3 reasons the Dodgers can catch the Diamondbacks and 2 they may not
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Despite issues in their rotation and bullpen, the Los Angeles Dodgers have gotten contributions from guys like Bobby Miller to keep things afloat there while the offense has remained one of the best in the league with certifiable MVP candidates in Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts.
Sure, they aren’t quite on the pace that we have come to expect from them in recent years. However, considering the injuries/setbacks in 2023, remaining one of the scarier opponents on any team’s schedule is a pretty good spot to be. It certainly also has to feel good that the San Diego Padres -- initially believed to be the Dodgers' biggest threat in the NL West -- are off to a rough start with an offense that has really under-performed to start the season.
That brings us to ...
Can the Dodgers catch the Diamondbacks?
The problem this year is that LA has some very tough competition from an unlikely source in the Arizona Diamondbacks. The D-backs finished 14 games below .500 last year and while many thought they would be better than that disaster, no one thought that they would be among the best teams in the National League through most of the first half in 2023. But here we are.
The Dodgers are currently looking up at the Diamondbacks, who are not showing much of any signs of slowing down, while LA is wondering, given everything we know up until now, if there's a chance Arizona can be chased down in the standings.
Here are a few reasons why the Dodgers can indeed catch their rivals ... and also other factors we'll acknowledge that might make it unlikely.
Can: The Dodgers are still, at least on paper, a better team than Arizona …for now
Despite the fact that the standings are the ultimate arbiter of which team has the better season, there are a lot of reasons to suggest the Dodgers are still the better team right now and that SHOULD average out over the season. The offense has remained one of the best in the entire league and, more importantly, a tier above what Arizona has done so far this season.
The pitching staffs for each team have both been middle of the pack, but there's reason to believe the Dodgers have more upside coming with Miller continuing his ascension as well as Julio Urias eventually returning from his hamstring injury.
There's more than that, though. The Dodgers have been strictly better in terms of run differential and, while that is far from a perfect metric, scoring a lot more runs than one’s opponents is a winning formula. Neither team’s bullpens are particularly imposing, so there's an opportunity for both teams to make an impact at the trade deadline.
One area that Arizona seems to have a big advantage, however, is defense. The D-backs have been one of the better defensive teams in baseball in 2023 while the Dodgers are in the middle of the pack for Outs Above Average and actively bad per Fangraphs’ overall defensive rankings overall.
Can't: Zac Gallen and Corbin Carroll are monsters and that could be a problem for the Dodgers
The Dodgers have a ton of stars on their roster, but Arizona has some studs of their own, including Zac Gallen and Corbin Carroll. We’ll start with Gallen who has been criminally under-appreciated for a couple of years now. He posted a 4.3 fWAR season last season with a 2.53 ERA in 2022 and, while he has looked a bit more human very recently, he's still one of the favorites to win the Cy Young in the National League in 2023.
Corbin Carroll is even more troubling for the Dodgers as he impacts games in so many ways (in addition to his advanced metrics being all-around amazing). He hits the ball hard a lot; he's one of the faster players in the league; he draws walks and doesn’t strike out a ton despite being a rookie; and he's a Gold Glove-caliber defender in center field.
While the Braves’ Ronald Acuna Jr. rightly gets a lot of attention for his chances at getting a 40/40 season this year, Carroll has a non-zero chance of making a run at it, too. These sorts of players can carry a team single-handedly, even if the roster isn’t deep because they're that good and their skillset makes the guys around them better.
Can: The Dodgers’ offense is in a class of its own
When you look at these two teams’ position players against one another on a leaderboard, you see a relatively small gap in overall fWAR (although LA does come out ahead). However, a deeper look suggests that the gap between the two offenses once you scrape out defensive contributions (which are still very important as mentioned before) is bigger than that.
The Dodgers’ team wRC+ is significantly higher than Arizona’s, as is their team ISO (a power measuring metric), walk rate, and run total. All of this is despite the fact that Arizona has been significantly “luckier” on balls in play -- their team BABIP is much higher that the Dodgers'.
A lot of this points to the Diamondbacks playing over their heads a bit and the Dodgers underperforming a bit, which makes some sense. Max Muncy struggling to hit above .200 for three of the past four seasons certainly isn’t helping, but Mookie Betts is having some decidedly mediocre luck from a BABIP perspective yet again and James Outman is having some real rookie growing pains after a hot start. Plus, the Dodgers having Miguel Rojas’ sub 40 wRC+ over a significant number of plate appearances both isn’t helping the overall picture and probably isn’t indicative of what the future looks like.
Look, if the Diamondbacks continue to have half a dozen guys in their lineups with .350 BABIPs the rest of the way, then yeah ... the Dodgers are in trouble. However, some of that luck is bound to come back to earth, especially with how young some of those guys are. The Dodgers have a ton of guys on offense with track records of being elite while Arizona does not.
Can't: The Dodgers and Diamondbacks have some very different trade deadline restrictions that could favor Arizona
Both teams have some very similar needs with the trade deadline approaching. Both teams have bullpens that are difficult to trust. Both teams, to varying degrees, would like to add some depth to their starting rotations. Unsurprisingly, that's also the shopping list for virtually every contending team across baseball because one can never have enough pitching as arms have been dropping left and right this season.
The Dodgers, however, may be restricted with who they can trade for because they “probably” want to shed some salary already for luxury tax/Ohtani pursuit purposes, and taking on a significant amount of salary could create some issues. They won’t stand pat in all likelihood, especially with the bullpen, but restraint could be in the cards.
Meanwhile the Diamondbacks, who do not have the minor-league depth the Dodgers have, have every reason to go all in here. Opportunities to topple the Dodgers in the division do not come often and they have some clearly defined needs with enough prospect/player capital to go get a couple higher-end options without having to worry about being financially hamstrung.
Can: The Dodgers are very, very deep and very experienced, and that matters
We can parse the stats as much as we want, but the reality is that even a cursory look at the team’s rosters reveals a pretty big discrepancy in depth. The Dodgers have some of the best players in all of baseball at their positions in Freeman, Betts, and Will Smith as well as All-Star-caliber guys who are underperforming like Muncy (aside from the dingers), Chris Taylor, and JD Martinez.
Over on the pitching staff, Clayton Kershaw is past his prime certainly but is still good for 6-7 of excellence every night, and the Dodgers should be getting back Urías before too long (he finished top-three in the Cy Young race last year).
With the Diamondbacks, Gallen and Carroll have been amazing and they have gotten real production from guys like Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marte, Christian Walker, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Merrill Kelly, and Andrew Chafin. However, a lot of those guys don’t have the same track records that the Dodgers’ guys do, although Ketel Marte has been productive in MLB for a good while.
Finally, most of the Dodgers' players are extremely battle-tested and have multiple tight division races and deep playoff runs under their belts. For the last several years, LA has had a target on them as one of the best teams in the league and they have largely lived up to the billing each year despite some shortcomings in specific playoff series. Arizona doesn’t have that and it's unclear if they'll be able to perform when they are trying to seal the deal.
One note here, though, is that that last point could go either way. While we have seen plenty of young, inexperienced teams wilt under the pressure of a tight division race, the opposite can also happen. The Diamondbacks may play so loose and with nothing to lose that they simply may not notice or know any better. Teams with the level of talent that Arizona has who also lay it all out there with nothing to lose can be very, very dangerous. Either way, this division race is setting up to be one for the ages.
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