The Padres defeated the Dodgers Thursday night by a score of 6-3. That puts the Padres in third place in the NL West, 2 1/2 games out of first. The Dodgers bring up the rear 8 1/2 games out.
Both teams suffered injuries to star players this season. By late March, the Padres lost both their starting third baseman and his young replacement, who was slated to become the starting second baseman. Their young catcher was serving a drug suspension, and various others would suffer ailments and DL trips.
The Dodgers lost Chad Billingley for the season, they may lose Josh Beckett for the season, and Zack Greike was out for a long stretch (thanks to the Padres). Hanley Ramirez, Carl Crawford, and Matt Kemp continue to be injury prone. So why have the Padres done a better job overcoming their injuries than the Dodgers?
I would suggest that the way the teams are built explains a lot of that. The Dodgers basically threw money at their problems. They traded for high salaries, injury risk, and bad attitudes. When a team spends like that, they are probably not paying that much attention to the farm system. So when they bring up someone as a replacement, they tend to be older players. Scott Van Slyke is a perfect example, playing as a 26-year-old this season. That’s not young for a second year player. Yes, they have brought along Yasiel Puig, but in general the organization seems to be lacking healthy 22-year-olds they can stick in the lineup.
The Padres, due to their more limited resources, need to keep the farm thriving. So they have youngsters like Jeff Decker and Alexi Amarista to step in, as well as young veterans like Yonder Alonso and Kyle Blanks. The Padres have a pipeline that flows.
The Dodgers put most of their eggs into their major league basket. When that broke down, there was little they could call on for help. The Padres spread the wealth throughout their system, so there are always eggs hatching. This year at least, it’s working in San Diego’s favor.
The farm system problem you’re referring to is something that is years in the making, and not really a product of the Dodgers’ spending the past 12 months. Yes, the Dodgers traded De La Rosa and Webster, but starting pitching has not been the big issue with the team this year, despite all the injuries. The new ownership has invested more in the farm in one year than McCourt did in eight years. But it takes time for that to pay dividends.
And it doesn’t make much sense to say the team traded for bad attitudes, when two of the most productive and easy-going players on the team have been Crawford and Gonzalez.
The team does have a lot of problems, but they were years in the making.
Jon Weisman » That post didn’t come out as well as I would have liked.
Injuries aside, the Dodgers have had two major problems this year:
–the bullpen has been horrendous;
–Ethier, Kemp (when healthy), and Cruz have been godawful.
Mattingly isn’t John McGraw by any stretch of the imagination, but I certainly don’t want Joe Torre back, and a big name manager isn’t going to want to jump on the hospital bandwagon and wouldn’t generate many more wins if he did. This team would be fine if the healthy players were all producing to their normal levels and if the bullpen wasn’t looking like Charlie Brown trying to throw with his feet.