{"id":52236,"date":"2025-07-09T20:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T20:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/52236\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T20:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T20:07:09","slug":"whats-working-and-not-working-for-the-los-angeles-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/52236\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s working and not working for the Los Angeles Dodgers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman discuss what\u2019s going well and what’s concerning about the Los Angeles Dodgers right now. Hear the full conversation on the \u201cBaseball Bar-B-Cast\u201d podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you listen.<\/p>\n

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Video Transcript<\/p>\n

We are now at the point where it’s not like, OK, uh, the Dodgers are a bad baseball team, but we are pretty far removed from them looking like one of the best teams.<\/p>\n

But we are pretty far removed from them looking like one of the best teams.<\/p>\n

What is going well for this team right now, and why should we have some level of concern?<\/p>\n

OK, what’s going well?<\/p>\n

Shahatani, he’s been outstanding.<\/p>\n

Will Smith, that’s been going really well.<\/p>\n

And then I think Clayton Kershaw deserves a lot of credit for being a useful, effective, competent Major League starting pitcher.<\/p>\n

OK, what’s not going well?<\/p>\n

Mookie Betts Mookie Betts does not have the juice he once did.<\/p>\n

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Maybe he will get it back one day.<\/p>\n

He does not have it right now.<\/p>\n

I think what’s most concerning is that when you dig into some of the bad ball numbers, like Mookie’s never had huge raw power, but he’s always got the most out of it.<\/p>\n

He’s always been able to pull the ball in the air, and he’s pulling the ball in the air pretty much the same rate as last year, but the hard hit rate is down.<\/p>\n

He is still hitting more grounders than he has before.<\/p>\n

And he’s just not a threat.<\/p>\n

His average exit velocity in 2023 was 94th percentile, and right now it is 29th percentile.<\/p>\n

That is a significant drop.<\/p>\n

Do I think that Mookie Betts is going to make the necessary adjustments?<\/p>\n

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To maybe become a different style of hitter and be an effective offensive player.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I do.<\/p>\n

I think it might take a little bit more time, but I think that what we’ve seen so far this year is a yellow, orange, red flag.<\/p>\n

As it pertains to the postseason, are you more worried about the Dodgers as an offensive club or as a run prevention club?<\/p>\n

I definitely am still more worried about the pitching.<\/p>\n

I think what’s so hard about the pitching, and this has been true, I mean, literally every week, you wake up.<\/p>\n

And you’re like, what the heck is the plan on the mound for the Dodgers?<\/p>\n

That has not changed.<\/p>\n

It’s not just like, oh, who’s gonna start game three.<\/p>\n

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It’s just like, who’s gonna even cover all of these innings that you need to, not just innings, postseason high stress innings against the best other teams.<\/p>\n

It is, we’re just running out of guys, and and especially now that the bullpen is no longer an obvious strength, it’s, that is, it’s not just, oh, who’s gonna start.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot beyond that that has me concerned on the mound.<\/p>\n

Close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman discuss what\u2019s going well and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,38997,38998,2961,224,2502,5337,1266],"class_list":{"0":"post-52236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-jake-mintz","11":"tag-jordan-shusterman","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114825084904107505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}