Why the Dodgers’ Plans Shouldn’t Change Despite Aggressive Push From Padres

Photo Credit: USA Today

The San Diego Padres have stolen the off-season show by making aggressive moves to close out December. However, despite all the buzz being made in San Diego, the Dodgers still have the upper hand.

The Padres showed that they are going all in on the 2021 season and beyond with the acquisitions of Blake Snell, Yu Darvish and Ha-Seong Kim, all in a matter of 24 hours.

With an already impressive bunch of players returning for 2021 such as Manny Machado, Eric Hosmer, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake Cronenworth, the Padres no doubt look impressive on paper. However, even after those flurry of moves within the slow off-season we’ve seen, the Dodgers are still ranked number one according to MLB.com’s Power Rankings entering 2021.

The Dodgers deserve it as well due to the fact that even if they decide to move on from Justin Turner and Kike Hernandez, they have the depth to plug in multiple pieces without making a huge splash in the free agent market.

Not to mention that they still have one of the best players in the National League (and arguably all of baseball) in Mookie Betts, and also have so many home-grown talents that have all been hits for the team, including Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Edwin Rios and Gavin Lux to name a few. They also have a plethora of starting pitchers that could fill in some of holes of the rotation, such as Dustin May, Julio Urias, Tony Gonsolin and Mitch White.

The only starters that are locked into the rotation would be Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw, and possibly David Price should he pitch in the 2021 season (he opted out last season due to concerns of COVID-19).

They also have a stacked farm system that could be used to swing a big trade if they wanted to, one that should still be a top-ranked system.

While this should have been included in the rotation options, Josiah Gray is the other option the Dodgers could go to as he’s knocking on the door for a call-up to the Major Leagues.

An article from MiLB.com that featured the state of the farm system had an interview with Dodgers director of player of development, Will Rhymes, in which he stated “I think if you look at the area where we have a tremendous opportunity over the next couple years, it’s with starting pitching prospects and our ability to develop something that’s really rare to actually develop starting pitching and quantity of it.”

This is all being said while a memory was triggered in my head about the Padres: didn’t they go “all in” in 2015?

That was the season in which we saw a trade between the Dodgers and Padres that sent Matt Kemp and Tim Federowicz to San Diego in exchange for Yasmani Grandal, Joe Wieland, and Zach Eflin. It was also the year that the Padres acquired Wil Myers and Justin Upton from the Rays and Braves. While most of the package the Braves got has proven to be subpar, they did get one diamond in the rough: Max Fried. He made his name known in 2020.

The Padres’ final moves of the 2015 season were essentially the cherries on top of their stacked roster in which they signed James Shields and acquired Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr. from the Braves.

Now, of course things have definitely changed since 2015. The Padres were able to flip Shields for Tatis, Jr. and flex some financial muscle of their own by signing Machado and Hosmer. But, this was just to show that we’ve seen the Padres go “all in” before and it proved to be unsuccessful.

The only thing good for them was that they were able to step back quickly and re-evaluate their team. So while much of the media praises the Padres moves and gushes over the possibility of what could be in the near future, Dodgers fans should remember that the Dodgers have a plan in place and these recent moves shouldn’t force them to do anything they would regret.

Jacob Cisneros is a writer for Dodgers-LowDown. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @_JacobCisneros.