The Los Angeles Dodgers signed A.J. Pollock to a 4-year contract last offseason, and are probably wishing they wouldn’t have.
A.J. Pollock is a great center fielder, and it certainly helped his cause that he has a career year in his final year with the Arizona Diamondbacks before free agency. But I don’t believe he is worth north of $50 million but that is what the Los Angeles Dodgers gave him.
It showed that he wasn’t worth the contract he was rewarded, as he only hit .266 with a .795 OPS.
Part of the reason he was so mediocre in 2019 was he was on the shelf a majority of the year. On April 30 he was placed on the Injured List with right elbow inflammation, and he didn’t return until the middle of July.
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His return was of course after Cody Bellinger was well on his way to an MVP type caliber season and was playing center field a lot of the time.
Alex Verdugo wasn’t bad either, as he showed that he could live up to his potential, hitting nearly .300 with a higher slugging, on base, and OPS than Pollock.
So, as you can see the Dodgers would still have been successful with Verdugo in the lineup every day and could have saved $55 million from Pollock’s contract, where they could have allocated that money somewhere else that was a more urgent need like the bullpen.
To make the Pollock decision look worse for Andrew Friedman, Pollock did not perform in the postseason, so much so that he was benched for the decisive Game 5 in Los Angeles.
In the 4 games he started and Game 5 where he pinch-hit, he recorded 11 strikeouts including three strikeouts Games 1, 2, and 3. He also did not record a hit the entire series.
With all that said, it is pretty clear that A.J. Pollock was not worth the money he was given last winter, and the Dodgers are going to have to pay the price the remaining three years of the deal if Pollock cannot turn it around.