Photo Credit: David Richard/USA TODAY
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2019 campaign came to an end, following a 7-3 loss to the Washington Nationals in the National League Division Series. The Wild Card-winning Nationals team managed to take the 106-win Dodgers to a game five winner-takes-all match up in which the National League’s top seed was dethroned.
The Dodgers jumped out to an early 3-0 lead against Nationals starting pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, and held their lead until the eighth inning when Clayton Kershaw surrendered back-to-back home runs to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto. Later on in the game, Joe Kelly was called on to pitch in both the ninth and tenth innings, allowing a no outs, loaded bases situation in the tenth inning. The batter in the situation, Howie Kendrick, went on to launch an extra-inning grand slam to center field off of Kelly, the first ever hit in Division Series history. These late-inning pitching faults have Dodgers manager, Dave Roberts, under heavy fire from fans and analysts. While some of the decision-making, or lack thereof, from Roberts was questionable to almost everyone who tuned into the postseason match up, to consider firing Roberts after this game is plain illogical.
Dave Roberts has led the Dodgers to an overall 393-256 (.606) regular season record since taking the reigns as Dodgers manager in 2016, averaging 98.25 wins per season. By wins, no team in baseball has been more successful than the Dodgers have since 2016. Alongside the wins, the Dodgers have collected four consecutive division titles and two National League pennants with Dave Roberts as manager. It’s impossible to deny that Dave Roberts’ Dodgers have been a highly successful baseball club since his taking over.
However, Wednesday night’s elimination game against the Nationals was without a doubt a messy managerial game down the stretch for the Dodgers. Although having only two hits as a team from the third inning on doesn’t exactly bode well for a team’s likeliness to win, there were a few no-changes with pitching that were blatantly putting the Dodgers in a bad spot. For example, following Anthony Rendon’s lead-off solo home run in the eighth, it was an obvious head-scratching decision not to have had lefty specialist, Adam Kolarek up and ready to face Juan Soto, who hit the game-tying home run off of the mismanaged Clayton Kershaw. Soto finished the series 0 for 3 with a pair of strikeouts at the hands of Kolarek.
It’s fine to be upset with the outcome of this record-setting 2019 season in L.A. It’s fine to be upset with the Dave Roberts and the decisions he made at the end of game five this season. But, pairing those two things together and believing the right move would be to part ways with Roberts this winter, rather than retooling and figuring out how to win it all in 2020, simply doesn’t make sense. Dave Roberts will (hopefully) continue to be the Dodgers skipper in the 2020 season.