World Series are not won in December or January, and if the early parts of this season are any indicator, the Dodgers won’t be doing it in the fall either.
Headed into a weekend series with the Yankees, the Dodgers (39-25) rank second in team OPS, fourth in team ERA and sixth in total runs, but the same issues persist that they faced last season despite adding Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and more to the roster.
Los Angeles is not clutch.
Still, the Dodgers sit as massive favorites to win the National League at +125 on FanDuel, with the Phillies sitting at +310 and the Atlanta Braves coming in at +400 despite losing reigning NL MVP Ronald Acuna Jr. for the season.
It seems that sportsbooks have overrated them up until this point as well.
If you blindly bet the Dodgers moneyline in every game this season, you would’ve lost $207 ($100 bets).
The Yankees are the most profitable team in baseball, you would’ve won $1,718 by blindly betting their moneyline.
A big piece of this is the Dodgers’ struggle in high-leverage situations, ranking 26th in clutch situations, according to Fangraphs.
Here’s how FanGraphs describes their “clutch” stat: “(It) compares how players perform in high-leverage situations, like late or close games, to how they perform in less critical situations.”
As FanGraphs notes, this doesn’t necessarily contribute or state how the players will perform in the future in terms of their clutch rate.
“However, some say that the numbers don’t show a relationship between a player’s ability to be clutch in the present and their future clutchiness.”
The Dodgers are one of the lowest-rated clutch teams in baseball, and that is something that has been a common theme for the team from Hollywood.
Los Angeles was rated No. 20 in 2023, sixth in 2022, 20th in 2021 and 16th in 2020.
Since 1990, only two teams rated in the bottom five have gone on to win the World Series.
If last year’s obscene Diamondbacks run wasn’t enough to tell you, we’ll make it abundantly clear: The National League is wide open.
The “Big Four” of the Dodgers lineup struck fear into everyone’s team eyes when it was assembled this offseason, and those gaudy OPS and run-scoring stats are clearly driven by their two MVP candidates in Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani.
But aside from them, it’s been a lackluster showing from the rest of the lineup.
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With Max Muncy out, the Dodgers have a sterling top four of Betts, Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith.
Sans Teoscar Hernandez, who has been solid, the lineup is otherwise filled with near-automatic outs.
The Dodgers’ outfield has the fourth and seventh-worst OPS grades in center field and left field.
Second basemen Gavin Lux is barely hitting above the Mendoza line at .210 and is rated 24th in WAR among second basemen, and his .554 OPS is also among the league’s worst.
Without Muncy’s 1.4 WAR manning third base, the Dodgers would have a -0.9 WAR for the position, the third-worst in baseball.
So while the Dodgers boast four elite players at the top of their lineup, the remaining four positions nearly need an overhaul with the trade deadline approaching, especially with Muncy, who just suffered a setback in his recovery from an oblique injury, on the mend.
None of that equates to clear favorite status this early into the season.
You’re essentially betting on several new pieces to the lineup being added at the deadline, something that seems unlikely. The Post’s Jon Heyman pointed out that pitchers are more likely to be moved than obvious upgrades at key positions.
There are a wide range of World Series outcomes here, from the Phillies (+310) to the Pittsburgh Pirates (120/1).
Expect chaos again and not chalk, as this year’s Dodgers team is not the 1927 Yankees.