5 former players the Dodgers missed most during latest failed championship run

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It's official. The Dodgers bringing Kiké Hernández back midseason was not enough to recapture their 2017-2020 postseason mojo. Noted.

Coming off a 111-win season that ended in four games against the Padres in the NLDS, the Dodgers vowed that this year would be different. They claimed they'd perfected a finely-hewn mix of superstars and glue guys. Dino Ebel spoke about how much more ready this version of the Dodgers was, as compared to last year's vintage, for a playoff tussle. They weren't perfect, but goddammit if they weren't ready to scratch and claw.

Then, Clayton Kershaw gave up six runs in the first inning of Game 1 and things went inarguably worse than last year from there.

The 2023 Dodgers rolled downhill with the velocity of a rocket-powered boulder the literal second the curtain rose on the National League playoffs. And while there were plenty of calculable reasons for their struggles -- Mookie Betts/Freddie Freeman went 1-for-21, they were three or four starters short -- intangibles likely played a role, too.

Following LA's playoff deflation, there was too thick an air of, "The Dodgers do this every year" for our taste. No. The Dodgers do not do this every year. The Dodgers have gotten immeasurably worse since allowing a fleet of their most proven postseason performers to depart, then replacing them with Jason Heyward and Kolten Wong.

5 former Dodgers who were missed during 2023 playoff disaster

Justin Turner

Ok, but seriously: How was Justin Turner not on this team?

Instead of keeping the Dodgers together in 2023 as they threatened to spiral after 2022's clattering thud, Andrew Friedman allowed Turner to head to Boston, where he specialized at driving in runners from third with less than two outs. He was nearly automatic before his troublesome foot caught up with him down the stretch, knocking in 96 runs and embodying the bounce-back ethos Boston intended to be team-wide this past season.

Friendly reminder: Turner was injured mid-series in the 2021 NLCS against the Braves, and watching him scream and hobble to the clubhouse couldn't have helped team morale during their title defense.

Yes, he did hit .154 in the Dodgers' NLDS loss last fall, and hey, sometimes you have to make tough decisions and move on from valued veterans to upgrade a roster. That's why it made sense that Friedman said goodbye to Justin and Trea Turner in order to welcome ... wait, David Peralta and Miguel Vargas? Are we sure that's right? Max Muncy at third, a Gavin Lux promotion ... yeah, Captain Hindsight says moving on from Turner for a bunch of unproven commodities wasn't a great idea. Captain In-The-Moment agrees.

Cody Bellinger

After 2022, the Dodgers' relationship with Cody Bellinger officially hit a breaking point after two years of substandard production. Another poor year from Belli wouldn't have helped get the Dodgers back on track, but a return to his pre-shoulder injury form would've helped a great deal. Too bad that player was forever gone, and the magic couldn't be recaptured with any twea -- you're kidding. Who unlocked him? The Cubs? Oh, boy. Thought the Dodgers were the best at doing that. Oof.

The good news? Bellinger added 100 points to his OPS between 2021 and 2022 in LA. The bad news? His 2021 OPS was .542.

The Dodgers had every reason in the world to move on from Belli at his exorbitant one-year salary this past offseason, but you can't deny that they were at their best when he was mashing in October, helping the team claw out of a 3-1 deficit in a now-legendary 2020 NLCS performance and drilling an extra two homers in the World Series (with a beefed-up shoulder).

Even in 2021, he managed to regroup and line a clutch single in the NLDS against the Giants, then hit .412 with a dinger in the NLCS and briefly flipped the series. If only the Dodgers had discovered the Cubs' secrets first...

Corey Seager

Obviously, the majority of this article is a vibe judgment. But, objectively, the 2017-2020 Dodgers were a Clayton Kershaw relief appearance away from making the NLCS in four consecutive seasons (at least) and the World Series thrice. They won a title and nearly captured another, if not for an infernal and well-covered scheme. This team did not come up small in October.

But the last three seasons have come to define the era, in part because of the baseball world's desire to plop an asterisk on the 60-game season, but mainly because of just how egregious the regular season-to-postseason dropoff was.

2021 wasn't pretty for anyone. It involved a Wild Card Game, thanks (?) to the outlier 107-win Giants. It also, in retrospect, makes the 2022/2023 teams look like the 1998 Yankees. That was the final Dodgers season to feature objective clutch performer Corey Seager, who captured the NLCS MVP in 2020, then decided he wanted the World Series one, too, for good measure.

Seager wasn't quite himself in October in '21, hitting .238 in the DS and .167 (with a pair of bombs) in a CS loss. He tore the cover off the ball in August and September of that year, but perhaps reality was beginning to sink in during the month of October, when he looked to his side and saw his ready-made replacement Trea Turner (little did we know).

Regardless, the Dodgers thought it was a good idea to let the centerpiece of their postseason offense walk, paving the way for a 6.9 bWAR/170 OPS+ season in Texas this year that helped lead the Rangers to the ALCS. His sweet left-handed swing would've done wonders in Kolten Wong's place last week.

Kenta Maeda

Ok, truth be told, this was a tough one. The Dodgers needed more starting pitching this postseason, no matter the source. As it turns out, they might not have even possessed one viable starter. Is that good?

So it would've been silly to go through this entire exercise, spitting out every clutch bat from days gone by without also adding an arm or two. Only problem is, unless you included a time machine in the deal, there aren't many ex-Dodgers out there who would've been excellent fits with this year's model. Walker Buehler would've been nice.

Rich Hill? You would have to do a lot of hard work convincing me that a 5.41 ERA and -0.6 bWAR this year would've been a better Game 3 fit than Lance Lynn. Hyun-Jin Ryu? 11 starts and 52 innings this season. Not quite. Tyler Anderson? 1.5 WHIP. Would've been an edge-of-your-seat affair.

So we're going with Maeda here, who's been more of a swingman in recent years, but would've acquitted himself more competently than Emmet Sheehan in a huge spot. 1.1 bWAR, 117 Ks in 104.1 innings ... yeah, that would've played. That would've played better than what we watched, ultimately.

Joc Pederson

All Pederson did during his tenure with the Dodgers was drill massive postseason homers and admire them.

When he left Los Angeles for Chicago (and then Atlanta), he specifically did it over and over again during the 2021 postseason to torture the Dodgers with pearls on; not surprisingly, Pederson's Bravos slid past LA that fall.

Since then, he's "found a home" (we refuse to believe it) in San Francisco, hitting 23 bombs, making the All-Star team, and finishing with a 146 OPS+ in 2022. This past season, he took a step back, only finishing 11% above average offensively. Dang. Brutal.

But Pederson's regular seasons rarely told the story of his postseasons, as the Dodgers legend lit up when the lights were brightest. .333 with three bombs in the 2017 World Series. .400, .389, and .400 during the 2020 run. .267 with a blast during the ill-fated 2019 NLDS. October magic doesn't always work, but ... when it works this often, that qualifies. You can't look me in the eyes and tell me David Peralta was a better call in big spots this past week.

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