Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Just kidding, we’re not that serious ’round these parts. But, coincidentally or not, that was a 10-year culmination of an idea, even if this post isn’t a culmination of anything. It’s more of a recognition/celebration.
Can you believe it’s been 10 YEARS since we launched this leading baseball blog? No, really, it’s been a freakin’ decade. And since we live in a Base-10 society, we must celebrate as such. We were pining over Masahiro Tanaka, basically predicting Justin Turner to the Dodgers, talking about the SportsNet LA deal that, well, you know how that went, bumping one of my Top 50 prospects posts to talk about the Dodgers signing Chone Figgins (I’m not really bitter, no matter what you think) — and that was all in the first three days of the site’s existence!
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It all started when now-trader Mike Petriello put his faith in me, Chad Moriyama and Daniel Brim to provide top-notch Dodger coverage, since we were all kinda doing our own content and it was, generally, the same kind of content — except for Mike’s in-depth coverage, Chad’s signature posts, Daniel’s incredible deep dives and my silly prospect coverage. It made sense at the time!
Then Mike left us for greener pastures — or so he’d say — while Chad, Daniel and I…
It wouldn’t be a Dodgers Digest post without a Simpsons reference or two.
We have all added to the roster over the years — Stacie Wheeler, Alex Campos, Allan Yamashige, Cody Bashore, Josh Thomas, Bruce Kuntz — while we’ve mostly subtracted because folks like Sarah Wexler, Max Bay and Shane Mittleman went the way of being a trader as well for “real” jobs in baseball or something weird like that.
We’ve been through a lot over the last 10 years. World Series heartbreak in 2017 (and, to a lesser extent, 2018), and Chad’s post about Yuli Gurriel being a racist asshole during the ’17 Series got picked up by Deadspin (before that site was zombified) and is still the most viewed post in the site’s history.
We’ve witnessed the MVP performances of Clayton Kershaw and Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Bellinger winning Rookie of the Year and Seager winning World Series MVP (for the first time).
We saw Kershaw throw a no-hitter that should have been a perfect game, defended Dave Roberts for not allowing Ross Stripling and Rich Hill to continue their no-hit and perfect-game bids, a combined no-hitter and we even saw non-2003 Josh Beckett throw a no-no.
We had the full Yasiel Puig experience. From his unheralded debut — coupled with Hanley Ramirez‘s insane 2013 — that predated this site, to his on-field struggles, to his off-the-field issues (not the more serious ones that followed his Dodger tenure), to what could have been his signature moment in the 2018 Series only for it to go down as a footnote, to his unsurprising yet still jarring trade to the Reds. It was a time like we hadn’t experienced as Dodger fans and may never experience again — for better or worse.
We’ve seen some good trades and some not-so-good trades. We had some inside information that the Dodgers were acquiring Yu Darvish at the 2017 trade deadline, which is why our post got out so quickly.
We’ve experienced some good times and very sad times. We adored Vin Scully and were heartbroken by his passing in August of 2022. Daniel wrote a warm, heartfelt post about Vin and what he meant to him.
“Vin Scully was a real-time poet. He had the uncanny ability to create a phrase in an instant more eloquent than most writers could create in a lifetime. These phrases defined Scully’s most iconic moments as a broadcaster. A million butterflies. The impossible has happened. Throw it to the sky. Public enemy number one. Scully witnessed many of the most memorable moments in baseball history, and his prose will last forever with them.
However, when I think about what Scully means to me personally, it’s not really about those iconic moments. The Dodgers didn’t have many of those moments for most of my life, and certainly not in my formative years as a fan and as a person. Even if they did, those moments aren’t what makes baseball baseball. 99% of baseball games don’t have a no-hitter, or World Series walk-offs, or more than one or two pivotal moments.
Instead, Scully used his innate poetic ability to keep his listeners engaged, and that is where he was truly special. There may never be another broadcaster who could keep you so captivated as the Dodgers were losing 8-3 to the Marlins. Scully’s ability draw focus in those moments was the difference between turning off the game or listening through to the end. It was the same skill which created his most iconic calls, but nobody has ever applied those skills so masterfully to both baseball’s loud moments and its quiet ones.”
We’ve remembered some guys. And trust me, there have been some guys to remember. We’ve rosterbated to our heart’s content and we’ve seen the Dodgers finally land Shohei Ohtani after years of pursuit.
But perhaps the happiest time over these 10 years was, ironically, one of the worst years in recent memory. The 2020 season opened by not opening in April. Instead, it was pushed to July due to the still-ongoing COVID-19, and it was too bad because the Dodgers acquired Literally Mookie Betts from the Red Sox a month before, and things were looking bright.
The site traffic dropped dramatically during that time, as nothing was happening. We did Out of the Park Baseball recaps that, funny enough, saw the Dodgers win the World Series that year. Then the season rolled around in July and the Dodgers went on a tear. They won 43 of 60 games (a 116-win pace over 162 games) and beat the Brewers in the Wild Card round, swept the Padres in the NLDS that included one of the craziest catches you’ll ever see from Bellinger.
Cody Bellinger. Instant classic. pic.twitter.com/TPRnAFFuMo
— MLB (@MLB) October 8, 2020
We thought it was smooth sailing from that point. We were wrong.
The Dodgers fell behind the Braves 3-1 in the NLCS and — I’m not gonna lie — I thought it was over. I went on a nice little rant on Twitter. I’d like to believe that’s what fueled the Dodgers’ comeback, because we know the Dodgers do nothing but live to make me happy.
But even the World Series wasn’t easy. The Game 4 disaster will go down as a footnote, but it’ll also never be forgotten by Dodger fans. Luckily, Kershaw threw well enough in Game 5 and Kevin Cash took Blake Snell out too early in Game 6. Otherwise, it could very well have been a 7-game series. But you know what? It doesn’t matter because the Dodgers won the World Series for the first time since 1988. That’s a long-ass time! And no postseason series win would be complete without Chad’s recap of all the celebrations.
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The post-2020 seasons have been a mix of great and not great. They returned to the NLCS in 2021, only to be upended by the Braves in a bit of revenge for them. They set the franchise record for wins in a season in 2022 (111) while getting bounced in the NLDS. They lost in the NLDS again this past year. Now, heading into the 2024 season, the bad juju from the signing that shall not be named is gone and it’s time to really look forward to Dodger baseball.
And we’ll be here, whether you want us to be or not. I can’t promise 10 more years of this site, and neither can Chad, Daniel, Stacie, et al. Hell, we can’t even promise you 10 more minutes of anything! But we know we wouldn’t keep at this silly hobby of ours without enjoying it and, more and most importantly, having the support we get from the community and readers.
The community at Dodgers Digest is unlike any I’ve ever experienced in my baseball writing “career.” Sure, there have been message boards and such, but nothing ever felt as intimate (no, not in that way … well, maybe sometimes) as this community. While the site doesn’t get as many comments as it once did — because Disqus is just fine while Livefyre was literally killing the site — we have pretty robust conversations on Discord, and we can thank Daniel for creating that for us … not only because it makes sense, but it’s also for the inevitable death of Twitter/X. Come join us, if you’d like.
We want to thank every single person who has clicked on an article, clicked on an advertisement, bought a shirt, retweeted an article, shared an article, emailed questions, listened to the not-official Dodgers Digest podcast and, really, put up with us over the last 10 years. Here’s to more fun in the coming years and, hopefully, another World Series-winning post or two to craft.
