With little to fix the Dodgers do little

Phil Gurnee ♦ December 12, 2017 ♦ 1 Comment

Headed into day three of the winter meetings the Dodgers have done nothing to enhance the team that got within one game of being the 2017 World Champions but we did learn a few things.

We learned once again that Houston feasted on Yu Darvish because he was tipping his pitches but Dave Roberts felt it was more about execution.  We could moan a bit about using a pitcher that management kind of knew was tipping his pitches but that is now history so what would be the point?

Today, the Dodgers lost free agent Brandon Morrow to the Cubs. Morrow was one of the many feel-good stories from the 2017 Dodgers and while I don’t hope his arm problems come back, I do hope that he doesn’t hurt the Dodgers in the 2018 postseason while pitching for the Cubs.  Then again maybe he can talk Joe Maddon into using him in the postseason after he had pitched in consecutive games and had nothing left, thus allowing the Dodgers to pound him as Houston pounded him in game five.

The Dodgers said they don’t have any holes, and they are right. They don’t. I speculated on how much fun it would be to have Stanton as a Dodger but they sure didn’t need him.

They will need to replace Brandon Morrow and that will happen.

What else can they do?

Every spot on the team is taken except left field.   Left Field will be an open competition between Toles/Pederson/Verdugo unless Adrian Gonzalez takes some David Ortiz medicinals and proves he can play 1st base on a regular basis in which case the three mentioned will take a back seat to Mr. Bellinger.

Toles was the starting left fielder in 2017 before he got hurt.

Pederson was the starting center fielder in 2017 until he lost the job late in the season to Chris Taylor.

Alex Verdugo is the best positional prospect in the Dodger farm system. Not really, we all know that is Keibert Ruiz but we will pander to those who still think otherwise.

Left field could use an upgrade, but I expect the Dodgers to run with what they have.

Starting pitching seems to run deep.

Kershaw, Rich Hill, Wood, Kenta Maeda, Ryu, McCarthy, Buehler, Stewart, Kazmir.

Yeah, yeah, yeah – I can see a hole. About the size of Yu Darvish. Maybe Walker Texas Ranger Buehler can fill it. They say he’s one of the top three pitching prospects in all of baseball. 

Fact is, the team is 95% set for 2017.  Might as well take a nap and wake up on March 1st.