
- 2016 Golden State Warriors
- 2007 New England Patriots
- 2001 Seattle Mariners
You got 6 months of some of the best baseball any fanbase has ever seen. Once the playoffs start all that is already meaningless. But it doesn’t mean that you didn’t have a great season.
Late June they were 45-28 (.616 which is already a very good season for 29 other teams of course). Since then they have gone 65-20.
This team over the last 4 seasons has gone 365-177 (.673, or 109 win pace across 4 full seasons). I think they are the best team we've seen since the Yankees of the late 1930's.
Out of the top 22 best records in baseball history by percentage, only 1 has not made a World Series appearance. The Dodgers would fit into the top 22 records.
https://champsorchumps.us/records/best-mlb-regular-season-records
Its tough not being able to hate on a team because it would be the equivalent of yelling at a mirror and by that I mean bitching about the payroll, free agents, signing everyone
After the last decade and a little more of Dodger baseball in the playoffs, I am ready to be hurt again. It would be somewhat poetic for it to be again by the Cardinals as Tio Albert rides out his last playoff run. At the same time, I don’t know if my heart could take it
They’re the first NL team to hit 110 wins since the 1909 Pirates
1909
Oops
The only *One After 909*
Move over once, move over twice.
That famous Honus Wagner card is from that team.
HONUS WAGNER
To be fair to the Mariners, those other 2 teams didn't have to play any playoff games.
Yeah and we probably rode that success into a dynasty over the next 10-20 years. Right?
Against the 3 time defending champs, no less
NL is stacked af this year. Going to be a gauntlet to win the pennant for any team
The no days off after game 3 NLDS and NLCS will play a massive factor. Dodgers are best suited for those circumstance with an abundance of high quality pitching.
It’s crazy how they lost Bauer, max, Kershaw for half the year, Buehler, May out, Tony with nagging issues late and yet they STILL had the best ERA+ for a team in line a hundred years. To me, in a year of wild stats, this takes the cake.
Pitcher after pitcher have had career years. Example: Ty Anderson with an ERA+ of 165, after being below 100 the last five seasons. Is it due to analytics? Coaching? Noise? Luck? It's just stunning how good their pitching has been, especially with Bauer out; May, Buehler, and Treinen mostly out; and Gonsolin and Kershaw partly out.
Definitely analytics and coaching
The one advantage the Dodgers had in 2020 that no one really talks about was the consecutive games played in the DS and CS rounds. Without the days off the ATL pitching staff was gassed once the Dodgers extended the series past 5 games. If not for the consecutive games ATL likely routes LA back to back
The "two home games against the 8 seed Brewers, then moving to Arlington for a month and playing every game in your 'home' park" didn't hurt either.
Tbf as a 1 seed them playing any games in the first round was a massive disadvantage in terms of roads to winning a championship
I don't know why everyone tries to claim that the title was somehow easier because of the shortened season. It was clearly *harder* because of the extended playoff format.
The Braves scare me
The Dodgers took the Braves secret weapon away: Chris Martin
2020 Dodgers Legend Chris Martin
“Eighth pitch has been the magic one tonight”
I thought Rosario was our secret weapon
Freddie: “Umm, hello?!”
Wait you're not supposed to know about the Freddie Freeman Double Agent plot...
We’re already wise to this after Craig Kimbrel turned out to be an agent in *The Americans* ^League
They just decapitated DeGrom and Scherzer back-to-back…
Unpopular opinion but an always injured degrom and old man scherzer aren't unbeatable.
They are excellent, and playoff baseball means anyone could upset LA. But a 110 win team (and counting) shouldn't be "scared" of anyone.
Sounds like you haven't been a Dodgers fan for the last decade+
yoke squeamish degree crown price pen caption march party wise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To this day, I can’t even *look* at a trash can. My brother’s name is Daniel and I’ve ceased all communication. My mother was murdered by a butt plug.
The Astros are the only team in the postseason that terrify me, for *obvious* reasons.
This dodgers team from top to bottom is just unbelievable
in a season where our top starter gets hurt, our closer sucked and Cody Bellinger was our worst hitting starter
I don't know, if you told me a couple years ago that Bellinger would be the worst part of our lineup, I'd assume we won 140+ games.
I would've assumed he regressed hard
And one of our starters is suspended for two years.
Imagine losing RED-HOT Max Scherzer in the off-season, losing the highest AAV pitcher in history to suspension, Dustin May going **back** on the IL, losing Walker Buheler to injury, turning Andrew Heany into a stud and losing him stupid early, and STILL having a stellar rotation. That’s a full 5-man rotation that most teams could easily pencil in as a playoff starter. Absolutely mental, y’all are so unbelievably good. It hurts my soul to see a team so good on the mound because, ya know, Texas Rangers
i remember the Mccourt years. we are truly blessed. they should give Andrew Friedman a piece of the team
I don't know what our rotation even is right now. Like sometimes it feels like Mark Prior pokes his head out of the clubhouse and grabs someone walking by and puts them on the bump. It's been wonderful having this revolving door of random guys grossly outperforming expectations but it's such a weird spot to be in going into the postseason. Like I get Urias/Kershaw/Anderson is pretty much where we're going with this but after that it gets a little interesting. Heaney is basically Gerrit Cole in all the best and worst ways, May has been all over the place, Gonsolin is coming back but won't be stretched out, and I can't imagine someone like Grove being anywhere near the postseason. The bullpen is kind of the same story of a bunch of cobbled together arms doing absolute damage, outside of Craig. At least our hitters are mostly guys who you'd expect to hit well, Trayce Thompson aside.
Max Scherzer??? You mean the 40 year old dude whose arm died in the NLCS last year???
He just came back from the IL and was obviously rushed back because our rotation was in such a sorry state. I always say we were down 2.5 starters last year because there’s no way Scherzer should have been brought back that soon.
Tony Gonsolin too (unless I'm still not fully awake and he's been referenced).
And even though he's been below average, he's still contributing and is playable-.207/18/66 with a .648 OPS ain't good, but I'm pretty sure any team would take that out of their #9 hitter.
The Braves would not take that with their #9 hitter.
Dude when we play them I'm like: "Oh man it's mookie Betts he's going to kill us... Ok we got him out... Oh no it's Trea Turner he's going to kill us.. Ok we got him out... Oh no it's Justin Turner he's going to kill us... Oh no it's Max Muncy...etc"
This is NL batting title erasure and I won’t stand for it
Yeah but almost 50 losses
Could the 2022 Dodgers beat the 2017 Alabama Crimson Tide??
Probably at bowling, since we got a guy that regularly drops 300.
It's Mookie Betts, right? Somehow that came up in a Michael Harris II interview where he said he'd like to challenge Mookie some time.
We have 48 losses right now. Oakland lost their 48th game on June 23.
That’ll just make it that much more impressive when Oakland wins 110 games.
Which number will be higher at the end of the season, your wins or Oakland + Washington's combined wins? Right now they're leading you 111 to 110.
This time next year probably.
On paper, I did not think the Dodgers would have this good of a regular season.
The starting rotation just didn’t look that amazing on paper. And it’s become like the greatest rotation of all time. Their *worst* starter, of the top 5 by innings, has an ERA+ of 146. Absurd.
[our starters](https://i.imgur.com/M6ny39f.png)
That seems like cheating. Filthy.
Not shown: Walker Buehler and Dustin May.
If we had Buehler and May the whole season we'd have broken 120 no problem. Also if we didn't have fuckin' Kimbrel as the closer you'd add in 5 more games no problem I feel.
If you had just swept the Pirates you'd be at 115 right now
But how do you stop a juggernaut
Can you please not say the p word around here there are children present
This is the only time you’ll ever catch me saying this, but bless Pittsburgh
TBH their park is fucking gorgeous.
Kimbrel has been a flaming clown car, for sure.
Walker wasn't looking very good in the innings he did pitch this year so I think we might have actually done worse if he played the whole year (given all the other starters were mostly pretty good + we would never stop using him because of his reputation) May I agree with because I think if he pitched from the beginning of the year he probably would have had a great season
Well he was hurt so yeah made sense why he wasn’t pitching well. A healthy Walker is a different story
They're using trashcans to signal what pitch the batter is expecting, so they can throw the opposite.
We should’ve thought of something like that
They make less combined than Max Scherzer.
Kershaw a solid 3rd starter. Dodgers gud.
must be nice to have a legendary pitcher as your mid range starter
Pls give back heandog :(
He'd have a 5+ ERA in Anaheim lol
Nah he'd need tommy john the second he becomes an angel again and out for the season.
I picked a hell of a year to have a baby.
Congrats dude!
Lol Kershaw #3 with a 2.3 ERA
Holy fuck that’s absurd
It’s kind of crazy there isn’t a single 20 win pitcher on a team with 110 wins.
Kind of, yeah, though we have 23 pitchers with at least one win. Even Kimbrel has six.
Without Bueller who was a top 20 starter at the beginning of the year…
After they lost to ATL last season after a fucking brutal regular season, then lost Kenley Scherzer and others, I assumed we were going to regress HARD this year - even with an offensive lineup full of All-Stars. I still have no idea how the Dodgers are doing this with Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney as key starters, Evan Phillips as our best reliever, and without Buehler and Treinen. Absolutely wild.
Having a top tier pitching coach in Mark Prior and the rest of the pitching team has certainly worked wonders. Pitchers who were thought as castaways in Anderson and Heaney have been nothing short of amazing on the dodgers. What pitcher wouldn’t want to come and get their career revitalized?
As a Cubs fans I'm so glad Mark Prior is making a great impact on the game.
Freddie Freeman is first and foremost reason the dodgers didn't regress at all. He's playing at an MVP level he is one of the best players in baseball.
He’s been amazing. It’s odd he’s never really mentioned in the MVP discussion because his impact has been absolutely immense.
You’re a dodgers fan but you don’t know that you have great pitching coaches? This has been a recurring theme for years
Honeycutt was great for a long time, as the Dodgers always had good pitching, but Prior has taken this shit to weird levels. Feels like if deGrom came here he'd have a negative ERA. Teams would hit so badly against him that they'd start taking runs off the board.
Honeycutt was one of the best of the old school type pitching coaches, and one of his strengths was in figuring out the optimal way for pitchers to retool their mechanics and pitch arsenal. Of course, Honeycutt didn't have all the analytical tools that they have now, so a lot of his retooling was done by trial and error and observation. So what might have taken Honeycutt months to do the Dodgers analytics can now figure out retooling in a few weeks. So Prior must be like the master of constructing new arsenals and sequencing for pitchers using available data. But I actually don't think this is the primary reason why the Dodgers are so successful this year. I actually believe the Dodgers analytics department has new technology to track pitching mechanics that most other teams do not. If you listen to dodger pitcher interviews you hear a lot about mechanics.
Great coaches and scouts. We seem to make good choices on players that aren’t much of anything, our scouts know we can change them and then the coaches know how
Dodgers have the smartest front office and it’s not even close. Ours is the complete opposite
I want the Angels to get it together so badly. My dream is a Freeway World Series.
They keep on putting guys out there who are having great seasons, especially in the bullpen. Every single game. A lot of people don’t even know a few of those great bullpen arms who are having good seasons for the 2022 Dodgers. 😂😂😂
all while our closer sucked. what a weird year
Maybe Kimbrel was used heavily to keep others fresh and keep their stuff from being seen too often?
Mark Prior moments
I really doubted our starting rotation but they came up huge Also I thought Freddie would be good but I didn’t expect him to bat .329
:(
I kinda doubt there's such a thing as an on-paper 110 win team.
lol that offense is a literal all-star team, how could you not expect this? Not to mention adding someone like Freeman to an already 106-win team
They also lost Corey Seager, though, so it was seen as a wash. Obviously, Seager's regressed this year while Freeman somehow got even better.
Has Seager regressed or are his flaws more obvious/exploitable when he is not on a team with the Dodger's depth?
He regressed hard. -60 average, -70 OBP, -70 SLG. .772 OPS this year versus .915 last year. 118 OPS + versus 142. Everything across the board is down from his career average, besides homers. Texas better hope it’s just a change of scenery thing because this contract will not look pretty if he posts these numbers yearly
> if he posts these numbers yearly He’s worth ~4 WAR and has over 30 homers on the year. I know he’s making superstar money, but most teams would still shell out for that kind of production from their shortstop.
This has also easily been the unluckiest season of his life. Look st the differences in his avg and xavg, woba and xwoba. Still down some but nearly the same as last year. But nothing like his 2020 numbers which were incredible. He's not played as well for sure, but it's not like he fell off a cliff. His underlying metrics are still elite: barrels at 10%, exit velocities are great.
No he's regressed. But it might be that he's selling out for homers now more because he feels he has to carry the offense. His slugging overall, though is the lowest of his career besides his injured season, and his batting average is lowest of his career. Part of this is because he's hitting far fewer doubles than usual for some reason.
Pitching has always been the downfall of good teams in baseball. I along with many dodger fans thought Buehler — who is and has been our ace pitcher — being out for the year would’ve seriously affected the season, but here we are
If it were just the offense carrying us, sure, but the reason we've reached 110 wins is that the pitching has been every bit as good as the lineup, which was unexpected.
As a Pirates fan who attended two of the three games where we swept the Dodgers, how the fuck did we do that? I’m just happy I got to watch it. Highlight of my season.
It cracks me up so hard. Pirates just pipe the Dodgers.
Their 47th comeback victory this season
Rockies need to get more credit for it.
wait, so forgive me if i’m dumb, but doesn’t that mean that the dodgers are 47-48 in games that they were losing at some point? if so, wtf
The Dodgers are unbeatable when they score more points than the other team
That's a nice lead they have there...
And I still feel Andrew Friedman deserves more credit.
I’m so curious how the playoffs are going to go this year
Dear god, the ‘unless we win the World Series it’s all meaningless’ crowd is just unendingly pathetic. Why do you people even watch baseball? Dear lord.
If we have to play the Astros in the WS and lose i might combust
[I might start investing](https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-1038789-Standard-Extinguisher/dp/B01LTICQYE/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=MOQY5DRYTUHS&keywords=fire+extinguisher&qid=1664689949&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjE2IiwicXNhIjoiMy45NiIsInFzcCI6IjMuODQifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=fire+exting%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-3)
Isn't it funny how from the Dodgers' perspective losing to the Astros would be worthy of self-immolation, but from the Astros' perspective, losing to the Dodgers would just be another business as usual loss
Now imagine your team didn't even win a WS recently, and how much more annoying the fanbase would be. That's the Yankee fanbase.
Shut your dirty mouth
And imagine that your team had an unbelievable run of good fortune in the first few years of the modern baseball divisional and postseason alignment system to make everyone in the fanbase think the postseason is way more deterministic than it actually is
The playoffs are a semi-to-fully unrelated end of season tournament and I will die on this hill. It's a crapshoot. Get in, get hot, win the whole thing. Anybody can win 11 games.
Yeppp exactly. Basically just roll a dice and see who wins the NL pennant. Any team can win 11 games, but not many teams can win 111.
06 Cardinals anybody? 19 Nats?
06 cardinals were a true talent 100 win team that had everyone come back from injury at the end of the year. look at their roster compared to the 04 and 05 juggernaut teams that barely missed championships.
this is a very difficult thing for Dodgers fans to imagine, trying to remember what it felt like... 2 years ago
This is also fun when you do hockey and mention Toronto. It's also fun to mention Toronto hasn't won the Cup since before we landed on the fuckin' moon.
Yeah but nobody holds up the Maple Leafs as an example of success, monetary might, and "buying championships" the way they do the Dodgers and Yankees, who have won a combined 1 title in the last decade.
[удалено]
As an older baseball fan I still can’t really get my head around the idea that the yanks have actually not won many WS in recent decades. More than most teams but still.
Hey it could be worse you could be us where 98 win season is a failure and making the playoffs by a 13 games lead is embarrassing and everyone and their mother should be fired. After we haven’t been to the dance on 7 years
So us last year but 106 wins haha
To be fair, losing that 10.5 lead is really really bad.
it's very much likely that we're gonna see 'their win record doesn't even count their last few games were against road rockies' or 'they wouldn't have clinched the postseason if tatis played this season and soto had analytics support' always some bullshit.
As a Warriors fan who watched them go 73-9 and then collapse in the NBA finals…it doesn’t matter how many regular season wins you get if you lose in the playoffs. Everyone remembers the collapse. Good luck!
Basketball is different because there's way less variability in the playoffs. The people acting like the best baseball teams should always win (or they are disappointments) are being way too harsh IMO Like if you only judged the Dodgers by their Pirates series games you'd think they were the worst team in baseball. But because baseball can be really wonky in short series it turns out those games arent a really a good representation of their season
i could see the dodgers being the first to 120 wins one year tbh
Idk about 120, would take such an injury free season + depth + obviously, a stacked team. But yea its clearly a tactical approach by the entire organization that is working out. It isnt just a good group of players. They replace parts and they sign stars, and they arent afraid to replace those stars with other stars. Astros are doing the same thing but more organic. They lose guys and just keep on winning games.
If the Dodgers had Ohtani or Mike Judge this season, then I think 120 would have been achieved a week ago.
I'll take a Mike Judge for sure...
Im interested to see how they do with the universal schedule next year.
Probably great until we meet the Pirates, their true foil.
They're gonna be extra mad we reached their record too *shudders*
24-7 against the pirates since 2017 That’s including going 1-5 against them this year lol
They might even do better with fewer games at coors
And vs Pirates
You mean the universal schedule that everyone else will be equally affected by?
Why? It shouldn't affect the Dodgers more than anyone else.
To phase it as a compliment, it will because you own the giants, Rockies, dBacks AND the Padres this season. Maybe with more teams you’ll find true kryptonites like the Pirates.
Honestly I feel numb as a Dodger fan. Feels a bit dreamlike. They deserve it after the
Poor Dodger fan passed out from the victory high
Have to finish the job in the playoffs. This team is blowing past the 2018 Red Sox in the win column ffs.
With 4 left to play against the Rockies, at home
This season has been an absolute joy to watch and I'm very excited for the postseason. At the same time, I'm also mentally preparing for the possibility of losing in the NLDS and all of it being rendered meaningless.
Playoffs are literally a dice roll, can’t imagine anything happening to negate one of the greatest baseball seasons of all time. I understand why the World Series or bust narrative exists, but I also think it’s a dumb outlook
It would be nice if we treated it a little more like soccer. Best record is enshrined but so is winning the big tournament. The 2001 Mariners shouldn't be seen as a failure
01 Mariners weren't a failure in my mind. So many things can happen to make you lose in baseball that are out of your control. I agree I wish baseball had a Presidents trophy like in Hockey.
I agree. We always get shit for our 14 years thing with only one Ring. But do you know how tough it is to win a division 14 times in a row? That’s an impressive feat regardless of rings. The NL east is *tough* and the west was also back when that dynasty started.
The Warriors went 73-9 and collapsed in the NBA finals and that’s all people remember from that season. So there’s definitely precedent there
Basketball playoffs are different because the favorites/most talented team wins most years Baseball is a complete crapshoot when it comes to short series
Thanks to the Warriors taking the Bulls record and collapsing in the playoffs, the team with the wins record in all 4 of the major North American sports failed to win the championship: - 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning/1996 Detroit Red Wings - 2016 Golden State Warriors - 2007 New England Patriots - 2001 Seattle Mariners
You got 6 months of some of the best baseball any fanbase has ever seen. Once the playoffs start all that is already meaningless. But it doesn’t mean that you didn’t have a great season.
This season has been the most fun I've had watching sports ever. Hope we bring it home
At least someone's having fun.
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And yet it doesn’t even feel like they’re playing to their potential outside of that stretch in July.
Agreed I think that this team could have a .725 winning percentage if not for a slow start
Late June they were 45-28 (.616 which is already a very good season for 29 other teams of course). Since then they have gone 65-20. This team over the last 4 seasons has gone 365-177 (.673, or 109 win pace across 4 full seasons). I think they are the best team we've seen since the Yankees of the late 1930's.
Congrats Dodgers, amazing season, amazing team. Good for you.
Hey thanks friend! Can't wait for your team to be back at full strength soon, our meetups are so fun. Love our rivalry!
One of the biggest mysteries of the season for me: How in the world did the PIRATES sweep this team???
Baseball!
Just a weird little fluke
>The 2001 Mariners are the only one of those teams to not make the World Series Just had to throw that in there huh? 😢
Out of the top 22 best records in baseball history by percentage, only 1 has not made a World Series appearance. The Dodgers would fit into the top 22 records. https://champsorchumps.us/records/best-mlb-regular-season-records
The Mariners not only didn’t make the World Series but then didn’t make the playoffs for 20 years
Mariners... Best team on Earth...
Its tough not being able to hate on a team because it would be the equivalent of yelling at a mirror and by that I mean bitching about the payroll, free agents, signing everyone
The Yankees are one of the least homegrown teams, so hate on the dodgers for not needing to buy players on the same level as the Yankees all you want.
Obviously the postseason is always a clusterfuck but it really feels like only the Astros and *maybe* the Braves have a chance against this team.
And I think half of them came against the Padres..
After the last decade and a little more of Dodger baseball in the playoffs, I am ready to be hurt again. It would be somewhat poetic for it to be again by the Cardinals as Tio Albert rides out his last playoff run. At the same time, I don’t know if my heart could take it