Dodgers: Dave Roberts is Managing Games Perfectly

There is something to be said for playing as your manager preaches. Dodger fans knew all too well that the team would be stifled in the playoffs under Don Mattingly and like Mattingly, there have been doubts about the current direction of Dave Roberts. But, different from some of his decisions which lent themselves to heavy criticism, Roberts has managed the playoffs to perfection and he may just manage the Dodgers back to the World Series.

To win a championship the players need to do their part. The pitching needs to shut down the opponent and the batters need to get on base and ultimately score runs. But, no team’s athletes can do that unless they are placed in the right spots to get the job done. This is where the tenth man comes in, the manager.

To manage a baseball game is to conduct an orchestra. You can not let your musicians get out of tune and you need to keep the rhythm. Let one player get off beat and the whole band sounds disjointed. Keep them all on the same page with every note falling into place, and the music is a masterpiece.

Copy and paste this into baseball. The manager needs to pick the lineups; putting each of his batters in the optimal spot to win games and he must do the same with his pitchers. The decision to leave a pitcher in just one out longer could make the difference in the outcome, a difference that a playoff team needs to be on the right end of.

And get on the right end the Dodgers have. Aside from a game three loss in Atlanta, the Dodgers have not skipped a beat both offensively and defensively and that is in large part due to the management of Roberts and how he has structured each game.

The first massive difference between regular season Dave Roberts and postseason Dave Roberts is the long leash he has afforded the starting pitching. Perhaps this is a result of having his best and most trustable arms out there every game but regardless, one bad inning has not dictated the rest of the start for Roberts.

Look to game three as an example:

Walker Buehler did not have his best stuff. Sure, he dominated in the first inning but after a fielding error and a bad call by the umpire, Buehler found himself buried by five runs and a grand slam by one of the youngest players in baseball. Now there were two paths from this point. The first was pull Buehler. This seemed like the easy option especially given how much a win in three games means for rest and getting ready for the next series. Or, Roberts could assess the situation and allow his starter to continue working. Roberts chose the ladder.

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Choosing to keep Buehler in that game was brilliant. Roberts saw the rare circumstances that changed that inning, considering how early it was in the game and gave Walker Buehler three more innings of work- this was brilliantly done.

The list of moves does not stop there. Roberts has stuck to his gut when it came to platooning the lineups and has reaped the benefits in a big way. The Dodgers have scored the third most runs in the playoffs to this point with 20. They sit behind the Red Sox who had 27 and the Astros with just one more at 21.

And it is not only the platoon strategy that has worked so well for a manager who is doing an unbelievable job. Roberts’ patience with his hitter has been unlike anything we have seen from the third year manager before. During pitching changes, in a spot where he would normally change his batter to get the favorable platoon split, Roberts has stuck with the guy in the on-deck circle and again, it paid off. The strategy worked when Max Muncy went deep off of left-handed reliever, Max Fried.

Dodger fans love to jump all over Dave Roberts for a poor decision. He gets scrutinized for every little move but throughout the playoffs, up until this point, Dave Roberts immaculate in his decision making. Continue like this, and Roberts might captain this ship to its first title since 1988.