Jim Alexander: Well, the Dodgers redeemed themselves Wednesday night, sort of, although I haven’t checked social media yet this morning to determine the pulse of the public – i.e., if they’ve come off the ledge for the moment. I’ve noticed that any time the Dodgers struggle it’s always Dave Roberts’ fault in the eyes of the masses, even if it really isn’t.
Tuesday night, for example, it was all his fault for not bunting with Miguel Rojas with runners on first and second and none out in the ninth, even though (a) after the first pitch it was apparent how the Padres were defending the bunt, and there was a good likelihood that they’d be able to get the lead runner, (b) if the bunt is successful it takes the bat out of Shohei Ohtani’s hands, and puts the responsibility on two hitters who hadn’t been producing in scoring position situations, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and (c) if you can accurately anticipate a game-ending triple play, what are you doing wasting your time with baseball?
Among the responses from the people were those who believed that Tommy Lasorda would never let this happen, and he’d certainly have the guys fired up. My responses: Tommy was a great motivator, for his time, but that was three decades ago, and it’s no accident that the celebrity manager of Tommy’s era no longer exists in this one. He certainly wasn’t immune to second-guessing; remember Jack Clark, 1985? And let’s keep in mind that Tommy’s teams won two World Series in 20 seasons of managing, ‘81 and ‘88. Roberts has one in eight seasons and his teams have been in the hunt every year.
Meanwhile, they can still clinch the division tonight. Where they go from here depends on how much they can get out of a beleaguered starting pitching staff. As our friend Bill Shaikin pointed out in the city’s other newspaper yesterday, even getting six innings out of their starters seems like a steep mountain to climb. As good a bullpen as they seem to have at this point, how long can it keep from cracking under the strain?
You were out there last night to see their 4-3 victory, Mirjam. What did you take from it, other than the fact that Mookie needs to get going, now?
Mirjam Swanson: My takeaway – beside the Mookie bit, and how he and Freddie Freeman NEED to contribute at the plate or this is all academic anyway – is that Shohei Ohtani is awesome.
Newsflash, right?
But as special as it’s been to see him chase history, as it’s been to see him revamp our expectations of what modern baseball players can do, it’s another layer of cool to see him playing with real stakes.
Really cool to see him continually come in clutch and be so fired up about it.
Before yesterday’s game, a bunch of reporters were teeing up questions for Roberts about which of his players might be taking it upon himself to fire guys up in situations like this Padres’ series. Roberts said he thought Mookie and Miguel Rojas are guys who’ll do that, on occasion, but: “I just don’t think this is a rah-rah situation. You have to a be a pro. We lost a tough ballgame… if we need a rah-rah after last night, then we have the wrong guys.”
And then we saw Ohtani smacking the ball all around the park and each time he reached base pumping his fist and waving his arms and shouting toward his teammates and, wouldn’t know it? The game’s best player is also the Dodgers’ rah-rah guy.
So fun.
Jim: When Shohei singled home Will Smith in the sixth for that 4-3 lead last night and started yelling and gesturing, it was … well, not a shock, but not something we’d ever been used to. It’s leadership, and while you don’t necessarily need a rah-rah guy at the top of your lineup – or the top step of your dugout – that fire and enthusiasm can be infectious. Watch the way guys like the Padres’ Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jurickson Profar get their team going. You don’t necessarily have to play with an edge, but it certainly helps.
But, as I noted the other night, teams that can get runners home in scoring position situations seem a lot more intense than those who don’t. It’s a chicken-or-egg thing, I guess, but at this time of the year everything helps.
And now from baseball to college football, and we had two instances yesterday of players taking the initiative regarding their futures, right or wrong. USC’s Bear Alexander is unilaterally going to use his redshirt year, as announced by his guardian, Tony Jones, because of the playing time he isn’t getting. This is almost certainly a precursor to a transfer at season’s end, and it makes Lincoln Riley’s this-isn’t-a-story proclamation of the day before look quite hollow.
The other development: UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka, who had transferred in from Holy Cross, is going to redshirt as well and announced he’s entering the transfer portal again at season’s end, declaring that commitments/promises made regarding his NIL compensation weren’t fulfilled. (Pause for a dozen choruses of “College football is ruined!!!” from a certain generation of alumni.)
Here’s a thought: The NCAA is fighting hard against the notion that players – I refuse to call them “student-athletes” – should be employees. But here are at least two reasons that an employee status, with signed contracts and ironclad commitments, would benefit all parties. You don’t like players bailing at midseason because of money or playing time or whatever? You consider it offensive if a player declines to play in a bowl game because of the possibility of injury? Get that commitment in writing.
(As far as Bear Alexander – no relation – and his playing time, here’s another thought: Play better.)
Mirjam: I agree.
There’s too much at stake, for everyone involved, to be speeding down this road without guardrails.
The players’ decisions this week – Week Four representing a hardline negotiating deadline, because the NCAA permits a player to appear in as many as four games without losing a year of eligibility – amount to them essentially exercising a midseason player option.
Which players are going to make use of if they’re unhappy, as often players are – for all kinds of reasons, some more justifiable than others.
It’s hard to feel good about the idea of a player telling a program: “Pay me or lose me,” or “play me or lose me” until you consider it’s possible that someone could, in fact, be promised a certain amount of money to move his life across the country only to find out he’d been duped.
Of course, there’s no way of knowing what was actually promised without a record of it.
Is playing time a different story? I don’t know. Sports is a performance-based thing, it’s competitive, you’re supposed to earn your role – and yet, if a coach wants to bench you, he can bench you and take away your opportunity.
But now if you’re a player who feels like the situation you’re in is a bad fit, he can look for a better situation – like pros do all the time. The truly disgruntled can demand trades midseason, but typically, yeah, they’d have to wait until the contract is up to negotiate with another team – so another point in favor of contracts.
Jim: Meanwhile, the NBA – where player empowerment is a way of life – holds most of its media days, including those for the Clippers and Lakers, on Monday. And it will be interesting to hear from Kawhi Leonard when the Clips convene at the Intuit Dome. Lawrence Frank, the team’s president of basketball operations, confirmed Tuesday that the swelling in Kawhi’s right knee – which kept him sidelined in four of the six games of last spring’s playoff loss to eventual champ Dallas – will limit him in training camp, and the effects could last into the start of the season.
Frank did not confirm that Kawhi had a “procedure” done on his knee over the summer, although reports are that he did so after being sent home from Olympic team training camp. This is entirely in keeping with the secrecy that has surrounded Leonard dating to the end of his tenure with the San Antonio Spurs.
And I guess there are two ways of looking at the whole issue of injury disclosure. On one hand, a player is entitled to a certain amount of privacy. On the other hand, athletes are in a public business, and withholding injury information isn’t fair to the people who watch you play – especially in a climate where betting is not only legal but borderline encouraged by leagues who are in commitments with gambling interests.
What are your thoughts, Mirjam?
Mirjam: It’s so lame. So disrespectful.
I really dislike the way the Clippers go out of their way to keep basic information from their fans.
I know Kawhi is a private dude, but this is part of the bargain of being a multi-millionaire athlete … people are going to want to know whether you’ll be able to play. If they’re going to invest their money and time and emotion into a team, they deserve to know basic facts: Did Kawhi have an offseason procedure, the Athletic’s Law Murray asked Lawrence Frank in July. Frank then: “I’m not going to get into the specifics. What I’ll tell you is he spent a great deal of time getting ready for this (the Olympics), he had a really solid progression, he looked good in the practices, ultimately they decided after the third practice, they didn’t feel as confident as we felt.”
Even if you speak Clipper, that was a confusing statement: On one hand, he didn’t rule out a procedure, which is about as close as anyone with the team will get to saying he possibly had one; on the other hand, though, he suggested that Kawhi should’ve been able to play in the Olympics. (And now that just seems like a lie … kind of like Lincoln Riley’s suggestion a day before Bear Alexander’s decision to redshirt became public: “There’s no story there. I mean, I know you guys are looking for one. Like, there’s – there’s no story there.”)
And it made a mess of their fan base, who didn’t know what to feel or who to believe. Whether to be mad at Grant Hill for excusing a healthy-enough Kawhi or proud of the Clippers for pulling him back for safekeeping or, alternately, mad at the team for pulling him back for safekeeping…
And most of all: Was Kawhi hurt or healthy? It’s the same question they have now: Is Kawhi hurt or healthy? Or how hurt is he? What does “progressing” even mean anymore?
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We all want for Kawhi to be able to play, we’re all rooting for that. He’s such a superb player, such a skilled basketball killer, and it’s such a bummer that he hasn’t been able to go. But all the obfuscation doesn’t serve his legacy, either, because if people don’t know what’s going on with him, they make assumptions. If they don’t understand that he’s hurt, they’ll assume he’s “load managing.” Instead of appreciating everything that he’s doing to get back to work and how frustrating it probably is for him, too.
I guess all that’s left to do, though, is to hope the Clippers’ current definition of “progress” means we see Kawhi back on the court soon. But I wouldn’t blame fans if they didn’t hold their breath.
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