The Los Angeles Dodgers tried to take advantage of one of the best pitchers in baseball last night. Their plan was incredibly flawed.
The Los Angeles Dodgers were the worst team against left handed pitching this season. They ranked dead last in wRC+ and OPS against southpaws, with 72 and .622 respectively. That is like having a team full of the 2016 version of Jason Heyward at the plate. With the NLCS tied 2-2, they were headed into a Game 5 against one of the best left handed pitchers in the league. They were unable to solve Jon Lester in Game 1, as expected from their horrendous split, so heading into Game 5 they devised a whole new plan.
Jon Lester is well-known for a few things. He’s been an admirably consistent pitcher throughout his entire career. He has his own personal catcher, David Ross, who has followed him from team to team. Most of all he is well-known for his inability to throw to first base. He’s one of the best at throwing a ball from the mound to home, but his ability to throw seems to stop there. Once asked to field a bunt and throw to first, he struggles. When asked to throw a pickoff to first, he stoutly refuses.
The Dodgers know this about Lester. The Cubs know this about Lester. Everybody knows this about Lester. He refuses to throw to first base. The Dodgers believed they could take advantage of what appeared to be a glaring weakness.
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Theoretically, if Lester never throws to first base, a runner can get as large of a lead as he would like. That large lead should translate to stealing bases. The ability to steal second base almost any time a runner gets on first base should translate to more runs scored. The premise was based on sound logic, assuming that Lester still never threw to first (he did not). In this sense, the Dodgers recognition of Lester’s refusal to throw to first base was valuable. However, their formulation of plan to capitalize on the weakness they identified failed miserably.
Their strategy on the basepaths was abundantly clear from the first batter. Kike Hernandez led off with a walk and proceeded to dance all over the place at first base. He took large leads, appeared to steal at one point, and ultimately made no real attempt to take what appeared to be a free base. In fact, he was so busy dancing around that he was unable to get to third base on a single to the gap.
Hernandez wasn’t the only Dodgers player that danced around while refusing to take the advantage blatantly being given to them. The same advantage, in fact, that Los Angeles claimed they were going to exploit before the game began. They simply failed at execution of whatever planned they claimed to have against Lester.
They either believed that dancing around where Lester could see them would distract him enough to make him throw worse pitches or that they would still be incapable of stealing with their large leads. The former was an unrealistic expectation that one of the best playoff pitchers of the last decade could be rattled by something so simple. The latter tends to indicate that Lester’s weakness wasn’t exploitable to begin with.
Over at Fangraphs, two different articles were written about the Dodgers’ plan against Lester. Jeff Sullivan addressed the more theoretical and mental challenges behind what the Dodgers tried to do. He made an interesting point that perhaps the odd feeling of being able to venture so far off the base had an adverse effect on the Dodgers base runners. It’s unusual to be so far off the base, so much so that they would naturally feel like they have to immediately head back to the safe zone of the base. This caused each and every one of the dancing base runners to actually remove any momentum he had going towards second base as the pitch was being delivered.
Los Angeles Dodgers
From a mathematical standpoint, August Fagerstrom approached the Dodgers’ premise that they could use Lester’s inability to throw as an advantage. He also mentions the lack of momentum going towards second base as being incredibly detrimental to anything the Dodgers were trying to do. Fagerstrom brings up the fact that Lester is quick to the plate while Ross has one of the best pop times. Certainly their ability to limit the time from pitch to plate and plate to second base would also limit number of steals. Lester allowed the third highest amount of stolen bases this regular season with 28, but with David Ross as his catcher they also threw out 13 runners. Those 13 runners, however, did not take ridiculous leads like the Los Angeles Dodgers did in Game 5.
It’s hard to quantify how much time lead off like Hernandez and Joc Pederson took would subtract from the time it normally takes to steal. However, it’s safe to assume that facing second base like a sprinter, or even taking a flow blown running lead 20 feet beyond the base as Hernandez did, would lead to a large portion of steals being successful.
And yet, the Dodgers didn’t do that. No team has done it all season long. In the end, for so many reasons, Los Angeles’ plan was incredibly flawed. It failed to exploit the weakness they so easily pointed out and left their offense focused on something entirely separate from hitting.
The Los Angeles Dodgers needed to put their money where they mouth was in their strategy against Lester. Maybe they don’t score the 9 runs required to win that game, but taking relatively free bases would have helped them out. They identified a weakness in a Cubs team that they are clearly overwhelmed by. And yet, they were unable to execute their plan. The plan failed brutally, made them look silly, and put them one loss away from another disappointing postseason.
Next: Stop Worrying about the Cubs Offense
Perhaps they should have focused more on the pitches Lester was throwing rather than the throws he wasn’t making.