Do the surging Dodgers really need Clayton Kershaw?
When Clayton Kershaw went on the disabled list with a herniated disc in his back, it was easy to write off the Dodgers’ season.
L.A. was six games back of the Giants in the National League West when Kershaw was shut down — the offense stunk and while the pitching staff wasn’t half bad around Kershaw — who boasted a 1.79 ERA to start the season — it didn’t look like the Dodgers were going to fare well without him.
A funny thing happened over the last two months, though -- the Dodgers took over first place, emphatically. As of Thursday, they hold a five-game lead over the Giants in the West with 23 games to play.
The logic doesn’t make much sense -- how did the Dodgers get better *without* arguably the best player in baseball?
Kershaw will be activated from the disabled list and pitch Friday in Miami -- it’s not as if the Dodgers would have passed on adding him to the active roster -- but what have we learned about his team with him out of commission?
And if something should go wrong and Kershaw winds up back on the DL, could the Dodgers still contend for a title?
Do the Dodgers really need Clayton Kershaw?
That depends on what you think teams need to succeed in 2016.
Let’s break down what’s changed for the Dodgers since we last saw the three-time Cy Young Award winner:
The biggest difference for the Dodgers’ has been the excellent play of Justin Turner, who has posted a slash line of .297/.346/.589 in the second half. Andrew Toles’ emergence has been critical as well -- he’s played in only 27 games, but he’s hitting nearly .400 with a .690 slugging percentage. It’s hard to see him keeping that clip up, but the Dodgers have prospered with him in the lineup.
It should go without saying that Kershaw doesn’t have any effect on the team’s hitting. But with or without the ace, the Dodgers will need this kind of offensive output to continue for the remainder of the season, and particularly in October.
Since the All-Star Game, Denard Span, who has averaged a whopping seven home runs a season in his nine-year career, is leading the team in slugging percentage at .441. Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and Brandon Belt have slugging percentages around .350. Belt, who was a first-time All-Star, is hitting .200 since he went to San Diego. As a team, in the second-half, the Giants have posted a slash line of .242/.312/.378. After posting a plus-5.3 offensive WAR in the first half of the season, they’re an abysmal negative-27.9 WAR in the second-half, third-worst in baseball.
The Giants' pitching has been close to its high standards -- 3.98 team ERA with a 4.23 FIP -- but there’s no way it can overcome the lack of any hitting.
Is it any surprise that with an offense like that the Giants dropped so precipitously in the standings? They’re still going to be a playoff team, in all likelihood, but their winning percentage has dropped 85 points since Kershaw went on the DL (.617 to .532.) The Dodgers’ winning percentage has only improved by 22 points in that time.
Of those 10 starters the Dodgers have used since Kershaw went on the DL, only one — the 20-year-old, Julio Urias — has posted a sub-4 ERA in five or more starts. The Dodgers don’t want to go into the playoffs with a 20-year-old ace, but without Kershaw, that’s what they’d be doing. The other three members of a playoff rotation would probably be Rich Hill (who hasn’t allowed a run in his two starts), Kenta Maeda (a respectable 3.62 ERA and 4.25 FIP since the ASG) and Ross Stripling (4.82 ERA in the second half) or the injured Scott Kazmir (5.27 ERA in the second half.)
The Dodgers are in a better place now compared to when Kershaw went on the DL -- but that doesn’t mean that he’s not an important part of the team’s quest to win the franchise a World Series for the first time since 1988. The regular-season is a long haul -- a macro game -- and while hitting is a massively important thing -- the Dodgers certainly have to prefer their current situation to their early-season form -- conventional wisdom still says that the most important thing come playoff time is lock-down starting pitching. And while Kershaw’s postseason form has been much maligned, every team in baseball history would want him wearing their uniform and toeing the rubber in a playoff series.
