Dodgers: The great trade deadline dilemma of 2019

For the first time in the last three seasons, the two-time defending National League Champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, did not acquire any top talent available by the 2019 trade deadline.

The Dodgers’ brass faced a mighty task in fighting with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The rare gold booty our hero-Dodgers’ desired? None other than the World Series Championship.

Did our captain, Andrew Friedman, make the right decision in battle? Why would the evil Pirates hold Felipe Vazquez hostage? Find out this and more, in our latest edition of The Great Trade Deadline Dilemma: 2019.

Daunting right? Please allow me to snap back into reality.

Background

When any team approaches the deadline there’s typically a glaring improvement that needs to be addressed or the front-office feels confident enough with the team remaining in front of them after the long grind of a more than half of the MLB season.

During Spring Training this year, the head of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, claimed that the 2019 version of the Dodgers were, at the time “without weakness.” I agreed with him then and I still mostly agree with him now.

Back in late-February, I argued that because the regular season hadn’t yet started, the team’s only real measure of assessing talent was through the evaluation of the team on paper. Of course, now that it’s early-August, the same methods of self-evaluation today cannot be the same as they were during Spring Training.

Injuries are inevitable. Personnel changes can sometimes alter a team’s season. Even the in-house stuff, such as the infamous “Joc Pederson experiment” at 1st base, can severely affect the outcome of an entire season.

It’s how the team, management, and the front-office deal with these issues that separates the winners from the losers, especially at this point in the regular season. Fans and management alike look to possible trades to solve a team’s weakness – whether foreseen or not.