2021 SEASON

I'm surprised as well. Maybe they're willing to pay the tax penalty for this year. Right now with this Bauer signing they'll pay around $7 million in tax penalties. I think Price is on his way elsewhere. I heard they were looking for a trade partner for him. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved money like Jansen and Price and attached someone like Lux to the deal. Would love to have JT back but I've also heard they've inquired on Jose Ramirez of the Indians too.

I wasn’t a big fan of Price in the first place, although I know he was a “requirement” of the Mookie acquisition.

That’s some pretty insane numbers for a one year wonder that pitched in a fairly mediocre division for most, if not all of his starts in 2020. The Reds didn’t make it out of the first round of playoffs.

I’m all for dumping Price and Jansen and maybe one top prospect if we can get someone decent in return and not have to eat the bulk of those contracts.

Still calling for a re and maybe threepeat. These guys are good!

GO DODGERS!!!

I don't know what Jansen can do now with his spent arm.  He might be the odd man out now that Knebel is our new closer.  I think Justin will still be our 3Bman unless we can deal for one with Jansen and/or Price.  What we really need is some righty power and a utility player to replace Kike.  We do have Barnes and Taylor but a trifecta would make a great difference.  DJ Peters is a possibility but he Ks way too much.  

We're in for a thrilling race this year with the Padres. They bolstered  their rotation by signing Darvish and Snell, but so did we by signing Bauer. Our offense is still better so we'll hold off the hard charging Padres and we'll be following them as closely as our boys in blue.


Last month, after the Padres acquired Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, and Ha-seong Kim -- but before they'd traded for Joe Musgrove, or the Dodgers added Trevor Bauer, or the Rockies dealt away Nolan Arenado for little return -- FanGraphs' Dan Szymborski ran his ZiPS projection system and came away with dual 98-64 projections for the two behemoths out West, noting at the time that "this is the best divisional race ZiPS has ever projected, going on two decades of prognostications."




Best ever? Before those extra moves? Consider us intrigued.

We haven't seen the updated numbers yet, which would now include Musgrove, Bauer and a weakened Colorado team that will face the Padres and Dodgers a combined 38 times, but we'd guess they're better. Maybe "pair of 100-win teams" better, even. Maybe it doesn't matter; "100" sounds nice, but it's not really functionally different from 99.

But what we do know is this: The NL West has, at worst, two of the three best teams in baseball, and they can't both win the division. Since it's likely we're not going to have an expanded postseason in 2021, there's a far greater emphasis on getting to first place and avoiding that one-game Wild Card Game. Getting first place matters a lot. There's two great teams looking to get it. You can see where this is going. We're not going to decide today who is going to actually win the West, though we're definitely circling "Padres at Dodgers, Sept. 28 through 30" in the next-to-last series of the year on our schedule.

We're more interested in this: Could this be the greatest 1-2 divisional race, even further back than Szymborski alluded to? We'll have to use outcomes, not projections, but let's say these two teams play as well as they're expected to. What would happen if a 101-win Dodger team beats out a 100-win Padre team, or vice-versa? Is only the outcome important, or what happens along the way?

How ... do you even measure that?

Bauer, Dodgers agree to deal
Feb 5, 2021 · 4:27
Bauer, Dodgers agree to deal
We can't, first, overstate the value of winning the division, waiting at home and resting your arms, as opposed to coming in second. It's not that a Wild Card team can't or doesn't ever win the World Series; the Nationals did it as recently as 2019. It's just that it's a lot harder. Since the Wild Card was first introduced in 1995 (it was a single team per league through 2011, then two from 2012-'19), there have been 66 Wild Card teams prior to 2020. Just seven have won the World Series. There's a great deal of value in avoiding that one-game coin flip, and the likelihood of that playoff system as compared to the 2020 expanded field might have motivated the Dodgers to keep adding to a great team in the first place.

They might not be done, either. They still don't really have a third baseman. Maybe that's the return of long-time star Justin Turner, still a free agent. Maybe that's a trade of Dustin May or Tony Gonsolin for Matt Chapman, or someone like him. Regardless: They'll be great if they don't make a move, and great if they do. So will the Padres. It's going to be an incredibly entertaining race. What might it look like, historically?

Let's begin here. There have been 10 teams in Major League history to win 100 games and not finish in first. That would seem to be a decent starting point.

2018 Yankees (100-62, 8 games behind Red Sox)
2001 A's (102-60, 14 games behind Mariners)
1993 Giants (103-59, 1 game behind Braves)
1980 Orioles (100-62, 3 games behind Yankees)
1962 Dodgers* (102-63, 1 game behind Giants)
1961 Tigers (101-61, 8 games behind Yankees)
1954 Yankees (103-51, 8 games behind Indians)
1942 Dodgers (104-50, 2 games behind Cardinals)
1915 Tigers (100-54, 1 game behind Red Sox)
1909 Cubs (104-49, 6 games behind Pirates)

(*The 1962 Dodgers and Giants each finished tied at 101-61. Under the rules of the time, they played a best-of-three tiebreaker, won by the Giants in three games.)

"Being tied with 101 wins after 162 games, requiring a playoff" as those '62 Giants and Dodgers were, seems like a pretty spectacular pennant race. But do all of these really count as exciting races? For example: The 2001 A's and Mariners were both excellent. But finishing 14 games out, as the A's did, hardly seems like an exciting race. At the beginning of August, when they were 20 games out, it wasn't even a race at all.

Maybe we need to look at something more specific to 'great races.' Let's look only at races where multiple teams in contention with one another had a .600 winning percentage, which is a 97-win pace over 162 games and 92 wins over the old 154-game schedule. Dating back to 1945, there were 27 such races, and we'll knock out the five that ended up being decided by more than five games. We're left with 22 great races.

But that's just end of the season. We're greedy. We want excitement for six months, because neither the Padres nor Dodgers are out-of-nowhere teams; they're each expected to be great from start to end. Surely there must be extra credit given for a great race between great teams that plays out over the entire season. Right?

To that end, let's sort those races by how many of their games they ended within five games of one another. That is, the 2001 A's and Mariners were within 5 games of each other at the end of only 10 games -- all coming to start the season -- which isn't much of a race. (Seattle got up to a 10-game lead on April 25 and spent every day the rest of the season with a double-digit lead.) The 1962 Dodgers and Giants spent 160 games no further than five games apart, which is incredible.

Basically, we're not looking for this:


We are looking for this:


So we looked through each of those races to find the ones that were the closest all year long. That excluded some of history's best comebacks, like that '93 Braves/Giants race (San Francisco blew a 10-game lead) and the '51 "Shot Heard 'Round the World" Giants/Dodgers race (Brooklyn blew a 13-game lead).

We found many that weren't that tight at all. We found a handful -- like two different Yankees/Indians races in the 1950s -- with just a few days of being more than 5 games apart. The '62 Dodgers/Giants race had two days, and only ever so slightly; the Dodgers were up by 5.5 games for two days in early August. We found three that had 0 such days.

1948 AL (Yankees / Red Sox / Indians)
1950 AL (Yankees / Red Sox / Tigers)
1977 AL East (Yankees / Red Sox / Orioles)

Interestingly, all three were three-team races, all came in the American League, and all -- shocker! -- featured the Yankees and Red Sox. That '77 three-teamer looked like this, in case you're wondering how tight that was. At the end, the Yankees (100 wins) beat the Red Sox and Orioles (97 wins) by 2.5 games. (Yet still didn't have the best record in the league, since Kansas City won 102 games.)


While we actually really like what the rebuilding Giants are doing right now, they're clearly not in the same league as the Dodgers and Padres are, so if you're into great three-team pennant races, you won't find that in the National League West in 2021.

Either way, two of those three took place decades before the concept of divisional play. If you're looking for the greatest 1-2 full-season tight race between two great teams, we might put our money on that '62 Dodgers-Giants race, given that it did end in a tie. But if you're looking for something in the divisional era, the closest we can point you to is 1985, when the Cardinals (98 wins) topped the Mets (97 wins), though with 17 different instances of the teams being more than five games apart. (That 1993 race, again, while viewed as classic, wasn't always that close until the end.)

Jayson Stark on Bauer deal
Feb 5, 2021 · 2:51
Jayson Stark on Bauer deal
So, if the Dodgers and Padres each post a winning percentage of more than .600 -- perfectly reasonable on both counts -- and if they do in such a way where they're regularly neck-and-neck, could this be the best 1-2 divisional race?" We're not prepared to say "ever," because some pretty classic things happened since 1969. But in the divisional era? It's got a shot. These teams are that good. They're that close.

In this story:
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
Mike Petriello is an analyst for MLB.com and the host of the Ballpark Dimensions podcast.

Related

Each team's biggest

MLB free agency: If Justin Turner doesn't re-sign with the Dodgers, where could he land?

Turner is the best unsigned free agent with spring training fast approaching; let's take a look at his market

By Mike Axisa

7 hrs ago

6 min read

Spring training is about a week away now and MLB teams are in a frenzy to finalize their rosters. Trevor Bauer and Marcell Ozuna, the top two available free agents, agreed to contracts with the Dodgers and Braves within recent days, respectively. All six of the winter's top free agents are accounted for, though 22 of our top 60 free agents remain unsigned.

Our top available unsigned free agent is longtime Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner. Turner, 36, has seen his production slip ever so slightly the last two years, and injuries limited him to 410 of 546 possible games from 2017-20, or 75 percent. That said, he remains a well-above-average hitter and a postseason force with a reputation for being a clubhouse leader. Turner is still someone a contender would want in the batter's box in a big moment.

A return to the Dodgers has felt fait accompli since the outset of the offseason, but it hasn't happened yet, and there are more and more rumblings about non-Dodgers teams trying to sign Turner with each passing day. It's hard to imagine his free agency will drag on much longer. Spring training is approaching and players don't like getting a late start on their preparation.

With that in mind, here's a look at Turner's market, and the best possible landing spots for him outside Chavez Ravine.

The best fit: Dodgers
It's such an obvious and perfect fit, and it's weird it a reunion hasn't happened yet. I suppose now that the Dodgers have signed Bauer and blown by the $210 million luxury-tax threshold, they could pivot to Turner and bring him back into the fold. Once you're over the luxury-tax threshold, you might as well keep going over. The benefits of staying under the threshold are gone.

The Dodgers have internal third base options. They could put Edwin Rios at the hot corner, or Matt Beaty, or even Chris Taylor. Might as well throw Gavin Lux into the mix too. Beaty, Rios, and Lux are all left-handed hitters though, and Taylor fits better at second base. Turner brings a quality righty bat and would balance the lefty-heavy lineup, plus he's a clubhouse leader. Go somewhere else and he's just a mercenary. With the Dodgers, he's part of the core. It works for the team and the player.

The top alternative: Brewers
Late last week the Brewers signed second baseman Kolten Wong to a two-year deal, pushing incumbent second baseman Keston Hiura to first. Wong will definitely improve the team's defense and he will improve their offense as well, even though he's never been a big-time offensive producer. It's just that Milwaukee's infield was dreadful in 2020:

Batting average: .222 (28th in MLB)
On-base percentage: .302 (27th in MLB)
Slugging percentage: .384 (24th in MLB)

Projected third baseman Luis Urias is a former top prospect and a career .226/.315/.320 hitter in the big leagues, so if the Brewers are going to add another infield bat, third base is the place to do it. Urias is only 23 and you don't want to bury him, so Milwaukee could turn him into a "10th man" who sees regular action at the three non-first base infield positions.

Keep in mind the Brewers' current situation. The NL Central is very winnable, Christian Yelich is in his prime, and Josh Hader has not yet priced himself out of town. This might be their last good opportunity to win with this core and Turner would a) improve their 2021 outlook considerably, and b) not require a big-money long-term deal. It's fit. It fits so well.

For what it's worth, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal says the Brewers "remain on the periphery" of the Turner market after the Wong signing. That sounds like standard "we'll take him if his price drops but we don't expect to sign him" language. We'll see.

The other good alternative: Nationals
The Nationals have gone all-in on bounce-back candidates this offseason. They signed Kyle Schwarber to play left field, traded for Josh Bell to play first base, and signed Jon Lester to serve as the fourth starter. Turner does not fit the bounce-back candidate mold (neither did new closer Brad Hand) but he would fill an obvious need at the hot corner. Consider the possible lineup:

SS Trea Turner
RF Juan Soto
3B Justin Turner
LF Kyle Schwarber
1B Josh Bell
2B Starlin Castro
C Yan Gomes
CF Victor Robles
Pitcher's spot

Carter Kieboom is a very good prospect but he's really struggled in limited MLB time, and the Nationals presumably feel urgency to win right now. Max Scherzer is entering the final year of his contract, (Trea) Turner is two years away from free agency, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin have whatever is left of their peaks, so on and so forth.

(Justin) Turner is a significant upgrade over Kieboom and besides, it's not Turner or Kieboom. It's Turner and Kieboom. Washington can find at-bats for Kieboom should his play warrant them, plus it's unlikely the club will skate through the season injury free. The Nationals are a mostly veteran team trying to win one more title with this core. Turner would improve their chances considerably.

It could still work: Braves
The Braves say they will stick with Austin Riley at third base in 2021 and I get it. He has huge power and cut his strikeout rate from a ghastly 36.4 percent in 2019 to a league average-ish 23.8 percent in 2020. Riley also chased fewer pitches out of the zone (34.7 percent to 30.2 percent) and made more contact on pitches in the zone (73.5 percent to 82.3 percent). Positive trends abound.

I mean, when you have a soon-to-be 24-year-old who can do this to a baseball, you make room for him in the lineup.

Why sign Turner then? Because he's better than Riley and would improve Atlanta's chances of winning a World Series in 2021. It's that simple. The Braves don't have to banish Riley to Triple-A, of course. They could find at-bats for him at third base and in the outfield during the season, plus use him to fill in for the inevitable injuries. There's no such thing as too many good players.

I admit the Braves signing Turner was a better idea before the Braves re-signed Ozuna. The universal DH is (probably) not happening, so Ozuna will have to play left field, taking away a possible landing spot for Riley. Should MLB come to its sense and approve the universal DH for 2021, the Braves should be all over Turner.

It was a better idea 10 days ago: Blue Jays
The Marcus Semien signing probably takes the Blue Jays out of the running for Turner. There's no such thing as too many good players, so they could still bring him aboard, but Semien pushes Cavan Biggio to third base, and signing Turner would push Biggio to the outfield and either Teoscar Hernandez or Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the bench. That's not ideal.

Toronto was reportedly in the mix for Turner prior to the Semien signing and the X-factor here is a trade. The Blue Jays could sign Turner, put Biggio in the outfield, then use Hernandez or Gurriel as a trade chip to get a pitcher. Cleveland, the Cardinals, and the White Sox immediately jump to mind as teams that could use an outfield bat. Toronto could sign Turner and make it work, even without a trade. It seems very unlikely after Semien though.

Don't sleep on: Rays
Depending who you ask, the Rays either were or were not interested in Ozuna before he returned to the Braves. Even if they had interest, it's extremely unlikely Tampa would have spent what was necessary to sign him. They don't swim in that end of the free-agent pool. Turner won't come cheap, but he won't require a long-term deal. Consider him the Charlie Morton of position players.

As for the lineup fit, the Rays would make it work. I have no doubt about that. Even with Joey Wendle and Yandy Diaz and Mike Brosseau penciled in for third base reps, the Rays could move them to other positions, and get Turner into the lineup at third base or DH on an everyday basis. They badly need another hitter -- Tampa was 12th in runs per game last year and if Randy Arozarena didn't do something amazing, they didn't score in the postseason -- and Turner would fill a clear need.

Dodgers' Cody Bellinger: Nearing full strength
Rotowire 14 HRS AGO
Bellinger (shoulder) is still limited but should be fully healthy by the start of the regular season, Bill Plunkett of The Orange County Register reports.

Bellinger required offseason surgery after dislocating his shoulder during a celebration in the NLCS. He's still taking swings with only one hand, but he's expected to take full swings and go through defensive drills without limitations once full-squad workouts begin in late February.

Dodgers' Walker Buehler: Reaches two-year deal with Dodgers
Rotowire 15 HRS AGO
Buehler signed a two-year, $8 million deal with the Dodgers to avoid arbitration Wednesday, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports.

It appeared an arbitrator would decide the 26-year-old's salary for 2021, but the two sides were able to reach a deal before the upcoming hearing. The contract includes significant escalators for games started and any finish in the top three of voting for the Cy Young award, which would add $4.125 million if all the incentives are reached. Buehler had another strong season in 2020 with a 3.44 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 42:11 K:BB across 36.2 innings and remains a pivotal piece of Los Angeles' starting rotation.