Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Following Edwin Diaz blowing yet another game, his third in his last four games and his fifth outing in seven appearances allowing a run, Dave Roberts asked for another bullpen option when questioned about why Diaz was being run out there again and again in leverage when it’s clear he wasn’t sharp.
Okay, here’s like 40 of them or something:
Hell, I’ll include Christian Zazueta, Jacob Kmatz, Lucas Wepf, Cam Day, Adam Serwinowski, and Zach Root from AA in there as well. There’s probably some guys in the lower minors right now who could do something (ANYTHING) better.
I loathe to even joke about things like this because people are definitely too reactionary, but it’s bleak right now, man.
Injured Edwin Diaz was bad to the tune of a 10.50 ERA/4.91 FIP/4.65 xERA over six innings, surrendering a .333/.455/.444/.899 line to all batters. Something was already clearly wrong with him at that point. However, in 5.2 innings since returning from injury, he has been an absolute nightmare. He has a 12.71 ERA/6.43 FIP/6.88 xERA with opposing batters putting up a comical .414/.469/.828/1.297 line against him. Given that the stuff doesn’t necessarily look all the way back either, the only cope I can provide is that it is just 11.2 innings on the year. And I dunno, progress isn’t linear, I guess?
To be clear, the only player who has put up worse results this year for the Dodgers relief core is Miguel Rojas, and at least he was usually pitching with a 10-run lead or deficit. That’s about right!
If you are sending him out there in anything less than a blowout, you are essentially just asking to lose.
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In all seriousness, I’m usually extremely sympathetic to these arguments by Dave.
For starters, in the big picture, he’s mostly just testing out scenarios for the trust tree for October and has always been willing to lose games to figure that out (see: Tanner Scott, Craig Kimbrel, Pedro Baez, even late Kenley Jansen, etc). Furthermore, the bullpen as a whole has indeed been bad for about the same period of a month-and-a-half that the offense has been, so it’s true there aren’t great options down there right now.
That said, at least if Diaz were to get into mess earlier in the game, he could be bailed out by others. Or if he blows it earlier in the game, the Dodgers have a chance to comeback like they have a bunch in during this homestand. But more to the point, Dave can’t talk before this homestand about playing with urgency, earning your spots, and lamenting that the Dodgers are a Wild Card team, then back it up by subsequently (and understandably) dropping Mookie Betts down further in the order (against the righty at least), dropping Teoscar Hernandez from regular starts, and calling out unnamed players (Andy Pages) over shoddy ABS challenges, and then with the top seed on the line continue to run out a guy who has very much not earned anything more than mop-up appearances.
Maybe Edwin will improve — to be fair, he almost can’t be worse even if he was trying — and I certainly hope he does because the Dodgers could use him, but after essentially calling the team out to get serious, this all just felt like Dave treating it like some random April game against the A’s or something. Just a frustrating moment as they seemed on the verge of responding to said call out with a gritty four-game winning streak and earning back the #1 seed in the NL.
