Los Angeles Dodgers: Three areas to improve to win World Series in 2019
By Jason Reed
1. The overall offensive approach
The story of the 2018 World Series was that the Boston Red Sox came up when it mattered with situational hits and the Los Angeles Dodgers did not. Outside of Max Muncy’s walk-off home run in Game 3 and Yasiel Puig’s three-run shot in Game 4, the Dodgers’ offense was woefully bad against a pitching staff that is not as good as the Brewers’ staff the team faced in the NLCS.
The Dodgers finished the series with a collective .180 batting average opposed to the Sox’ .22 average. Los Angeles had just three players with five or more hits in the five games (David Freese, Justin Turner and Yasiel Puig) while having seven players with five or more strikeouts.
The Red Sox had four players with five or more strikeouts and were arguably the four best hitters on the team, Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts.
While we will get to the pitching later, the pitching did a decent enough job of limiting the biggest hitters as much as they could. It was the offense, in the end, that had the worst overall showing.
The Dodgers are a textbook example of the new wave of MLB offenses; a team that focuses on launch angle, hitting the ball out of the park and inadvertently striking out a ton.
The same power stroke that gave that team the second-most home runs in the MLB fell completely flat in the World Series. This strategy might work in a 162-game season, the team’s do not have the luxury of using their best arms every single night.
However, when you are facing the best relievers a team has to offer, this strategy is obviously a flawed one.