2007 Dodgers were exact pivot point for modern dominance

The 2007 Los Angeles Dodgers, in the grand scheme of things, were only memorable in the way that someone who embodies an iconic role before it reaches the mainstream are memorable.

Essentially, the ’07 Dodgers were Eric Stoltz, cast as Marty McFly in the iconic film “Back to the Future,” but unable to put forth the performance to match.

Stoltz couldn’t give off the level of effortless cool the script called for; the 2007 Dodgers, with Grady Little at the helm, couldn’t either. This team never threaded the needle between overpriced grandeur and letting the kids play, and ultimately, it left them right about where most average teams settle.

The numbers, in a vacuum, look nice. There was competence atop the rotation, a mix of veterans and kids in the lineup, and a lockdown bullpen … oh, and also, there was an 82-80 record, a fourth-place finish, and the final momentum push to move on from Little and instill a little championship discipline with the offseason hiring of Joe Torre.

2007 Dodgers led to Joe Torre and modern dynasty

Ultimately, of course, Torre was not the man to lead the Dodgers to the postseason promised land, either. He merely leveled up the team’s bridge years and paved the way for the decision to break the mold and build an analytically-inclined masterpiece.

The chasm formed by Little’s firing to the dominance of the Dave Roberts Era created an almost linear path. Los Angeles, in one fell swoop, went from “caretaker” to “championship mentality” with Torre, then to a younger Torre disciple in Don Mattingly, then finally to a younger outside-the-box hire in Roberts to finish the job and put the plan in place.

The 2007 Dodgers had the ingredients, but couldn’t cook. Clayton Kershaw was drafted in 2006, waiting in the wings to be the missing piece in a rotation still tied down by bad contracts of a previous era like Brad Penny, Randy Wolf and Derek Lowe. The offense? Russell Martin, James Loney, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp had been introduced, but they were still weighed down by Nomar Garciaparra in his waning years, Juan Pierre and Jeff Kent.

Again, halfway there. Again, the very definition of 82-80.

Torre wasn’t the only major tonal shift between ’07 and ’08, of course. The arrival of a 20-year-old Clayton Kershaw midseason served as a harbinger of things to come. Though Torre may have skewed conservative with his usage patterns those first few years, Kershaw was the light at the end of a tunnel packed with Chad Billingsley.

That 2008 team finished just 84-78, sure, but something within them propelled them to an upset of the top-seeded Cubs that helped set them on a path toward future glory. Was that “something” Mannywood? Sure, in large part. But it was also Torre and the youngsters getting their feet wet, absorbing a title-winning ethos.

Do the modern Dodgers exist without getting so close without a cigar prior to the Dave Roberts era? Would Los Angeles have settled on Andrew Friedman eventually anyway? The only thing we can say, definitively, is that a downward trend became an upward spike between 2007 and 2008, and everything that followed help lead to a drought-breaking title in 2020 as well as sustainable, annual contention.

And all the Dodgers had to do was go back to the future.

The preceding article was a piece of FanSided 15-year anniversary content.

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