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Dodgers, World Series: Can We Keep Them Apart This Fall? Please?

August 26th, 2019 · No Comments · Baseball, Dodgers

The New York Yankees came to town to play a three-game inter-league set with the Los Angeles Dodgers, in a matchup of the clubs with the best records so far this season.

Excuse me if I, a lifetime Dodgers fan, was a little creeped out by it.

The Yankees took two of three, outscoring the Dodgers 16-5, out-homering them 9-2 and beating up their two best veteran pitchers — Hyun-jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw.

These are the Dodgers who have lost the previous two World Series, and one of the first things I did today, in the wake of the Yankees demonstrating their superiority, was check out a painful statistic:

Which was the most recent ballclub to lose in three consecutive World Series?

That would be the New York Giants of 1911, 1912 and 1913.

If the Dodgers return to the World Series … well, the New York Giants of 106 years ago may want to make room for the boys in blue in the three-times-running Fall Classic losers club.

Take it from someone who has lived through it: Watching your team lose consecutive World Series is awful; I saw the Dodgers do it in 1977 and 1978, when they lost to Reggie Jackson’s Yankees, each time in six games.

Only two teams have lost three World Series in succession, the other being the Detroit Tigers of 1907, 1908 and 1909. Yeah, it has been a while.

The Dodgers could be the first three-straight loser since the Giants and, previously, the Tigers.

Ugh.

The Dodgers are clearly the best team in what is equally clearly the weaker league — the National. Over in the AL, the Yankees are (according to their record today, anyway), the best team, at 85-47, but they have several other AL clubs playing well enough to keep them on their toes. That would be the Houston Astros (also 85-47), Minnesota Twins (79-51), Cleveland Indians (76-55) and Oakland Athletics (74-55).

Meanwhile, the National League has exactly one other team with more than 73 victories, and that is the Atlanta Braves, at 80-52.

In is not the Dodgers’ fault the NL has so many bad teams, but it hurts them in matching them against subpar teams. The Dodgers knock ’em around a little and tell themselves they can hang with any team in ball … when the evidence for that over the past two years is just not there.

Pitching is the main problem. We noted the Dodgers’ inactivity ahead of the July 31 trade deadline when it came to acquiring a top-notch arm to fortify a bullpen led by by Kenley Jansen, who is having the worst season of his career.

Once one of the Dodgers’ big three starting pitchers (Walker Buehler, Kershaw, Ryu) leaves the game, control is turned over to the ‘pen, which at the moment seems to have one truly plugged-in guy — set-up man Joe Kelly. In theory, Pedro Baez is the seventh-inning guy, but the club should not count on getting six innings from any of its starters, including Ryu, who looked like something special until the Yankees took him deep three times (accounting for seven earned runs). Two days later, they abused Kershaw for three more homers.

And did we mention the Yankees 1) pummel left-handers, which means Ryu, Kershaw and Rich Hill, if he gets healthy, should warn fans in the bleachers about incoming rockets; and 2) that the Yankees have a mob of equally scary sluggers on the injured list who may be whole in time for the World Series, led by Giancarlo Stanton, Edwin Encarnacion, Luke Voit, Aaron Hicks …

So this is my wish for the Dodgers. They can go ahead and win the division (they could clinch, like, tomorrow), but I want them to lose in the NL playoffs. To the Braves, presumably, but it could be anyone who makes it to the postseason: the Nationals, the Cardinals, the Phillies.

Just as long as it isn’t the Dodgers. They do not need the taint, the mark of Cain, on them as the first three-times-running World Series losers since 1913.

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