Series Preview: This one neat trick has cemented the Dodgers’ supremacy

Why are the Dodgers so much better than the Giants? Simple: they hit the ball hard and they hit the fastest balls harder than everybody else.

The Giants are about to park in LA for four games against a Dodgers team they’ve played tough this year, but who really don’t seem to struggle much on offense and have the pitching to match. An examination of just how the Dodgers are better seems relevant at this point, especially if you’re reading this and wondering what it will take for the Giants to go from second division to top of the league again.

Statcast is able to measure the batting average of balls put in play on pitches of a certain velocity. Let’s just look at 95 mph, since that’s pretty fast but at the same time not quite that common, although modern pitching has gotten to the point that we’re very close to 95 mph being the average fastball velocity. Excluding the pitchers, the Dodgers are really good against 95+ mph fastballs with a .348 batting average. That breaks down like this:

Because our time is precious, I’m not going to jump around the league and compare the Dodgers to everybody, so let’s just take a look at how the similarly talented Yankees lineup stacks up against the same kind of fastball:

So, that at least partially establishes the Dodgers’ bona fides against this kind of velocity. And now... here are the Giants:

Doesn’t compare, really. The .213 mark (less the pitchers) is actually a bit better than the Giants’ average against 94+ mph. Drop down that one extra mile per hour and the batting average drops to .211. Again, pitchers excluded. Bumgarner and Dereck Rodriguez actually both have hits against 94 mph fastballs.

So, while this alone doesn’t account for the Dodgers’ NL-leading .350 wOBA (pitchers excluded). They have an MLB-leading team OBP of .354, in part because of a 10.5% walk rate. They’re patient, they hit the ball hard, and as a group, they can handle the highest velocity pitches.

Just to make one more comparison: the Twins have the best lineup in baseball right now (.357 wOBA) and have even out-homered the Dodgers (135-110). But against fastballs of 95+ mph, their team batting average is just .300.

Success against this one specific type of pitch doesn’t have to determine the entire course of the franchise, but it’s helpful to see why the Giants have been left behind in the power trend that has overtaken the league: they literally can’t keep up. And to really drive the comparison home, which of these things is not like the other?

Getting younger can only help the Giants at this point.

Meanwhile, four days in LA means we’re going to get at least one full day of the Max Muncy-Madison Bumgarner cove shot beef that led to two “Go Get It Out of the Ocean” shirts:

I think two shirts covering the same event is a bit much, but this is Hollywood, and if you don’t make a sequel or reboot of an original property immediately, the franchise dies. But also — oof. Look at them. They’re so happy. So pleased with themselves. Do you taste bile?

Anyway, the Dodgers do not care about The Rivalry, but they do love bonding over t-shirts inspired by their encounters with Madison Bumgarner. And Dodgers fans, who also don’t care about The Rivalry, will still get a kick out of mocking a team they know the fan base for which actually does care about The Rivalry.

Yes, the Giants have played the Dodgers tough this year (4-5 so far) and the Giants are playing better overall lately, and yes, the Giants are 3-2-3 this century in four-game series at Dodger Stadium, but — ah, screw it. This is Giants-Dodgers. It’s not supposed to go according to plan. The Dodgers have the best everything and the Giants might just ruffle their feathers enough by getting their grimy fingers on their fine dining ware or something that it might just get in their heads.

Plus, if this winds up being a trash-talk heavy start that might favor the Giants, too. The Giants are a slow, deliberate team that plays without emotion or energy. The Dodgers might be young and impudent enough to overplay their hand and go for an excited kill shot early, letting the tortoise-esque Giants get the better of them to start the series. Win one of the first two, then who knows?

Hitter to watch

Matt Beaty was a 12th-round draft pick by the Dodgers in 2015 and along with Willie calhoun (who went to the Rangers in the Yu Darvish trade) and Walker Buehler are the first players from that draft to make it to the big leagues.

(That was the Phil Bickford, Chris Shaw, Andrew Suarez, and Steven Duggar draft for the Giants)

He’s going to get more playing time now that Corey Seager is on the IL for 4-6 weeks with a hamstring strain. The Giants saw him in one plate appearance opening weekend (he singled off of Ty Blach as a pinch hitter) but have missed him since because of his up-and-down roster status. He hit his first major league home run on Friday night against the Cubs and has nine RBI in 50 plate appearances.

It’s expected at this point that the Dodgers can just reach into their farm system and call up a shiny new present to unwrap, and of course the Giants struggle against players they’ve never seen before, so this seems like it could be an interesting matchup for the rookies, Tyler Beede and Shaun Anderson especially. Beaty is essentially one of their contemporaries. It feels like it has been the Giants’ fate for their veterans to be flummoxed by rookies while their rookies are flummoxed by veterans.

Pitcher to watch

Game one of this series will mark one full week since reliever Joe Kelly last pitched and if you’ve checked in on the Dodgers at any point this season, then you know why: he’s been really bad, and he’s the only player Dodgers fans don’t like:

He’s like if Nick Vincent and Derek Holland merged. I feel this merge comparison works because their combined salary is just a little bit more than Kelly’s and their combined ERA (6.14) is actually worse (7.59), although we’re talking about a difference of roughly sixty innings more pitched by that bad back of of the bullpen combo. Anyway, Kelly’s last scoreless appearance came on June 8th against the Giants!

This is a four game series. While it’s entirely possible the Dodgers’ four starters each go seven innings, there’s a nonzero chance that one of these games gets weird enough that Dave Roberts has to deploy Joe Kelly.

Prediction

Bumgarner will make that start on Thursday against Walker Buehler in a “Get Out of the Ocean” Game rematch, and if it goes well (6 IP 0-3 runs), it will be his last start as a Giant.