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Alexander: It should be a fun MLB summer in Southern California

March 29, 2023

The game itself will be better. That’s almost a sure thing as Baseball 2023 begins its long march to November, with rules changes designed to quicken the pace, encourage offense and return the sport to what it used to be.

But will the local teams be better?

The oddsmakers say no. This Space says yes. Hapless optimism, or do I sense something the wise guys don’t? We’ll see.

You might have seen our staff predictions already. Five of the seven of us who were polled agree that the Angels will get back into the postseason for the first time since 2014, as a wild-card team. I’m not ready to predict they’ll get any farther than that this year, nor am I ready to forecast that just getting back to the postseason will be enough to keep Shohei Ohtani in an Angels uniform. But hope is built on small beginnings, right?

And let’s face it. Angels fans who grumble because Arte Moreno isn’t selling the team – and there are a lot of them – need something, anything, to sustain that hope. A better, deeper roster and the opportunity to fool the experts at least a little bit is a start.

It helps that the Angels have added proven big-leaguers to replace the youngsters and fringy guys who had to step in a year ago when injuries scrambled the roster. Gio Urshela, Hunter Renfroe and Brandon Drury provide superior offensive production to last year’s replacement players, and they can bolster a lineup that could be awfully scary if Ohtani, Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon are all healthy and performing up to their capabilities.

There are also signs that General Manager Perry Minasian understands the critical role of not only depth but having several multi-position players on a roster, similar to the way the Angels’ neighbors one county to the north have been built. (Of course, this could be a challenge for Phil Nevin in his first full season as Angels manager, convincing players that they won’t necessarily be on the lineup card in the same spot – or at all – every day. But it’s been done.)

Pitching, for a change, wasn’t what sunk the Angels in 2022. The bullpen is potentially good and the rotation should be better than average, bolstered by All-Star Tyler Anderson and anchored by Ohtani, who I’m predicting will win the American League Cy Young Award in addition to getting serious MVP consideration again.

Bottom line: When you have two of the best players in the world on your roster, something’s got to go right at some point, doesn’t it? And as for the idea that things need to go right to keep one of those two … well, if that doesn’t spark some extra urgency organizationally, maybe there is no hope after all.

As for the team 30 miles up the 5? I’m calling my shot now.

In a year when the game returns to a classic style, get ready for a classic World Series: Dodgers vs. Yankees. And it says here that 2023 will be a repeat of 1981, which will be perfect symmetry in a season in which the Dodgers will finally retire Fernando Valenzuela’s No. 34.

Yeah, I’m sort of lonely among our prediction panel. San Diego, punching way above its market-size weight in terms of payroll, received four of the other six votes as World Series winners, with Atlanta and Toronto getting the remaining two. And it’s possible I’m just being overly counterintuitive, but I’m guessing this will be a season in which the Dodgers toss the script that has sustained them for much of the past decade and find another way to the finish line, this time lying in the weeds as a wild-card team.

They’ve been the hunted for the past decade, winning the NL West in nine of the past 10 seasons and requiring 107 wins by San Francisco to beat them in the other. In that 10-season stretch under the stewardship of Guggenheim Baseball, they’ve played .612 ball, they’ve won more than 100 games four times in the past six seasons (and had a .717 winning percentage in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season), and have led all of baseball in regular-season victories three times.

And all they’ve brought back in that span was one lousy Commissioner’s Trophy, in 2020, and the final game of that World Series against Tampa Bay featured the other manager’s move that backfired. More often their own pitching usage miscues have cost them, and while Dave Roberts always gets the blame, we can debate whether the manager or a front office overly active in strategy decisions should actually be held accountable.

So maybe it’s time for a different approach, tailored to the expanded playoffs and necessitated by a roster that begins the season with more youngsters and more questions. And by not extending themselves to rack up huge margins in the regular season, they can be fresher for the postseason – and by this, I mean not only the players but the manager, coaches and executives.

The Padres, as noted, have gone all-in. Their 40-man roster payroll of $275.8 million is projected to be the third-highest in baseball by Cot’s Contracts, trailing only the New York clubs (the Mets at $375.3 million and the Yankees at $295.3 million), while some $25.4 million ahead of the No. 5 Dodgers.

So let them spend. We were reminded again last year, the first of the expanded playoffs and wild-card series byes, that being hot in October is what matters. The 89-win Padres eliminated teams that won 101 and 111 games (Mets and Dodgers), 87-win Philadelphia eliminated teams that won 93 and 101 games (St. Louis and Atlanta), and then the Phillies got to the World Series … where Houston was waiting for them. End of fairy tale.

The Dodgers’ lineup, even with the star power of Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, is not the same monster that it’s been at the start of recent seasons. But Andrew Friedman tends to do his best work at the trade deadline, and I’d be willing to bet that the roster will be a lot stronger after the deadline and at least a couple of the youngsters on the Opening Day 26-man will have significant impacts.

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The danger, as usual, lies in Friedman and his R&D staff overthinking things in the postseason and orderi– … er, suggesting … strange pitching strategies, such as using an opener in Game 5 against the Giants in 2021 with repercussions that affected Julio Urías and Max Scherzer in the NLCS against the Braves.

But if the front office can be persuaded to stay in its lane – I know, that’s a lot to ask – I can easily see the Dodgers getting on a roll in the postseason. And this time, it says here, the Dodgers eliminate the Padres in the NLCS and win Game 6 of the World Series in Yankee Stadium. They haven’t clinched a World Series in L.A. since 1963. Why start now?

This time, at least, they’d get a parade.

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Orange County Register

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Alexander: It should be a fun MLB summer in Southern California

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