The Los Angeles Dodgers are a damn fine baseball team that ultimately has little to show for all of its talent. Did you know they have made the National League Championship Series five out of the last 10 years? Probably not, because they haven’t advanced to the World Series even once during that span. Baseball, my friends, is terrible, but playoff baseball is actually worse. It’s that recurring dream where you’re being chased by snakes with fangs and alligators that can zigzag across interstates but you can’t run from them because you’re paralyzed. Playoff baseball is like that, except your private nightmare is broadcast on national television and mocked by Internet trolls. (I Googled it, and the only thing worse in the history of autumn is the electoral college.)
Despite playing in the second-largest market in the country and possessing a payroll larger than a medium-size country’s GDP, the Dodgers have not advanced to the World Series since 1988. As a fifth-generation Angeleno who has written a book on this team and their quest to win it all, I am here to help. Because I was born into this shit — and the mental and emotional health of the people around me will be greatly impacted by how well a group of 25 grown-ass men play a children’s game these next few days — I consulted the baseball gods and determined the 10 things the Dodgers must do — and not do! — to end this three-decade farce get back to the World Series.
1. Do not leave Clayton Kershaw to die on the mound
The Dodgers have the best pitcher in baseball. He has struggled in the playoffs. People on Twitter call him a choker. I have fought these people online. So here’s the deal: the playoffs are hard. Every pitch is stressful. When Kershaw is his normal, unhittable, magical self, his fastball sits at a comfortable 93 — not 94, not 92. But because the human body is a terrible machine that plays host to a never ending civil war between adrenaline and inertia, and because Kershaw is a mensch who wants to win so bad, he typically comes out in the first inning of playoff games throwing 95. I’ve even seen him hit 97. You’re thinking, this is good, right? The harder he throws, the more difficult it is for batters to hit it? Well, I’ve watched almost every start of his career — yes, I know I need to get a life — and when I see 95 on the gun I get scared for two reasons. First, movement is more important than velocity, and his 95s flatten out and miss the corners pitchers have to ever-so-slightly nick to be effective. Second, starting pitchers are like iPhone batteries. There are only so many applications you can run at once before you’re down to 17% and sitting on the floor at a party with your charging cable plugged into the wall like a nerd.
In the regular season, at least before his back injury last year, it wasn’t that unusual for Kershaw to pitch into the eighth. But in the playoffs, he throws harder than usual, he’s more stressed by every pitch, and he’s basically cooked after six. This would all be fine if the Dodgers didn’t continue to trot him out there for the seventh, over and over again, and watch him shrivel from GOAT to goat. In other words, Kershaw’s playoff woes aren’t mental. If you erase the seventh inning out of his playoff history, the narrative dies. He’s not bad in the seventh inning because he’s scared: he’s bad because he’s tired.
Last October, Kershaw took the ball four times in nine days, logging two road wins, a no-decision, and a series-clinching save on one day’s rest. Starting pitchers usually go once every five days. He went f o u r t i m e s i n n i n e d a y s. And then he fell apart five days later in Game 6 of the NLCS because his body broke down — though he’d never admit it — and the Dodgers were eliminated. The Kershaw Is Actually Bad truthers, who had been silenced for a week, came out of their basements to gloat. I’m not mad about it, I swear.
But remember Madison Bumgarner’s mythic 2014 postseason, by which all other starting pitchers are judged? Well, he never started on short rest. In fact, the only time he pitched without at least four days rest was when he closed out Game 7 of the World Series, which is totally appropriate, because there was literally no tomorrow. If the Dodgers want to win it all, they should (sigh) learn from the Giants and stop riding Kershaw until he’s gassed. It’s not fair to him or the team or their fans or (most importantly) to me. Count on Kersh for six solid innings, then get the bullpen going before the seventh begins and take it batter by batter. This is not a sign of disrespect; it is a symbol of affection.
2. Start Austin Barnes over Yasmani Grandal
When Andrew Friedman took over baseball operations for the Dodgers in the winter of 2014, his first big move was trading one of the team’s best players, Matt Kemp, to San Diego for Grandal, a decent pitch-framing catcher who hits the ball hard from April to the end of July every year.
But then his body falls apart, because playing catcher is a horrible thing to do to it. Since August 1, he’s posted a .684 OPS. And to the frustration of many Dodger pitchers, he sometimes messes up sign sequencing, which leads to an inordinate number of passed balls. (He led the majors this year with 16.)
Look, I get it. The front office is attached to Grandal. And when he hits, the passed balls are forgivable. But playing catcher can be brutal on the body, and right now he’s an out at the plate. Barnes’ OPS is nearly 200 points better than Grandal since August 1, he hit a crucial home run in the game that clinched the NLDS, and he handles the staff just fine. Elevate him to starter, score more runs, win baseball games!
3. Piss off Rich Hill
Hill is a miracle. This dude played for the Long Island Ducks in August 2015; reinvented himself as a curveball-first, fastball-last pitcher; began striking everybody out; and now finds himself as the No. 2 starter on a World Series favorite. More importantly, he’s a maniac on the mound who curses at himself, the ball, the grass, the umpire, the sky, the vendor chucking bags of peanuts, the pitching rubber, the moon, and the godforsaken blisters that form on the fingertips of his left hand at the worst possible time.
But he doesn’t mean any of it, because on the days he’s not pitching, he’s disarmingly nice. On the days he takes the ball, though, he’s succumbed by hellfire, and it is glorious. The madder he gets, the more dominant he is. So, maybe block his parking spot in the player’s lot or something.
4. Yu Darvish is only allowed to throw the pitches he threw in the NLDS
I watch a lot of baseball. I cannot figure Darvish out. One day, he looks like the half-Japanese, half-Iranian, eight-foot-tall version of Cy Young. The next, he looks like he’s tossing batting practice to your local high school team. He has roughly 47 different pitches, which sounds great in theory, but in practice it’s like using 47 different colors of paint on your bathroom wall and ending up with green-brown baby food.
I get the same feeling watching Darvish pitch as I do trying to order off the menu at The Cheesecake Factory. It’s super hard to enjoy the Tex Mex Eggrolls when you’re worried the Roadside Sliders might have been better. Bottom line: Pick the right one and you can’t go wrong. (OK, here’s a hint: always order the sliders.)
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5. Do not run on Jon Lester
Remember when Jon Lester had the inability to throw the baseball to first base? Neither do I! The Dodgers don’t either, because when they faced him in the NLCS last year, their base runners took 20-foot leads and danced around first base like they were going to exploit his yips and run wild on him … then chickened out every time. His yips gave them the yips. It was amazing!
His throwing woes continued this season until he conquered his demons in GAME 4 OF THE NLDS by picking Ryan Zimmerman off first base.
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Jon Lester is a bad man with steel coconuts.
6. Suspend (without pay) anyone who slides feet-first back into any base on a back pick from Willson Contreras
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7. Clear eyes, full count, can’t lose
One of the reasons the Dodgers are so good this year is they only have two players who repeatedly swing out of their cleats: Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger. Seager won last year’s Rookie of the Year award. Bellinger will win it this year. They’re both superstars in their early 20s who will anchor the coming Dodgers dynasty for the next decade until Scott Boras wrecks it. They hit boatloads of dingers and doubles, so they get a pass on this, but everyone else needs to work Cubs pitchers over until they collapse.
The Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks in the NLDS largely because they had high-quality at-bats. Yasiel Puig, in particular, has been a revelation, spitting on pitches an inch out of the strike zone, taking walks when pitchers don’t give in, and obliterating pitches when they do. Justin “Ginger Jesus” Turner walked more times this year than he struck out, and leadoff man Chris Taylor has displayed a knack for turning 0-2 counts into 3-2 simply by staring into the opposing pitcher’s soul and fouling off pitches until the fellow looks like he’d rather file retirement papers than finish the inning.
The Cubs bullpen had a hard time throwing strikes in the NLDS. Since that series with Washington went five brutal games and involved both a rainout and sleeping on a grounded plane in Albuquerque, their command isn’t likely to get better this round. Do not help them by swinging at bad pitches. And with Seager being excised from the NLCS roster due to a back injury, the pressure will be on players like Puig and Turner to replace that lost offense while also maintaining plate discipline. Nothing is ever easy.
8. Chase Utley needs to do something annoying in Games 1 or 2
Look, Chase Utley is a future Hall of Famer. But he’s also a Hall of Fame heel. I was not a fan of his slide that broke Ruben Tejada’s leg in the 2015 NLDS. It was a legal play, yes, but violent and avoidable, so I was happy when the “Utley rule” was instituted the following season, so middle infielders in the future will be protected from Flores’ fate. When the Dodgers visited Citi Field the following season, Mets fans mercilessly booed Utley, who goaded Noah Syndergaard to throw at him The Mets flamethrower was ejected, and Utley ripped a solo homer off the next pitcher He also crushed a grand slam three innings later.
I don’t advocate Utley injuring a Cub, but there are things he can do to piss off Chicago fans that don’t involve X-rays. The louder Wrigley boos him, the more dingers he will hit. It’s just science.
9. Let Joe Maddon beat himself
Maddon is a better manager than most. He also wears cool glasses and dresses like a hipster grandpa, so people assume he’s a genius.
He’s not.
Last year, the Cubs won the World Series in spite of him. He left Aroldis Chapman on the mound to die in Game 7, and the only thing that stopped the Indians from winning that game was a rain delay that allowed Chapman and others to cry privately. There were other things he did last year that other managers would have been roasted for, but I don’t have to go look them up because stuff happened in Game 5 of this year’s NLDS that was just as bad. I have no clue why any manager would bring in starting pitcher Jose Quintana in the middle of the game and burn him for two outs, then ask closer Wade Davis to get more outs (seven) than he’s ever gotten in his career. It worked, but mostly because Willson Contreras bailed Davis out. (See #6 above). But just because the Cubs won the game doesn’t mean it was smart.
Quintana now has to start Game 1 versus Kershaw today, and who knows if his arm is weird after one day of rest from a two-out effort. Davis is probably going to pitch in most of the games of this series. He threw 44 pitches two days ago. The Dodgers are going to hit both of them, I think.
10. Light a candle for Curtis Granderson
The Dodgers acquired Granderson in mid-August to replace a slumping Joc Pederson. It has not gone well. The left fielder has posted a .654 OPS in 36 games and looks like the only sure out in the Dodgers lineup right now, assuming the Dodgers listen to me and start Austin Barnes at catcher. I know he’s been bad. I know that if you’ve made it this far, it’s probably because you’re a Dodger fan, which means you’re so mad at him that you’ll want to hit me right now for what I’m about to say.
But I know how playoff mischief works. I have a PhD in it. And trust me when I say Granderson is going to get the biggest hit of the year for the Dodgers. It’s going to happen, and you are going to jump up and down and say you always knew he would do it. He is Mike Davis. He is Travis Ishikawa. He is David Eckstein.
So light a candle and say a prayer and cross your fingers and toes and thank the universe for baseball bullshit. This is the year, Dodger fans, the loss of Corey Seager notwithstanding.
Probably. Maybe.
(Oh, God.)
Molly Knight is a freelance journalist and author. Her 2015 book The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse was a New York Times bestseller and longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.
