The Jays just had a season palate cleanser in a brutal sweep of the Rockies, beating them like the Rockies were, well, the worst team in baseball. It was fun to watch the team romp, especially after a bit of a sputtering recent run and facing down series against the Dodgers, the Cubs and the Rangers.
Also, like all the other contributors here, I’m still figuring out the new interface so please be patient with us over the next few days while I personally luddite my way through it. If somehow the last decade of the site gets accidentally deleted, as Olenna Tyrell said, ‘tell Tom it was me.’
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I reached out to True Blue LA for some questions about the LA Dodgers and Michael Elizondo was gracious enough to provide us with some answers to enjoy.
Coming into the trade deadline, the Dodgers swapped Dustin May, James Outman, and Hunter Feduccia for James Tibbs III, Zach Ehrhard, Alex Call, Brock Stewart, Adam Serwinowski, Paul Gervase, and Ben Rortvedt, despite being name-dropped as in on some other high-profile impact players. Are Dodgers fans happy with the performance at the deadline or is the feeling that the team didn’t do enough?
I think there’s a definite split of opinion. Historically, while the Dodgers have no problem opening the checkbook under the right circumstances (Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, et al), they are loath to overpay at the trade deadline. I think the Dodgers did fine in bolstering the depth of the team, but I wish they had swung a trade for Lars Nootbar of the St. Louis Cardinals, Stephen Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians, or Pete Fairbanks of the Tampa Bay Rays. Dylan Lee of the Atlanta Braves would have been an exciting pickup. (Author’s note: Lee and I are from the same small California farming town, but we have never met.)
The team is centered around an offensive engine of Betts, Ohtani, Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez, and Will Smith. Four of those five players have regressed offensively in 2025. It cannot be overstated: the Dodgers were hard to watch in July. There were too many holes to panic and go trade crazy, ala San Diego or New York (AL). Michael Conforto has been a disaster in 2025, but he was arguably the slumping team’s most productive batter not named Smith or Ohtani in July — that’s how bad it got. And while reports have emerged that the Dodgers were trying to upgrade in left to no avail, so the summer of Conforto will likely continue.
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Smith is having an excellent year. Some say he’s due some MVP frontrunner consideration. I won’t go that far, because he’s consistently good to great, not exceptional—no super peaks of production but no dramatic dips either. He leads the NL in average, and he’s arguably the most overlooked player on the team.
Ohtani’s regression is the mildest of the core, considering both the historic nature of his 2024 campaign (of which I was at the 50/50 game) and the fact that he’s returned to the mound.
Hernandez is playing like his 2023 campaign. He was injured in the first part of the year, and he is slowly getting back up to par at the plate.
Freeman had the worst six weeks of his professional career, but he looks like he’s gotten out of it, in part thanks to a meme MLB did of the Coldplay cheaters and his WS grand slam last year.
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Betts is having a season from hell. He hasn’t been this bad ever. It’s like watching him in the postseason (the last few years, he did lead in team OPS in 2024 if I recall correctly) spread out over the entire year. Dodger fans tried pulling a 2023 Trea Turner last night to try and coax him out of it. We’ll see going forward.
To answer the question succinctly, I worry that the team did not do enough to address the lack of outfield production and the shaky bullpen. The team is counting on folks returning from the injured list to serve as de facto acquisitions. I am scheduled to attend ten games in four cities over the last third of the season, so I guess we’ll see.
One of the running jokes (albeit a bit bitterly) is that the Dodgers have an uncanny ability to break pitchers. Is their seemingly higher than average tendency to see pitchers on the IL a product of the types of pitchers they target, an element of internal pitching philosophy and development, or just plain bad luck the last few years?
I do understand where the glass cannon joke comes from, but I think it’s a bit misplaced.
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The Dodgers prioritize getting pitchers with excellent stuff. Pitchers with excellent stuff tend to get injured more. Baseball is trying to make 30 Nolan Ryans, which is a current biological impossibility. Yes, there are overall trends in baseball where everybody is getting hurt and needing surgery. I think part of it is that we are reaching the limits of what the human body can do in both rotation and velocity. The first team to understand that there is room for a knuckleballer or someone who can be durable will go far.
To answer the question succinctly, the Dodgers have tended towards glass cannons, who “shockingly” happen to break.
Ohtani is up to three innings a game so far. Is the plan to build him up to longer outings or this far into the season, is it more likely the Dodgers limit his innings per start for the remainder of the season and build him back fully next spring?
Ohtani is essentially rehabbing during MLB games. The goal is to stretch him out so that he’s pitching full games by the end of the year. The team has previously employed a piggyback strategy, which it has publicly said is ending. I would expect Ohtani to pitch four to five innings for the next couple of starts before going forward with an eye to October. He had cramps in Tampa last week, which was alarming, but no one was having fun in Florida in August. There’s no playbook for what we are seeing. Unlike in Anaheim, there are actual stakes here.
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Which prospect are Dodgers fans most excited for that might debut this year or next?
Most of the cream of the team’s farm system is either already with the main club (Alex Freeland (IF), Dalton Rushing (C)), about to rejoin soon (Nick Frasso (P), Kyle Hurt (P)), or in low/high A (Jose de Paula (OF), Zyhir Hope (OF), Jackson Ferris (P) etc.)
Who is your favourite member of the team to watch right now?
The correct answer is Shohei Ohtani, because the man is literally doing things that have never been seen before on the diamond. Plus, he was omnipresent during the Tokyo Series, which I covered extensively as I was fortunate enough to go. He’s also a big goofball who has come out of his shell after leaving Anaheim.
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My personal favorite is no longer with the team and currently living his best life watching rodeos and concerts: Brent Honeywell. I have confidence in my own skin, but I don’t have “wear a turtleneck in 34C/98F humid weather” confidence.
If you want someone to watch for pure entertainment value, watch Alex Vesia. He’s a stalwart of the bullpen, but if you’re at the ballpark sitting by the bullpen, imagine if you gave your cat some Red Bull to drink (please don’t do that). Alex Vesia is that guy. During Gavin Stone’s complete game shutout in Chicago (AL) last year, I was fortunate enough to be sitting directly over the bullpen. There is no more supportive teammate than Vesia, but he wanted to pitch, so he was pacing the bullpen in the later innings like a racehorse that wanted to run.
Dodgers at any point in their history and drop them into this team at their rookie position and with their rookie year numbers, who would it be? (I’m particularly interested in this answer because my father started out as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan)
If I wanted to be cheeky, I’d say Todd Hollandsworth (1996) or Joc Pederson (2015) for the upgrade in left field on this year’s club.
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Jackie Robinson (1947) is the evergreen answer, not just for what he brought as a ballplayer but who he was as a man, especially with how things are going in the United States. Robinson is arguably the most important American sportsman of the 20th century and arguably one of the top three Americans of the 20th century. Baseball has seemed to do its level best to try to sanitize who he was, which is intolerable. Along those same lines, the league ignoring Larry Doby is arguably more unforgivable.
But if that answer is too political, I’d say a maverick who debuted in 1995 and opened the door to Japanese ballplayers playing in the U.S., Hideo Nomo. The Dodgers released a documentary about him 30 years later that is well worth your time. https://youtu.be/AE9X-RnZcyE?si=8AyRi1IyxIn1_ex9