The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse

by Molly Knight

  Game 3 of the NLDS was the Dodgers’ first playoff home game under the Guggenheim regime. Puig led the team onto the field, sprinting to his spot in right. Hyun-Jin Ryu took the mound and struggled from the start. Though he had pitched well in his first year in Los Angeles, Ryu was typically mediocre in the opening frame: he gave up seventeen runs in thirty first innings for a 5.10 earned run average. Like a marathon runner, he seemed to gain strength the longer the game went. While Ryu’s ERA in innings one through three was 3.50, he improved to 2.58 in innings four through six, and to 2.45 from the seventh to the ninth. It may have been his first time pitching in the playoffs, but Ryu was no stranger to big stages. He started the gold medal game in the 2008 Olympics for his native South Korea and pitched brilliantly in victory over Team Cuba, allowing just two runs in eight and a third innings.

  Whether he was nervous or just melting in the ninety-degree heat, Ryu was sweating so much on the mound that it appeared he had difficulty gripping the ball. The Braves capitalized on his tentativeness right away, scoring two quick first-inning runs. But the Dodgers got four runs back in the bottom of the second off a sacrifice fly from Ryu and a three-run home run from Carl Crawford. The Braves evened the score in the top of the third, before the Dodgers exploded for six in the next two innings to take a 10–4 lead. Ryu admitted later that he was hurt by his failure to adjust his strategy for the playoffs. Because bullpens risked being burned out during the regular season, it was more valuable for a starting pitcher to go seven innings and give up three runs than go five innings and give up none. In the postseason it was the opposite. Relievers were no longer being stashed away for rainy days, and the best were often called upon to work more than one inning. A manager’s job was to try to get twenty-seven outs from his staff by any means necessary, while giving up as few runs as possible. Instead of throwing 91 mph fastballs so that he might conserve energy to go deeper in the game, Ryu would have been better served throwing 95 until he tired, because tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. He gave up four runs in just three innings of work, but on that day the Dodgers didn’t need him to be great. Chris Capuano pitched a scoreless fourth, fifth, and sixth, and Los Angeles pounded the Braves 13–6 to take a 2–1 series lead.

  Before Game 3, Mattingly insisted Nolasco would start Game 4. But the idea of losing and being forced to fly back to Atlanta for a winner-take-all Game 5 was too scary for the skipper and his staff to bear. So they summoned Kershaw on short rest to try to close out the series. Kershaw had never pitched on three days’ rest in his career, and his catcher was nervous. It wasn’t that A. J. Ellis didn’t believe in Kershaw’s ability. He was of the firm belief that his best friend was the best pitcher in baseball, and as mentally tough as anyone. But his talent didn’t change the fact that firing a baseball overhand is not a natural motion for a human arm; knots of lactic acid form from the shoulder to the elbow as thick as meatballs during starts. Some starters are in so much discomfort they never sleep on the pitching-arm side of their body. Others have trouble finding feeling in their hands. The four days between starts are necessary to drain that acid from their arm muscles, so that blood can flow to the tips of their fingers unimpeded.

  Kershaw’s schedule in between starts was as regimented as his routine on game days. The day after a start he played catch. On day two he threw a bullpen session of forty or so pitches to stretch out his arm, a common practice many pitchers compare to an oil change. Day three was for long toss, and on day four he rested. Not only was Kershaw rushing that routine, but he was also coming off a game in which he had thrown 124 pitches and a season in which he’d tossed a career-high number of innings.

  And there was something else: Kershaw still hadn’t signed his contract extension. While it was true that a pitcher risked serious injury every time he threw a ball, catastrophe seemed more likely to happen when a player was tired. Because baseball contracts were guaranteed, if he signed a contract for hundreds of millions of dollars the night before Game 4 and then went out and hurt himself and was never able to start another game, he’d still collect all that money. But if he got injured before signing, Los Angeles could, in theory, significantly lower its off-season offer. Kershaw was still under the Dodgers’ control for 2014, but after that he would hit a free agent market that didn’t like to give injured pitchers long deals, regardless of pedigree.

  C.C. Sabathia had been one of the best pitchers in the game when the Yankees rewarded him with a seven-year, $161 million contract before the 2009 season. Sabathia was coming off an extraordinary year during which he posted a 1.65 ERA in 130 innings for Milwaukee in the season’s final two and a half months to help the team to its first playoff berth in twenty-six years. That workload came with a cost. Because they were in a tight race to the finish, the Brewers sent Sabathia to the mound on three days’ rest three outings in a row to close the season. Some wondered if the decision to risk his arm health was perhaps made easier by the fact that the Brewers knew they could not afford to re-sign him once he became a free agent. An exhausted Sabathia pitched poorly in his only playoff start for Milwaukee, allowing five earned runs and getting just eleven outs with ninety-eight pitches. Sabathia pitched well in his first four seasons with the Yankees before injuries from overuse compromised him at age thirty-two.

  Kershaw was just as competitive as Sabathia. Regardless of the money at stake, he wanted the ball with the chance to clinch. Facing elimination, the Braves countered with Freddy Garcia, a thirty-seven-year-old journeyman pitcher who had been on their roster for a month after spending most of the summer in the Orioles’ minor-league system. On paper it didn’t seem to be a fair fight. But the game began on an ominous note, with Adrian Gonzalez, a Gold Glove Award winner, booting a grounder hit to him on the first play of the contest. Kershaw got the next three outs without the ball leaving the infield. It looked as though the Dodgers might beat up Garcia from the start after Carl Crawford greeted him with a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first. But aside from another solo shot from Crawford in the third, Garcia gutted through a stellar performance, allowing just those two runs in six innings—which was more than the Braves could have hoped for.

  Kershaw was his usual self, striking out four and allowing just one hit through the first three innings. Then Freddie Freeman led off the fourth with a single, and Evan Gattis grounded an easy double-play ball to Gonzalez. But Gonzalez threw the ball away. So instead of two out and the bases empty Kershaw was forced to face the Braves’ star catcher, Brian McCann, with no out and runners on first and second. He struck McCann out. But Chris Johnson singled in a run, and a ground-out from Andrelton Simmons tied the game. The score stayed even at two through six, and both managers pulled their starting pitchers.

  Kershaw became the first pitcher to go six innings and give up no earned runs on three days’ rest since his teammate Josh Beckett did it in the 2003 World Series ten years earlier with the Marlins. But because of Gonzalez’s fluke errors, it didn’t look as though it would be enough. Ronald Belisario came in to pitch the seventh inning for the Dodgers and surrendered a triple and a single to give the Braves a 3–2 lead. Gonzalez had a chance to atone for his earlier mistakes in the bottom of the seventh, when he came up with two on and two out. He flied out to right. Despite Kershaw’s efforts, he couldn’t will the team to victory by himself. And when the Dodgers went to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning, it felt as if their season was on the line as well. The Braves were three outs from giving the ball to Craig Kimbrel, their excellent closer. If Los Angeles did not score in the eighth, the club would almost certainly have to fly back to Atlanta for a winner-take-all elimination game on the road.

  Puig led off with a double. When he reached second base he slapped his hands together and threw his fist at the sky. Juan Uribe was up next. After staggering through his first two miserable years with the Dodgers, Uribe had worked hard to prepare for his final season under contract, and came into 2013 looking to somehow salvage his time in blue. “If you don’t play good p
eople don’t remember you,” he said a month earlier. So the free-swinging Uribe stepped up to the plate looking to do something people would not forget. But Mattingly asked him to bunt. It was a strange call. The Dodgers needed only a run to tie the game, and Puig was fast enough to score from second on a single. Perhaps a better plan would have been to let the three men behind Puig try to get a hit to drive him in, rather than give the Braves an automatic out to advance him ninety feet. It was also head-scratching because Uribe had sacrificed only three times that season and once the year before. But Mattingly preferred Puig on third with one out to his being on second with no out, reasoning that a fly ball from Skip Schumaker could sacrifice him home. Uribe tried twice to get the bunt down and failed.

  After taking the next two pitches to work the count to 2-and-2, Uribe waited for the next offering from Braves reliever David Carpenter. Kimbrel stood in the bullpen, furious. He had told his manager that since the club would be eliminated if they lost, he wanted to get the last six outs. Gonzalez’s decision to let Carpenter start the inning was defensible. The third-year man had been excellent for Atlanta in sixty-five innings that season, striking out seventy-four hitters with a 1.78 ERA. But once Puig made it to second base with no outs, Kimbrel wanted in the game. Brian McCann flashed a signal for Carpenter to bury a slider in the dirt, while Uribe stared out at the reliever, flicking his bat back and forth over his right shoulder. It was the worst possible moment in David Carpenter’s young life to hang one, but that’s what he did. The ball floated straight down the center of the plate parallel to the blue lettering on Uribe’s white jersey. Uribe unloaded, crushing the ball high into the Los Angeles night toward the Dodgers’ bullpen. When it landed just inside the left-field foul pole to give Los Angeles a 4–3 lead, the fifty-four thousand people who were in attendance that night all seemed to scream and bounce in unison. Uribe rounded the bases, touched home, and ran back to the dugout, where he was mobbed by teammates. Los Angeles faithful remained on their feet. It was the biggest hit by any Dodger since Kirk Gibson’s homer that won Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Kimbrel stood in the bullpen with his hands on his hips and cursed. Kenley Jansen then struck out Jordan Schafer, Jason Heyward, and Justin Upton to end the game and send the Dodgers to the National League Championship Series.

  After the game Kershaw returned to the locker room to find Sandy Koufax waiting for him. While his teammates hollered and sprayed champagne and beer around him, Kershaw embraced his idol. Uribe was the last Dodger to leave. Hours after his home run he was still in uniform, drenched in liquor, standing on the soaked carpet in his soggy socks, as if the moment he changed back into his street clothes the night would no longer be real. In a roller-coaster season when so many of these players struggled to exist in the same clubhouse, it was fitting that the team’s most popular player got the hit that put them in the National League Championship Series. “Juan has been, I think consensus, he’s probably been the most liked teammate we have,” Kershaw said after the game. “He’s always the same no matter what. You couldn’t tell if he’s one-for-thirty or thirty-for-thirty. The way he plays, I couldn’t be happier for him. I just love him to death.”

  When Jansen recorded the final out, a relieved Mattingly hugged his coaches. What no one outside the coaching staff and front office knew was that when the Dodgers advanced to the National League Championship Series, Mattingly’s contract automatically vested for 2014. But there was no celebratory press conference. His players didn’t even know he would be back. The club made no announcement.

  • • •

  Mattingly assumed that silence meant he was out. In that way, whatever the Dodgers did versus the Cardinals wouldn’t matter to his future. Even though the Dodgers’ trip to the NLCS triggered a clause in his contract, all that meant was that the club would have to pay him for the 2014 season. They could give him that money and fire him. Yes, it would be harder for them to let go of the man who took them to their first World Series in twenty-five years if he accomplished that, but the lack of acknowledgment that his contract had vested stung him. After all, this was an organization that sent out regular press releases about national anthem singers and garden gnome giveaways. When the Dodgers flew to St. Louis to take on the Cardinals for the first two games of the NLCS, they did so with a manager who did not feel wanted.

  For National League teams, the road to the World Series always seemed to go through St. Louis. In the past fourteen seasons, the Cardinals had made it to the NLCS eight times, and won World Series titles in 2006 and 2011. Their eleven world championships were most in the NL and second only to the Yankees. That the Cardinals were able to field championship-caliber teams year in and year out was remarkable, given their market size. The Dodgers had bullied their way to the National League Championship Series by spending well over $200 million on player salaries. The Cardinals paid their players about half what Los Angeles did. What the St. Louis starting nine lacked in talent they made up for in depth. They were so good at drafting and developing young players that they seemed invulnerable to injury. If a guy got hurt, the organization suffered minimally because it had no shortage of viable replacements. Magic Johnson stood on the cut of the Busch Stadium grass before Game 1, visibly anxious. “I’m nervous and I’m crazy and I’ve gotta sit in the stands and be more nervous and crazier,” said Johnson. “The Cardinals are the model. We want to build the same thing back in L.A.”

  When Vin Scully described the inside of Busch Stadium as looking like an internal hemorrhage, he meant it with great affection. Scully deeply admired the Cardinals’ winning ways and loved to talk about how the organization had both the first female owner and the first infielder who wore glasses. Since Kershaw had pitched the final game of the NLDS and needed to rest, the Dodgers sent Greinke to the mound for Game 1. St. Louis countered with young Joe Kelly, who had pitched fewer innings in his career than Kershaw had that season. But Cardinal youth weren’t wired with the same tremors as young players on other teams. They seemed bred from birth not only to expect to play in maximum pressure situations, but to thrive.

  After the public address announcer said Carl Crawford’s name, Kelly stood on the mound holding the ball with both hands and breathed in the weight of the moment. Then he fired strikes one, two, and three. Crawford walked back to the dugout. Mark Ellis stepped into the batter’s box next to polite applause from St. Louis fans. Quiet and midwestern nice, Ellis did not have much in common with most of the better-known Dodgers. Whether or not they were arrogant, there was no denying that Los Angeles played with a panache that bothered opponents. The Cardinals preferred the kind of hard-nosed, head-down, aw-shucks baseball that had long been glorified as the “right way” to play the game. They were like the Diamondbacks, but better. The 2013 NLCS was more than just a battle for a spot in the World Series: it was a culture war.

  Ellis singled.

  Since the Cardinals had home-field advantage, the Dodgers would have to win at least one game on foreign soil to take the seven-game series. Swiping Game 1 with Kershaw on deck to pitch Game 2 would be ideal, and doing it by drawing blood in the first inning to knock the optimism out of the home crowd would be even better. Hanley Ramirez walked up to the plate looking to drive in Ellis. Ramirez had scorched the ball during the NLDS, going 8-for-16 with four doubles, a triple, and a home run. His six extra-base hits tied a playoff record for most ever in a National League Division Series. To say he had enjoyed a great year at the plate was an understatement. Ramirez’s 1.040 OPS was the best in major-league history for a shortstop with at least 300 at-bats. It was also tops in the NL, and second-best overall, behind only Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera (1.078). Had he played in enough games, he might have been the National League’s MVP. And unlike Puig, Ramirez didn’t rattle. Cardinal pitchers knew it.

  Teams in the NL Central had developed a reputation for pitching inside to brush hitters off the plate. In 2013, the four NL teams that hit opposing batters the most were in the league’s Central Division, with Pitt
sburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis going 1-2-3, and the Cubs taking fourth. It wasn’t that they were necessarily trying to hit opponents on purpose. A good way to gain an advantage over a hitter was to buzz him with an inside fastball to move him off the plate. If that player got hit, well, so be it. The free base was annoying, but it was the cost of the strategy. Plus, many of the hit batsmen were dangerous sluggers that opposing teams wanted to pitch around anyway. The approach was economical, too: hitting a guy cost only one pitch, but walking him required four.

  It’s not often that the most important pitch of a seven-game series is thrown in the first inning of the first game. But that’s what happened. After getting ahead of Ramirez in the count 1-2, Kelly drilled him in the left flank with a 95 mph fastball that ricocheted off his body so hard it sounded as though it had hit his bat and cracked it. Ramirez reeled away in agony, and after talking with Dodgers trainer Sue Falsone, walked to first base. At first it was difficult to tell how badly Ramirez was injured. He had been so brittle during the season—playing in just eighty-six games—that every time he ran or threw or swung he seemed to wince. Each trip around the bases was an adventure. With Ellis and Ramirez on first and second with one out, Gonzalez and Puig both struck out to end the threat. Ramirez remained in the game, hopeful he had just sustained a bone bruise. But as the innings wore on, the sharp pain near his skin radiated deeper, through his bones and into his lung. Each breath he took felt like a mistake.

  Greinke mowed down the first six Cardinal hitters he faced, allowing only one ball to leave the infield. Carl Crawford doubled to lead off the third inning for the Dodgers, and Ramirez came to bat again after Ellis grounded out. This time Kelly walked him. And then, unable to locate the strike zone, he walked Adrian Gonzalez to load the bases for Puig. With the count 2-1, Puig grounded into a force-out at home. Then Uribe came up with two out and slapped a first-pitch sinkerball up the middle to drive in Ramirez and Gonzalez. Those two runs looked like they might be enough for Greinke, who took the mound in the bottom of the third and struck out Cardinals third baseman David Freese and shortstop Pete Kozma to start the inning. But Kelly worked a two-out hit, and leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter walked, bringing up the dangerous Carlos Beltran with two on and two out. Beltran whacked a changeup from Grienke toward the deepest part of center field. Andre Ethier sprinted back to the fence, jumped, and missed it. Two runs scored. Ethier was playing out of position, but the Dodgers had had little choice but to put him in center with Matt Kemp injured and unable to play. By October, even the players who weren’t on the disabled list were battling some kind of nagging injury. For Ethier it was shin splints. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these Dodgers was that they were playing for the National League title without a true center fielder on their roster. An excellent defender would have caught Beltran’s fly ball. The game was tied 2–2.