1971 Recap: The Dodgers spent most of the year looking like a mediocre-to-bad team, fighting rivals San Francisco for the "staying out of the cellar" award. Then a monster end of the season almost landed them at .500 and gave fans lots of hope for the future.
1972 Outlook: Since the giant surge came after the team by and large moved away from their older players and started looking at the new guys, there's good reason for optimism. Maybe, just maybe they can contend in a West division that's in transition?
Pitching
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Code:
Pitching Age BT W L WL % ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9
Apolonio, Fernando 30 LL 18 11 .621 3.00 33 33 0 11 2 0 263.2 211 106 88 18 77 1 132 1.092 100.0 0.6 2.6 4.5
Castillo, Andres 34 RL 15 12 .556 3.02 33 30 1 12 2 0 232.2 229 101 78 14 68 4 176 1.277 100.0 0.5 2.6 6.8
Salinas, Rogelio 28 LL 9 14 .391 3.86 32 30 0 7 2 0 224.0 199 104 96 37 76 3 190 1.228 100.0 1.5 3.1 7.6
Figueroa, Carlos 25 RR 11 14 .440 4.69 31 29 0 3 0 0 201.1 219 112 105 26 97 2 168 1.570 100.0 1.2 4.3 7.5
Cosby, Alec 26 RR 6 7 .462 2.63 62 0 54 0 0 23 99.1 76 35 29 9 33 2 81 1.097 100.0 0.8 3.0 7.3
Wilson, Rich 33 RR 2 5 .286 2.56 46 0 29 0 0 5 59.2 59 23 17 4 22 1 59 1.358 100.0 0.6 3.3 8.9
Rodriguez, Santos 22 LL 8 11 .421 3.65 32 25 2 6 0 0 187.1 176 92 76 14 63 4 126 1.276 100.0 0.7 3.0 6.1
Wood, Arthur 35 SR 1 1 .500 2.72 30 0 13 0 0 1 39.2 38 15 12 2 15 0 13 1.336 100.0 0.5 3.4 2.9
Parsley, Jason 33 RR 2 1 .667 4.25 24 0 11 0 0 1 29.2 22 15 14 2 16 0 18 1.281 100.0 0.6 4.9 5.5
Juarez, Mario 26 LR 3 2 .600 4.15 24 5 5 0 0 0 52.0 57 26 24 3 16 0 35 1.404 100.0 0.5 2.8 6.1
Reiner, Rob 24 LL 1 2 .333 3.29 5 5 0 2 1 0 38.1 37 14 14 2 5 0 16 1.096 100.0 0.5 1.2 3.8
Mincher, Dylan 28 SL 2 1 .667 2.70 17 3 3 0 0 1 30.0 25 14 9 2 6 1 12 1.033 100.0 0.6 1.8 3.6
Lee, Dan 26 LL 1 1 .500 6.00 2 2 0 0 0 0 12.0 18 9 8 0 8 0 4 2.167 100.0 0.0 6.0 3.0
Entwistle, Josh 36 RL 0 1 .000 11.25 5 0 3 0 0 0 4.0 6 6 5 2 3 0 2 2.250 100.0 4.5 6.8 4.5
Flores, Orlando 24 SL 0 0 .000 0.00 2 0 0 0 0 0 2.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0.000 100.0 0.0 0.0 4.5
Code:
Starting Pitching GS Wgs Lgs ND Wchp LTuf WTm LTm tmW-L% CG SHO QS QS% GmScA Best Wrst sDR lDR RS/GS RS/9 IP/GS Pit/GS <80 80-99 100-119 >=120 Max
Apolonio, Fernando 33 18 11 4 5 6 19 14 0.576 11 2 20 61% 59 84 32 4 16 4.0 4.5 8.0 116 0 6 17 10 232
Castillo, Andres 30 14 12 4 2 6 14 16 0.467 12 2 22 73% 57 84 15 3 16 3.6 4.2 7.7 118 2 2 12 14 148
Salinas, Rogelio 30 9 14 7 3 7 12 18 0.400 7 2 16 53% 56 89 17 4 16 3.4 4.2 7.4 114 0 6 11 13 139
Figueroa, Carlos 29 11 14 4 1 6 12 17 0.414 3 0 18 62% 49 84 16 5 15 3.6 4.7 6.8 115 2 5 10 12 146
Rodriguez, Santos 25 8 11 6 0 5 13 12 0.520 6 0 16 64% 53 86 20 0 16 3.1 3.9 7.1 113 2 4 9 10 152
Juarez, Mario 5 2 2 1 1 0 3 2 0.600 0 0 2 40% 44 53 38 2 1 3.0 4.5 6.0 97 0 3 2 0 103
Reiner, Rob 5 1 2 2 0 1 3 2 0.600 2 1 2 40% 56 83 42 1 3 1.8 2.1 7.7 100 0 3 2 0 117
Mincher, Dylan 3 2 1 0 1 1 2 1 0.667 0 0 2 67% 46 51 41 1 2 3.3 4.9 6.1 94 0 2 1 0 101
Lee, Dan 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0.500 0 0 1 50% 35 50 20 0 2 3.0 4.5 6.0 106 0 0 2 0 106
Code:
Relief Pitching GR Wgr Lgr SVOpp Sv BSv SV% SvSit Hld IR IRS IRS% ALi LevHi LevMd LevLo Run Emp <3O >3O 0DR 1DR 2DR 3+DR Out/GR Pit/GR
Cosby, Alec 62 6 7 32 23 9 72% 33 1 20 5 20% 2.080 33 15 15 13 49 1 30 12 19 11 20 4.8 25
Wilson, Rich 46 2 5 7 5 2 71% 15 8 35 17 33% 1.466 19 17 17 17 29 11 16 6 10 10 20 3.9 21
Wood, Arthur 30 1 1 2 1 1 50% 6 4 8 2 20% 0.576 2 23 23 6 24 3 12 3 5 3 19 4.0 20
Parsley, Jason 24 2 1 1 1 0 100% 2 1 11 2 15% 0.585 3 19 19 8 16 3 9 1 3 4 16 3.7 20
Juarez, Mario 19 1 0 0 0 0 0% 5 5 16 3 16% 0.745 4 10 10 9 10 5 7 3 5 2 9 3.5 18
Mincher, Dylan 14 0 0 1 1 0 100% 4 3 7 0 0% 0.879 4 10 9 4 10 5 2 4 3 2 5 2.5 10
Rodriguez, Santos 7 0 0 0 0 0 0% 2 2 1 0 0% 0.630 1 3 3 1 6 2 3 3 0 0 4 3.9 21
Entwistle, Josh 5 0 1 1 0 1 0% 2 1 3 1 25% 1.073 2 3 3 2 3 2 0 0 0 0 5 2.4 19
Castillo, Andres 3 1 0 0 0 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0% 0.600 0 1 1 0 3 1 0 0 1 0 2 2.0 7
Salinas, Rogelio 2 0 0 0 0 0 0% 1 1 0 0 0% 0.586 0 1 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 3.0 18
Figueroa, Carlos 2 0 0 0 0 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0% 0.350 0 2 2 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 2 4.5 20
Flores, Orlando 2 0 0 0 0 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0% 0.250 0 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 3.0 12
Fernando Apolonio quietly had a career year last season, finishing 8th in the league in wins and ERA. He still missed the All-Star Game because he saved a lot of the winning for the last 2 months: from August 1 onwards he was 8-1, 3.52. He's always been a guy who likes to complete games - last year was the 3rd time in his career he had 10 or more of them - and the hope is that the improved control and the ability to induce weak groundouts is sustainable (note: the latter is probably not).
Andres Castillo also finished the season on a roll - 3-1, 1.20 in September - and made a decent season look really good. This happened, too, right when the Dodgers brass was thinking about trading him off to a winner in favor of a youth movement. Looks like that's going to be held off for a bit.
Carlos Figueroa, meanwhile, was not very good last year but as he's still only 25 and projects as the only RHP in the rotation, he's still a virtual lock (and a .321 BABIP tells me he should be moving in the opposite direction of Fernando Apolonio next year).
For the rest of the rotation, this is the Dodgers so they'll go with the good old Dodgers 5 man setup. That means that 22 year old
Santos Rodriguez is also a near lock to open the year. He had a pretty damn good rookie season, starting the year as the 12th ranked prospect in the game and winning the June NL Rookie of the Month with a 2.70 ERA in spite of a 1-1 record (he was doing some long relief that month; only 3 starts). Unlike the rest of the staff he had a rough August (2-3, 4.57) but he turned it around in limited time in September (2-0, 2.70 in 3 starts).
Rogelio Salinas should also find a spot in there; dude struck out 7.6 batters per 9 innings so he might have been another guy who experienced plain old bad luck in arriving at his record. If not him (or if LA decides to use one of these 5 thousand lefties in a bigger relief role),
Rob "Meathead' Reiner is a guy who won 19 games with a 2.65 ERA at AAA Spokane and largely followed up that good performance in 5 September appearances. He's definitely a control guy, with a hard slider he hopes to use to get more swinging strikes in the majors.
LA was supported by a nice bullpen all year, led by stopper
Alec Cosby. Cosby, a former starter who's nevertheless still only 27, set a career high with 23 saves in '71. Those 9 blown saves isn't so hot but those constituted 9 out of 10 of the meltdowns he had all season long vs 35 shutdown appearances. He's a definite positive heading into next season. His setup man for most of the year was
Rich Wilson, who at 33 years of age still manages to get strikeouts off of a bunch of junk (which to be fair includes a devastating change of pace). For right now they've got another guy sitting in the lefty specialist role who started a bunch last year in
Dylan Mincher. Rebuilding or otherwise, this does seem like a team that could stand to replace some of these lefties with similar righties.
Batting
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Code:
Batting Age BT G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS DP BA OBP SLG Pos
Davis, Jason 26 RR 121 337 32 85 14 0 4 30 37 56 0 0 12 .252 .321 .329 2*
Zimmerman, Jason 29 RR 72 192 20 31 7 0 3 14 29 37 0 0 6 .161 .274 .245 2
The Dodgers intended to run a 50/50 split of
Jason Davis and
Jason Zimmerman but only one of those two catchers managed to hit well enough to play regularly. Zimmerman still wound up playing a lot because Davis has a below average arm (he did throw out 32.9% of would-be basestealers but scouts insist he's not that good) and sometimes you need a gun back there. He also hit for the lowest average of his career, which is saying a lot, considering "Zim" has a career average of .183. LA considers that they've got a great replacement who might even push Davis for the starting job at AAA Spokane in the form of
Jacob Marshall (probably not his name), who, at the age of 24, won the PCL Platinum Stick at catcher with a .287/2/34 season with a .376 OBP. The one thing keeping him from going further, potentially, is that he's an even worse defensive backstop than Davis.
Code:
Batting Age BT G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS DP BA OBP SLG Pos
Stone, Justin 32 LL 152 564 94 165 20 1 38 112 92 82 10 6 3 .293 .396 .534 3*
Pena, Francisco 27 RR 122 411 54 107 20 1 10 49 43 68 4 1 13 .260 .329 .387 4*
Tristan, Billy 41 RR 87 188 19 51 4 1 1 20 25 27 1 1 6 .271 .355 .319 4/3
Sego, Nick 27 LR 9 28 1 6 3 1 0 3 3 4 0 0 1 .214 .281 .393 /43
Toscano, Ben 27 RR 7 25 3 6 0 1 0 4 1 5 0 0 0 .240 .269 .320 /4
Maccioli, Brian 26 RR 151 584 68 165 30 1 16 61 47 74 0 3 17 .283 .335 .420 5*
Schwartz, Jeremy 29 RR 43 65 6 14 2 0 0 5 4 11 0 0 4 .215 .261 .246 5
Solis, Luis 22 LR 140 554 79 157 20 4 12 54 28 51 19 14 5 .283 .315 .399 6*
Lander, Brian 32 SR 42 94 10 18 4 0 1 3 14 22 0 0 3 .191 .300 .266 6/4
Curtis, Matthew 30 RR 2 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.000 1.000 1.000 /67
LA acquired
Justin Stone, giving up an All-Star in Rafael Disla in return, to give them some much-needed power at the heart of the order. His first season with the Dodgers, he did absolutely everything that was asked of him. Yes, moving out of Busch and into the more HR happy (although still very much a pitchers' park) Dodgers Stadium didn't result in the huge power burst that some pundits thought it would, but the man still finished 3rd in the NL in HRs and RBIs, finished 4th in slugging following leading the league in that category in 3 of the previous 4 years, and reached the 10th All-Star Game of his career. He even collected his 2000th hit in late September (he's sitting at 2,007 right now) Oh yeah, and also he hit .351/14/29 in the month of September. Stone is currently 4th in round-trippers among active players with 432, at least to the extent that you can say that Matthew Levario (2nd with 445 HRs) is currently in the league.
1971 was finally the season that
Billy Tristan was unable to plah second base. The man is 41 years old, let's be honest here. Unfortunately, this also came at a time when his power completely left him and so he's now a .270ish singles man: still useful as a pinch-hitter if he wants to play that role but that's about it. His replacement
Francisco Pena doesn't look like any kind of a budding superstar or anything but he got the job done, with a .230 September pulling his yearly numbers down. Technically they also have
Nick Sego except that he can neither field nor hit at a major league level.
Brian Maccioli made the forward progress that scouts were expecting out of him in his 3rd season in the league. He set career highs in average, hits, doubles, HRs, RBIs, and also hit the only triple of his career on May 1st against the Braves. He does not have good speed but he does have a gun and that should serve him well enough.
Luis Solis might not have hit .324 as he did in 1969 but a shortop who can hit in the .280s with 12 HR power is still one hell of an asset to have. One thing the Dodgers hope Solis can solve - and now that I look into this, this is kind of a big thing - are his iron-hard hands. Last year Solis led the league in errors with 30 and fielded just .949 at the position. As good of a hitter as he is, that might take the Venezuelan right out of the lineup. LA is kind of thin at the position, though, with the main competition to Solis being organizational soldier
Matthew Curtis, who went .240/12/42 in AAA and had the same kinds of ball-handling issues that Solis did in the majors, with 20 errors and a .950 FA of his own in Spokane.
Code:
Batting Age BT G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS DP BA OBP SLG Pos
Griffin, Ernie 33 LL 133 484 61 119 9 7 18 61 44 60 16 7 2 .246 .309 .405 7*/98
Rhone, Jamal 39 RR 100 148 16 39 5 3 2 24 23 14 1 2 3 .264 .355 .378 79
Winchell, Dusty 29 LL 59 112 7 25 0 0 2 10 8 21 1 1 1 .223 .262 .277 7/389
Ernst, Ben 25 LL 103 412 46 110 13 7 5 45 43 56 8 7 3 .267 .330 .369 87
Heil, J.D. 26 RR 47 153 23 44 4 2 7 21 11 25 4 3 2 .288 .333 .477 87
Magana, Butch 25 LL 38 117 8 24 2 0 0 1 6 22 3 3 4 .205 .244 .222 8/79
Hohman, Danny 27 LL 26 106 15 30 4 2 2 11 7 16 2 2 0 .283 .327 .415 8
Costa, Ray 25 RR 149 548 69 125 24 3 20 75 68 103 6 4 11 .228 .316 .392 9*
Vergara, Omar 25 LL 8 23 3 4 0 0 3 6 4 7 0 0 1 .174 .296 .565 /987
With Ernie Griffin shipped out to Minnesota and Dusty Winchell long gone to the Mets, the left field job is
Paul Stewart's to lose. Stewart had a fine year with the Phillies in 1970 - .298/14/62 - but got hurt early on and struggled heavily when he returned, finishing the year .238/0/8. A return to form would really help bring the Dodgers back into contention. If not... this team is a little bare in the high minors. By the way,
Jamal Rhone is still putting in good whacks as the team's primary pinch hitter as he approaches his 40th birthday.
Ben Ernst was in and out of the lineup with an assortment of injuries and went from being an obvious choice for Rookie of the Year to really being just another guy in that mix. He was the April Rookie of the Month with a .315/2/13 record but hit only .254 the rest of the way. The hope here is that a full, healthy year will see him return closer to that April record. If not,
Danny "The Phantom" Hohman has played in just 26 games since 1969 but is still theoretically there or in left.
Ray Costa had a really rough season and fins himself in a situation where maybe he's a reverse-splits guy. He hit only .158 against left-handed pitchers last season, absolutely terrible. That also, I have to think, is unsustainable. By and large he's got good speed but, obviously, needs to cut down on the strikeouts. He's a man who hit .307 in AA Bakersfield in 1969 and .309 in 47 appearances in AAA last year so there is some hope this will happen.