Greetings after the first Los Angeles Dodgers off day after 13 games in a row. Perhaps you spent the day watching baseball. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you read Part 1 of this week’s Dodgers Mailbag. If you didn’t, we’ll pretend you did, because here is Part 2.
Some questions were abridged for length and clarity.
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Freddie Freeman is having a good year by most standards, but not his. With Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts looking like MVPs, is there any talk about changing anything up with Freddie or is it just assumed he’ll get back to being last year’s Freddie? — H. Slade S.
This is a complex question at this stage of Freddie Freeman’s career. His 140 OPS+ is essentially at his career norm (142), a testament to how depressed the current offensive environment seems to be to start the season. But the raw totals, including an .839 OPS, would be his lowest over a full season since he was 22 years old. He’s 35 now.
FREDDIE SLAM. pic.twitter.com/ws1L6YIrZp
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) May 21, 2024
While Freeman’s bat has shown an uptick lately, he said he still feels he’s “treading water” with his swing. That should be encouraging. Freeman and the Dodgers sense a run is coming and are pleased with what they’ve gotten in the interim.
That said, they aren’t ignoring age. As a preemptive measure, Freeman — famously fastidious about his routines — has made an alteration. Starting with this last road trip through San Diego and San Francisco, he has integrated core and weighted ball work into his pregame exercises. Freeman says he feels the same as he used to, but the added exercises are just a matter of keeping things that way.
How much do pitching coaches really “affect” the staff, and how does the industry view Mark Prior? — Dan M.
The way the Dodgers have structured things, plenty of people deserve some form of credit. Bench coach Danny Lehmann handles the game plans. Connor McGuiness has been known for helping pitchers fiddle with grips. Josh Bard has consistently churned out solid bullpens. And Mark Prior brings credibility and feel from a unique track record having been a star, a prospect and later a journeyman.
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There are other members of the group as well, including Rob Hill and Don Alexander on the minor-league side who also dabble in some big-league projects. It doesn’t hurt that general manager Brandon Gomes is a former big-league pitcher who drew requests to interview for big-league pitching coach positions before his promotion.
As a whole, it’s hard to argue with the production. The Dodgers coaches have consistently produced top-level pitching staffs and the organization is a place where pitchers want to be. Beyond the one-year success stories like Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney, the reputation of the Dodgers’ staff helps with adding depth pieces like Elieser Hernández, who said after his club debut, “Who doesn’t want to be here?”
Prior, individually, is extremely well-regarded. If he were to go on the open market he would be among the preeminent pitching coach candidates in the sport.
When the Dodgers acquired Anthony Banda and Yohan Ramírez to fill out the bullpen this week, did they do this because someone on staff had seen something they could fix? What role, if any, do the major-league pitching coaches play in evaluating such players before their acquisition? What adjustments did the Dodgers have Banda and Ramírez make? Was it simply pitch mix? — Debra B.
Some of it is purely a necessity. Teams need arms. Teams go through churn. But they also usually put in claims on pieces they feel can either be replacement-level or they see something untapped there. If the Dodgers skipped the waivers line and put actual cash toward a trade, like they did with Connor Brogdon, Yohan Ramírez and Anthony Banda, that usually means there are multiple teams that at least saw something to tap into.
It can be a matter of tweaking pitch mix. Adding a pitch. Adjusting mechanics, whether to generate more consistent command or make a certain pitch play up better. With Banda, there’s obvious appeal — there are only so many guys, even now, who can touch 97 mph from the left side. With someone like, say, Evan Phillips, the Dodgers engineered an overhaul: mechanical changes to improve his command, emphasizing him throwing his best pitch (a sweeper) more frequently and in optimal spots, and a mentality shift after the pitcher admitted to getting beat down with his struggles with his hometown Orioles.
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What are the organization’s realistic expectations for Walker Buehler for the rest of the year and into the postseason? — David P.
It’s a cop-out answer, but it doesn’t seem there are any set expectations for Buehler. He and the Dodgers know the return from a second Tommy John surgery won’t be linear. He’s still trying to figure out who he is as a pitcher, let alone how that translates into a potential postseason rotation. But the track record, underlying talent and the Dodgers’ position in the postseason picture means he will get plenty of opportunities to get things rolling. Few of the Dodgers’ options for October have as high of an upside as Buehler. But the Dodgers aren’t putting all their stock into locking Buehler into a postseason rotation spot right now.
What are the chances the Dodgers can get Mason Miller at the deadline? That guy in our pen would shatter every previous expectation any Dodger fan had about the postseason. — Domingo C.
We should be cautious not to take executives’ previous statements as gospel for how they will behave, but this, from 2022, is an important quote to remember from president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman:
“I hate trading for relievers at the deadline. It’s my least favorite thing to do. The acquisition cost is totally out of whack. So I like to avoid it as much as possible.”
Then you factor in that the Athletics would have little incentive to move Miller for anything other than a massive haul, and that there will be multiple teams with a bigger relief need than the Dodgers, and it feels incredibly unlikely as things are currently constituted. Could things change? Maybe. But Phillips is locked in as the closer when healthy and the Dodgers typically have had enough trust in their pitching development to rely on more marginal additions. Whether you think that’s a conducive strategy for building an optimal October roster is up to you, but the bullpen wasn’t why the Dodgers lost in either of the last couple Octobers.
(Photo of Freddie Freeman: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)