Dodgers: Picking Our Regular Season Award Winners
The Dodgers are headed to the postseason thanks to a sparkling 43-17 record. Los Angeles came to play in 2020, and they showed it by dominating the west. Before we go into the playoffs though, we want to virtually hand out some of our award winners from the regular season.
Keep in mind, these are our picks for the top performers of the year. After watching all 60 Dodgers games in 2020, we feel like these are reasonable choices. If you see something you disagree with, let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!
Team MVP
It’s almost too easy to pick Mookie Betts for the Dodgers MVP. Betts is already in the running for the NL MVP, so how could you not? ESPN has Mookie Betts leading all of baseball with a 3.4 WAR, even ahead of the Indians’ Shane Bieber. He slugged 16 homeruns and finished with a final slash line of .292/.366/.562 across 55 games. In my opinion, worth every penny already.
Best Pitcher
You could make arguments that the strides Clayton Kershaw took this year would have him back near the top of the Dodgers starters. Walker Buehler probably could’ve gotten here if he had stayed healthy the entire year as well. But instead, it’s Tony Gonsolin that shined the brightest in 2020. He led all starters on the team in WAR, FIP, ERA, and WHIP. Gonsolin struck out 46 batters and issued just 7 walks in a year where the team didn’t have a designated role for him to start with.
Biggest Surprise
Good surprise are always welcomed when talking about the Dodgers season. Their biggest surprise was probably AJ Pollock, who came off of a disappointing year to absolutely crush the ball in 2020. Pollock also health with plenty of off-field issues en route to a great season, including the early birth of his daughter and contracting COVID-19. Against all odds, he came in and put up some of the best numbers of his career. We also got this really cool montage video because of him.
Best Opener
2020 was the year of the openers for the Dodgers, as Dave Roberts started to toy with the idea of throwing relievers out to start a game. One of the best had to be Brusdar Graterol, who got to start twice this year. Maybe the results weren’t there, but Graterol did his job against the Padres. He came in and shut down their first three batters to open a very important game in late September. Plus, he’s just so fun to watch.
Best Smile
The Dodgers have a few guys on the team with award-winning smiles. Corey Seager is one that comes to mind, especially given how serious he is on the field. But how can you possibly beat Mookie Betts smiling in a Dodgers uniform? You can’t. So he wins.
Best Shoes
The Dodgers shoe game really came to life on the field in 2020. Mookie rocked some of the coolest Jordan cleats you will ever see early in the season that had everyone buzzing. Then Justin Turner showed up wearing Kobe Bryant cleats that had all of Los Angeles hyped, on the same day the Lakers headed to the NBA Finals. But for me, it was Walker Buehler’s custom Jordan 1’s that really took it to the next level.
Disappointments
We say this with all of the love and adoration that we possibly could. When we say the biggest disappointments, we know that this guy is capable of so much in his big league career. Gavin Lux got a slow start to 2020 and never really caught up. The Dodgers kept him back at the alternate site, and he probably needed more time to get reps. Lux finished up the year .596 OPS, and that’s all you need to know about how his year went. The good news is that there is still so much potential, and the only way to go from here is up.
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While Lux certainly struggled at the plate and even in the field, he’s a youngster who the Dodgers hope will reach his potential sooner than later. So to say he is the biggest dissappointment is a stretch. This catagory has Max Muncy’s name written all over it. We’ve seen what he can do the last couple of season, enough that the team gave him a nice contract deal. But, other than his HR total, he looked completely lost at the plate. For a guy who has a great understanding of the strike zone, he seemed to take too many good pitches putting him in a hole in way too many at bats. Nothing looked good for him at the plate this season. And his fielding seemed to be somewhat questionable this time around as well. Hope he come out of his funk during the playoffs as his bat is needed.