You can’t say the Dodgers didn’t give the rest of the National League West a chance.
It wasn’t a great chance, certainly. But consider this: The Dodgers spotted their division rivals 157 games before rolling out their varsity lineup.
The Dodgers clinched the division a week earlier. They still could win 100 games.
On Wednesday, with that preferred batting order making its season debut and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound, the Dodgers fielded the 10 men you might well see in Game 1 of the playoffs next week.
Or, as the Dodgers might say, Opening Day.
The Dodgers can say their schedule starts in October, and their goal is for everyone to be healthy and effective then. But that presumption depends upon the supporting cast: the boys of summer that might never play come fall but must play well enough so that the stars can play postseason ball.
“It’s just the depth,” Freddie Freeman said.
Everyone has depth, to some degree.
“We’ve got really good guys that can cover guys when they get hurt,” Freeman said. “You’re going to go through injury bugs over the course of the year. It’s on people to step up. We’ve got some guys that are on the bench that can fill in.
“You have guys that can potentially be playing every day on some other teams.”
In April, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman were on the injured list. By the time both men had come off the injured list, Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith were on it. By the time Hernández and Smith had returned, Andy Pages was on the injured list, soon to be followed by Shohei Ohtani.
Rookie infielder Alex Freeland has more at-bats than Smith. In roughly the same number of at-bats, backup catcher Dalton Rushing has more home runs and a higher OPS than Smith, the starting catcher.
The Dodgers rank second in the majors in OPS.
Four Dodgers pitchers started at least 20 games, but Yamamoto is the only one projected for the playoff rotation. Emmet Sheehan and All-Star Justin Wrobleski each started more games than Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, combined.
Eric Lauer, who had won once in six starts for the Toronto Blue Jays, won six times in an eight-start stretch for the Dodgers.
The Dodgers rank fourth in the majors in earned-run average.
“We’ve had more injuries than we would have liked this season, but with that came opportunities for guys that gained a lot of valuable experience,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said.
“Now, going into October, we feel like we have a chance to have a roster as representative of the talent level we have as you can reasonably expect.”
The Dodgers buy depth, right?
“I won’t say anything about that,” Friedman said.
They buy everything else. And what other team would spend a combined $10 million on utilitymen Kiké Hernández and Miguel Rojas?
How about the farm system? The Dodgers traded three prospects for Tarik Skubal, the best player available at the trade deadline, and the league website nonetheless ranks the Dodgers’ farm system as the best in all the land.
So, we’ll ask again: What about buying depth?
“Obviously, we have a very high payroll,” Friedman said, “but I think leaving it at that diminishes the incredible work that our scouts, our baseball ops, our player development, our Latin American scouts — our entire department — and the success they’ve had in their respective areas, and how it’s all come together.
“I think it really minimizes it in a way that’s not fair to excellent people doing excellent work.”
That excellent work includes 97 wins, so far, from the 53 men to play for the Dodgers this season. On Wednesday, finally, the Dodgers had their A team: Freeman, Edman, Betts and Max Muncy starting in the infield; Teoscar Hernández, Pages and Kyle Tucker in the outfield; Smith at catcher; Yamamoto at pitcher; and Ohtani at designated hitter.
One of the charms of baseball is a cliche: Anything can happen — in a single game or in a short series. The Dodgers lost to the San Diego Padres on Wednesday. The A team is 0-1 this season, with October to go.
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