What now?
With the season-ending injury to Corey Seager and the comments by the Dodgers that they expect to use internal options how will the Dodgers look for the rest of the year?
The Dodgers had two options to replace Seager, Chris Taylor or Kiké Hernandez. Taylor was the starting center fielder but the Dodger opted to remove Taylor from center field and install him as the everyday shortstop. Center field now looks like it will be manned by Kiké and Joc. One week ago that seemed absurd but Joc is now the hottest hitting Dodger and that platoon looks as good as I expected the left field platoon of Kiké/Joc to be before Matt Kemp joined the party.
Speaking of Matt Kemp the Dodgers are quite lucky he decided to get in baseball shape because now they need him more than ever. Alex Verdugo will now take over the Joc role as his caddy. Verdugo has a chance now to prove what his high prospect status was all about. He showed off his arm yesterday but airmailing a throw home is not what we are used to from right field. The strength is there, but is the accuracy? He also looked a bit out of touch in RF on one ball. If Matt Kemp had flailed at that ball as Verdugo did the anti-Kemps would still be mocking him today.
Eventually, Justin Turner (hopefully two weeks) will return to 3rd base. How much he will hit like Justin Turner remains to be seen, as wrist injuries could be troublesome for a while.
Eventually, Yasiel Puig will return to right field. Puig needs to get going. For a while, he was hitting the ball hard into hard luck, but before his recent injury, he had simply stopped hitting.
Eventually, Logan Forsythe will return to second base. And that might be the biggest problem with all this switching around. Kiké can no longer play second since he’s now in CF against LHP. The Dodgers have no viable minor league prospects to take his spot. Logan was not very good last year until late in the season. They attributed that to early season injuries. He has been horrible so far this year, and maybe once again that is attributable to injuries. Logan Forsythe will need to hit when he comes back. Chase has been outstanding with the bat, but his glove now looks like that of an old second baseman. Eventually, his bat will too. The other Dodger option for second base if Logan fizzles out is Austin Barnes who has gotten a few starts there lately. Farmer could become the backup catcher to Grandal but the Dodgers have barely (ever) used him at catcher so far.
The Dodgers can mix and match with the best of them, but Corey Seager was a MVP type of talent and you don’t replace that with mix and matches. The Dodgers have plugged the holes, but will they hold back the damn? Only if they don’t get any new holes.
Have I mentioned how bad the bullpen seems to be right now?
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Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 
Yesterday Zaidi said it will be about three more weeks until we see Turner, Puig and Forsythe.
Handling things internally is all the team really has to talk about immediately.
As a long range plan for the remainder of the season, not so much.
The amount the Dodgers has been spending for players on the field has been declining every year. Today the team is pretty close to the MLB average in this regard.
The team had intimate knowledge of Seager’s health since he first reported the elbow discomfort in August of 2017. Has the FO not had in place a Plan B in the event Seager blew out his elbow? It would be surprising if they have not considered this possibility.
The solution to this problem we see at the end of the nose is Machado.
The Luxury Tax applies to the amount over the limit, so if you just over the limit, it is not so expensive. the rules as they pertain to penalizing draft pick positions, et al is another wrinkle that should not be ignored though.
The opportunity cost of acquiring Machado could be worth it though if he can be traded for and then signed to a long term deal. This is something that I would like to see happen.
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