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Dodgers: 3 players LAD needs more from in second half of season

By Adam Weinrib |
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 26: Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers high fives with fans after the game against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium on June 26, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers defeated the Cubs 3-2. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 26: Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers high fives with fans after the game against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium on June 26, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers defeated the Cubs 3-2. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)
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Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images) /

The Los Angeles Dodgers are charging relatively hard behind the surprising San Francisco Giants, who might relent a little bit, but are certainly not going away.

If they’re going to finish the job, while also holding off the Padres, they’ll need a little more juice from a few key areas of the roster.

There’s a reason this team was a preseason favorite to not only reach the World Series pinnacle but to set records while doing so — namely, their depth was unparalleled. Even the haul they assembled in the offseason wasn’t enough to do much more than tread water in early May, though, with the bullpen entirely shot and the offense reduced to searching for Albert Pujols in the wastelands of Anaheim.

Now, though, things appear to be veering toward the right track. Efforts from players like Matt Beaty and Zach McKinstry have gone a long way, but the cavalry seems set on returning to do damage in the second half of the season.

Cody Bellinger and Corey Seager are, quite obviously, players the Dodgers could use a little more “oomph” from moving forward. That goes without saying, but just to cover our bases, we’ll say it here. Their absence hurt, shifting the burden to a few others who likely weren’t prepared to shoulder the load (though shoutout to Max Muncy for being beyond ready for the spotlight).

In addition to the emphasis on injury returns rounding into form, these three Dodgers could stand to level up for the pennant chase.

The Dodgers need more from these 3 players to win the World Series.

3. Mookie Betts

Love Mookie Betts. He’s an icon for the community. He’s modern baseball royalty. He, quite possibly, was the biggest difference-maker during the Dodgers’ run to the title in 2020.

If Los Angeles is going to repeat, though, they’ll need slightly more from Mookie. They’ll need him to evolve again and re-take the “generational superstar” plateau. They’ll need him to play so well that Red Sox fans stop posting poorly-photoshopped Instagram graphics reassessing his comparison with Alex Verdugo.

His “down year” has still been worth 2.9 WAR, and his 10 homers, .366 OBP, and 132 OPS+ are, again, fantastic. Betts is a player whose downs you accept because the ups are spectacular, though, and even though the baseline is phenomenal, LA could really use him jumping a level in the season’s second half.

In his past 11 games, Betts is hitting .194. Expand that to 23 games, and it’s .241. Though he’s presumably shaken off the aches and pains of the back injury that hampered him early, he’s still not making quite the consistent level of contact we’re used to. Understanding exactly how blasphemous this is to report, Betts is in the middle of the road in most statistics meant to illustrate how often he’s hitting the ball hard (54th percentile in max exit velo, 57th percentile in average exit velo, 55th percentile in the easy-to-follow hard-hit percentage). Bizarrely, Betts’ defense has also not been looked upon kindly by the metrics, falling in just the 22nd percentile in “outs above average.”

We’d take the player a hobbled Betts has been 10 times out of 10, but for the stretch run, we’d like to see an ascension take place.

Cody Bellinger #35 of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates his walk-off home run with Gavin Lux #9 (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)
Cody Bellinger #35 of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates his walk-off home run with Gavin Lux #9 (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images) /

2. Gavin Lux

Buoyed by the strength of his defense and versatility, Gavin Lux has looked a bit more like the player he was forecasted to be in 2019 in 2021, but there’s still a ways to go.

1.6 WAR as we near the break? Acceptable for a player many of us had written off as an above-average contributor (sorry, prospect appreciation is fickle). But for a bat-first player with demonstrable swagger, an 87 OPS+ is not going to cut it.

Lux’s largest moments have been loud, and 32 RBI from a middle infielder will certainly play in this day and age. On the whole, though, he’s been a below-league-average bat in a season full of those, and hasn’t justified the team’s long-term faith in his offense carrying the day, given ample opportunities to do so.

Is Lux still 23? Yes. We’re not writing him off. He’s an everyday player on a World Series favorite! No one is! We’d rather he be here than languishing at some sort of dreary Alternate Site. That said, other than a few shining moments, there hasn’t been much about his batted ball profile that’s blown us away thus far in 2021, and his middling exit velocities and poor barrel percentage (23rd percentile) tell the story better than we ever could.

Down the stretch, it would be nice to see more from a prospect deemed one of the top five commodities in the entire league. We’d like to see him excel at more than just sprint speed. He’s built for high-pressure moments, but we hope he embraces the other at-bats like they’re special, too.

Tony Gonsolin #26 of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)
Tony Gonsolin #26 of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images) /

1. Tony Gonsolin

The three-way race for the fifth starter spot this season ended disastrously, though not for the reasons anyone anticipated. We favored David Price, though at the time we had no idea he didn’t feel properly built up for the role.

After watching him succumb to injury early, it was painfully clear he wasn’t built up for short relief, either.

Between Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, we probably would’ve opted for Gonsolin, given how effective May was in short relief during last year’s postseason. Unfortunately, we were very obviously wrong there; May displayed remarkable upside before being forced to undergo Tommy John surgery, the plight of most hard-throwers these days, young and old. Baseball sucks.

Gonsolin seemed to hit a wall in last year’s postseason, where we all learned fairly quickly that his end-of-year endurance was going to be a big problem. With the lights at their brightest, outings of 2.0, 1.1, and 1.2 innings pitched weren’t exactly what any well-adjusted doctor would order. Coming off an exceptional year that ended with a thud, we thought middle relief might be a solid spot for a Rookie of the Year candidate who needed to rebuild value.

Unfortunately, the injury bug bit Gonsolin, too, solving that issue for us. For the remainder of 2021, the Dodgers need to see something that resembles Aug. 2020 Gonsolin every fifth day, now that he’s worked his way mostly back from his issues.

In his most recent start, Gonsolin completed a season-high four innings against the Cubs, allowing only a single hit and whiffing seven. He doesn’t have to be picture perfect, but five or six solid innings every five days could give Los Angeles the protection they’ve been sorely lacking. We know he has it in him.

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