The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (35 page)

Schumaker wasn’t wrong. It was obvious Ramirez was playing hurt or with hurt feelings, and he just wasn’t the same guy he had been the year before. Through the first two months of the 2014 season, Ramirez’s on-base plus slugging was .772, some 270 points lower than his 2013 output. An unhappy Ramirez had hit .240 in his final two seasons with the Marlins. Some wondered if his good mood during 2013 was just an act, and if his Miami malaise was who he really was.

On June 3, a year to the day after his call-up, Puig was named the
National League’s Player of the Month. During the month of May, he had led the league in batting average, home runs, RBI, on-base percentage, and slugging. Dee Gordon excelled, too. Though he wasn’t even expected to make the opening day roster when he first showed up to spring training, Gordon seized the opportunity when the job became open and flourished. Batting leadoff, he posted a .360 on-base percentage during the first six weeks of the season and terrorized opposing pitchers on the base paths. He was named to the NL all-star team and would finish the season with a major-league-leading sixty-four stolen bases and twelve triples. Puig was named to his first all-star team, too. He had a star shaved into the side of his head to mark the occasion.

The day after Puig won player of the month, the Dodgers trailed the Giants in the NL West by eight and a half games, despite their rotation and their lineup being better than San Francisco’s. Mattingly was angry. “I’m sick of talking about individual players,” he said before the game. “It seems like we keep talking about one guy or two guys instead of how we can win the game as a team. Last year when we got rolling it felt like we had a true team focus. Like we were a collective group.”

He continued: “The focus needs to just be on winning, and we haven’t felt that. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but the feeling just isn’t here,” he said. “I want guys to have a great season. I tell them that. There’s nothing wrong or selfish about wanting to have a great season because it helps everyone. Just take a walk. Swing at strikes. No matter who gets the game-winning hit it doesn’t matter.”

When asked for his thoughts on why the Dodgers had already fallen so far behind the Giants, Mattingly was blunt: “It’s just being basically shitty,” he said. “We’re just not that good.”

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With Kemp moved to left, Mattingly inserted Ethier into center field and hoped for the best. But Ethier didn’t belong there, either. And after a particularly rough day in the field in Detroit, Mattingly fired Ethier from the position as well. The coaching staff wanted the front office to call up Joc Pederson, the organization’s top prospect, to play center.
Pederson was not only the best defensive center fielder in the Dodgers’ organization, he was also tearing through Triple-A. In 2014, the twenty-two-year-old lefty would become the first player in the Pacific Coast League in eighty years to hit thirty home runs and steal thirty bases.

But Pederson still struck out too much. Also, there was a general sense among the Dodgers’ coaching staff that Colletti remained terrified of youth even though Puig had helped save their season the year before. Mattingly had tried to force the front office into calling Pederson up by starting the club’s fifth outfielder, Scott Van Slyke, in center even though he wasn’t used to the position, either. The coaching staff thought about playing Puig in center, too, but they worried that if they made him captain of the outfield he would run over teammates. They were especially concerned for the survival of Gordon, who weighed ninety pounds less than Puig. But when the front office stalled in calling up Pederson, Mattingly moved Puig to center, Kemp to right, and Crawford back to left.

Then, some luck.

The Giants went into free fall, thanks to a couple of key injuries and some atrocious play. The Dodgers caught them by mid-July and went into the all-star break with the best record in the National League.
“It doesn’t feel that way, though, does it?” Stan Kasten said of his team’s place at the top of the NL at the time. He was right. While the 2013 team had rolled off a 42-8 stretch of baseball where they had seemed invincible, this club had quietly worked its way to the top, never losing more than three games in a row but never winning more than three in a row, either. Kemp was still unhappy, and Dave Stewart said his client would prefer to be traded to a team that played him in center. But Kemp eventually settled into his new position, and began mashing the ball as he did before his injuries. In the sixty-four games after the all-star break, Kemp hit .309 with an on-base percentage of .365 and slugging clip of .606. His seventeen home runs over that span would have put him on pace for forty-three over a full season—four
more than he had hit during his runner-up MVP campaign in 2011. “He would never admit it, but I think he’s comfortable in right,” said one teammate.

But to recapture his form at the plate Kemp had to swallow his pride. During the first half of the season, he was still having trouble driving the ball with any consistency because of the bad habits he had developed to overcompensate for his injuries. So when the Dodgers returned from the all-star break with a series in St. Louis on July 18, Kemp went to the team’s hitting coaches and asked for help. Mark McGwire and John Valentin had noticed that back when Kemp was one of the most feared hitters in the National League his batting stance was much more upright. His leaning over the plate made it difficult for him to hit inside pitches, and also forced him to yank his elbow back farther than optimal when he swung, which sapped his power. McGwire and Valentin urged him to widen the distance between his feet and change the line from his head to his feet from eleven o’clock to five o’clock back to 12/6. It worked. In a way, Kemp looked as if he had unclenched his stance; his more relaxed approach helped him wait on the ball, which put him in a better position to drive it. On August 4, Kemp was named the National League’s player of the week. On August 6, he hit his sixth home run in nine games.

When Kemp’s power returned his good mood followed close behind. Gone was the brooding outfielder who announced he would rather play every day for a last-place team than sit on the bench for a championship contender. After two-plus years of ups and downs, Kemp was back on track at the plate and in the clubhouse. He was hitting even better than Puig, and seemed much more equipped emotionally to lead the Dodgers in October.

Kemp and Puig were never close, and their relationship became further strained in September during a game in Colorado. With Kemp on deck and Puig on first, Adrian Gonzalez singled to right and Puig trotted to second. Kemp then struck out. Puig came home a batter later on a Hanley Ramirez double. As Puig high-fived his teammates
after scoring the run, Kemp chased him the length of the dugout and screamed at him. After being separated by Mattingly, an enraged Kemp stormed down the tunnel toward the clubhouse. It was an odd time for a quarrel. The Dodgers were in the middle of an eight-run inning, and would go on to win the game 11–3. Afterward, both Kemp and Puig declined to talk about what led to the incident, but the best explanation seemed to be that Kemp was angry that Puig, one of the team’s fastest runners, had failed to go from first to third on Gonzalez’s hit. Ironically, it was the same thing Puig had screamed at Gonzalez for the year before.

When asked about his relationship with Kemp months later, Puig told CBS Sports,
“He stated he’s the best outfielder in the league. I think there are better outfielders.”

But at the time, Mattingly downplayed the incident. “Oh, just talking in the dugout, same old things,” said Mattingly. “We’re like the ’72 A’s.” He may have been trying to gloss over what happened, but in doing so Mattingly compared his squad to a club whose members hated each other so much that one locker room fight led to its starting catcher suffering a crushed disk in his neck.

Forty-eight hours later, Puig was involved in another altercation with his teammates. After the Denver series, the Dodgers flew to Chicago to play the Cubs. The club opted to do its annual rookie hazing on the trip. Veterans wanted rookies to come to the front of the bus to sing on the way from O’Hare to their downtown hotel, but Puig and others were playing dominoes, blocking the aisle. When some players asked to stop for pizza, the rest told the driver to continue to the hotel and circle back for the guys getting food. But Puig had opened the door to the luggage bay on the bus so he could retrieve his bag, and the driver couldn’t move until the door was shut. Greinke got out and threw Puig’s bag into the street. Puig responded by pushing Greinke, but J. P. Howell intervened to stop Puig.

The Dodgers had a more pressing issue than Puig not getting along with his teammates, however: their bullpen was melting down. Going
into the 2014 season, Colletti had filled the Dodgers bullpen with expensive former closers way past their prime. He inked former Indians closer Chris Perez to a multimillion-dollar deal, and re-signed Brian Wilson to a one-year, $10 million contract for 2014 with a $9.5 million player option for 2015. At first blush the Wilson deal was seen as a steal. Since he had pitched so well for the Dodgers in September and October 2013, the club had hoped it could count on Wilson to set up for Jansen in 2014 as well. But he wasn’t the same player. Wilson gave up eight earned runs in his first six innings in 2014, and when Mattingly demoted him from the eighth-inning job, he pouted. Some of his teammates believed he threw his fastball in the mid-80s in protest and that he wouldn’t bother throwing hard and risking injury until the 2015 season, when he was pitching for another contract. Wilson’s kooky clubhouse behavior hadn’t bugged teammates as much the year before when he dominated on the mound. But now that he struggled, his oddball persona started to grate. He would finish the season with a 4.66 ERA and minimal life on his fastball.

Chris Perez was just as ineffective, striking out only thirty-nine batters against twenty-five walks and posting a 4.27 ERA. But unlike Wilson, who had pitched brilliantly the year before, Perez’s numbers were no surprise: they were almost identical to what he did in his final year in Cleveland. Because they were veterans, Perez and Wilson could not be demoted, and they were owed too much money to cut. As if that weren’t bad enough, the bullpen’s hardest thrower, Chris Withrow, suffered a season-ending injury early in the year, which left J. P. Howell and Jansen as the club’s only two reliable relievers. The Dodgers’ starting rotation would be brilliant in 2014, notching a 3.20 ERA—second-best in baseball. But their relief core posted a 3.80 ERA, which was twenty-second out of thirty teams. With stellar starting pitching but poor defense and relief pitching, the 2014 Dodgers roster seemed built to cannibalize itself. What good was getting out to a lead if you couldn’t protect it?

The club’s poorly constructed roster didn’t seem to matter much
during the regular season, however, since talent usually wins out over the course of 162 games. The Dodgers streaked past the Giants in September and captured their second-straight NL West crown by six games. Despite the club not being nearly as exciting as it was the season before, the Dodgers’ ninety-four wins were two better than what they posted during their 2013 campaign.

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But as the club was soon reminded, playoff baseball is a different game altogether. In October the best offense is often defense. Pitchers throw harder and fielders tighten screws. Scoring runs becomes much more difficult. The best way to survive and advance is to give up as few runs as possible.

The Dodgers weren’t built that way. With the exception of Adrian Gonzalez at first and Juan Uribe at third, every Dodger fielder was below average, which made it unlikely that the club’s pitchers would be bailed out by an incredible play that prevented runs from scoring. (Puig was an above-average right fielder, but he was playing out of position in center.) Compounding that problem: Dodger starting pitchers didn’t have the luxury of just getting through five scoreless frames and then turning the ball over to the bullpen to close out the game—the formula the Kansas City Royals used to make an improbable run to the World Series—because their relief corps was such a mess. J. P. Howell had been excellent for the Dodgers for the first five months of the season, but he broke down in September. He gave up just six earned runs in his first forty-six innings of 2014. In his final three innings before the playoffs began he gave up seven.

Clayton Kershaw was aware of the Dodgers’ bullpen struggles when he took the mound in Game 1 of the NLDS. The Dodgers drew the Cardinals in the first round, giving them a chance to avenge their 2013 exit. On the surface, they appeared to have more of an advantage. Matt Kemp was healthy. Michael Wacha—the St. Louis pitcher who shut them out twice in the 2013 NLCS—was not. And the Dodgers had home-field advantage in a short series, so Kershaw and Greinke could
each pitch perhaps twice. Los Angeles was experiencing an unforgiving October heat wave, and when Game 1 started it was ninety-six degrees. Dodger Stadium is a pitchers’ park except on hot days before sunset, when the ball flies off the bat much farther than usual. The Cardinals’ seldom-used outfielder Randal Grichuk took advantage of the conditions and clubbed a first-inning home run off Kershaw just inside the left-field foul pole. Kershaw retired the next sixteen batters in order before giving up another solo home run to Matt Carpenter. But the Dodgers were cruising. They scored six runs to knock Adam Wainwright out of the game in the fifth, and Kershaw took a 6–2 lead into the seventh.

That should have been more than enough. Matt Holliday started the Cardinals’ seventh inning innocently enough with a single to center. Jhonny Peralta then singled Holliday to second. Yadier Molina singled on the first pitch he saw to load the bases for Matt Adams, who then singled Holliday home. With the bases loaded and no out, Kershaw struck out Pete Kozma on three pitches. But Jon Jay singled in Peralta to cut the Dodgers’ lead to 6–4. The Cardinals’ subbed talented rookie Oscar Taveras in as a pinch hitter, and Kershaw struck him out on three pitches, too. Then, Matt Carpenter stepped into the box.