Dodgers win at games and roster building

Phil Gurnee ♦ August 18, 2017 ♦ 1 Comment

Tonight the Dodgers won again, this time with Adrian Gonzalez playing for the first time since June. I don’t think enough is being made about how useful a healthy Gonzalez can help this team. Probably because it appears they don’t need any help in winning, but winning in the summer isn’t the same as winning in October.

The front office must agree as they continue to tinker with the team, and in an effort to increase their odds this October they and went out and acquired the best human being in baseball, Curtis Granderson. If you follow ESPN columnist Mike Petriello you know that he has been banging the drum for someone to acquire Granderson, so the Dodgers finally obliged and added him to the roster tonight.

Top hitters since May 1 (minimum 294 plate appearances), by wRC+
176 — Jose Altuve / Joey Votto
169 — George Springer 
166 — Marwin Gonzalez
164 — Giancarlo Stanton 
162 — Aaron Judge 
159 — Paul Goldschmidt / Justin Smoak
157 — Anthony Rendon
153 — JD Martinez
148 — Granderson / Kris Bryant / Eric Hosmer / Cody Bellinger

There’s Granderson, tied over the past 3 1/2 months with last year’s NL Most Valuable Player Award winner, a World Series champ finally tapping into his power, and the clear front-runner for the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year Award. He’s ahead of Corey Seager and Daniel Murphy; he’s ahead of Anthony Rizzo and Mike Moustakas.

The roster was already complicated with the addition of Adrian Gonzalez and was going to be a little more complicated when Andre Ethier joins the team on Sept 1st, but now it is really complicated.

Or is it?

Seems clear, that Curtis Granderson should play right now instead of Joc Pederson. The Dodger only weak spot right now is CF, and that was probably going to result in Joc sitting so either Cody or Chris Taylor would play CF when Adrian was playing 1st. Curtis Granderson will join the outfield, I don’t know if he will play CF or LF but I doubt he is insurance as has been suggested.

He’s too good to simply be insurance.

The Dodgers just made their starting lineup better, and their bench better.  I feel bad for Joc but he should have played better.  His play in CF has been shall we say less than inspiring.  Hopefully, the new batting stance will help him with the hitting tool, but I don’t think they can do much about his fielding tool.  Seems strange, but in April/May of 2015 I thought he was playing a great CF, but he already seems to have lost a step and the routes just don’t seem good enough these days.

Update 08/19/17 – Looks like Joc is being sent to AAA for a few weeks.