Survey Says: One Loss Makes a Big Difference
The Dodgers are six games into a 2024 season. Fans’ satisfaction with the direction of the team following a $1.3 billion offseason spending spree certainly hasn’t worn off entirely. But some grumblings of dissatisfaction are poking through the cracks of a 4-2 club.
Some aspects are inspiring more grumbling than others.
Front office
Nine out of 10 fans approve of the front office. Pretty good, right?
Sure, but consider that in the previous poll that 90.4 percent approval rating was up to 96.3 percent. Maybe it’s simply harder to see the holes in a team that hasn’t played a game that counts than a team that has played two (polls were conducted after the Dodgers went 1-1 against the San Diego Padres in South Korea.
Some fans were still on the fence about Mookie Betts’ viability as an everyday shortstop.
Position players
The Dodgers erupted for 11 runs in their second game of the season. That would’ve been enough for a win, if Yoshinobu Yamamoto hadn’t gotten rocked in his only inning of work in his major league debut.
Even besides the shortstop outlook, it turns out there were plenty of nits to pick. The drop in approval for position players was steeper than any other area of the team — from 88.6% to 66.6%.
Starting pitching
There’s no way around it: some fans were simply ready to jump off the Yoshinobu Yamamoto bandwagon after one game. Approval for this group fell from 87% to 72.% in the span of three weeks.
Bullpen
Approval for the relief pitchers “only” fell by 10 percent, which might have been a direct result of the 10 runs they allowed to the Padres in Game 2.
Or not.
Photo Credit: Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports
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some people only look for the negatives. front office did a great job.
There are cracks, for sure. The defense is a major weakness. But, IMHO, the worst part of this early season is the bottom half of the lineup – Outman, Lux, Rojas, Taylor, Kike, Barnes. Ironically, they are the best defenders, but their offensive output is abysmal. It is still early, plenty of time to turn it around. But you can’t base your whole season on 3-4 guys, even 6. Big offensive holes will kill us in the playoffs. And you have Lux in there “for his offense”, which is yet to be found. If this continues, it makes more sense to start Rojas at short and move Mookie back to second.
On the other hand, the starters look great so far, and three guys who would be aces on any team will be coming back later this year. A complete turnaround from last year. But with pitching like this, it is critical to back it up with good defense.
The opinion of an arm-chair manager.
The Dodgers are 5-2 so far with a .714 winning percentage. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t care how many big stars you sign they are still going to lose some games.
So many fans are totally unrealistic. Every player will have slumps and be hot at times. I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen so far.
I really don’t like “bullpen” games. That levels the playing field with the Dodger opposition. The talk last night was how well Yarbrough pitched and ate up innings. I’m not so sure that giving up four runs in four innings is good pitching. Plan ahead so “bullpen” games are eliminated.