Painful Loss Highlights Dodgers Need to Make Changes to Roster
A season filled with injuries of all kind to key players, maddening at-bat’s with runners in scoring position, poor production from expected starters AKA Luis Cruz, questionable bullpen management, and worst of all just simply awful baserunning, took another painful turn in San Francisco and with it a likely return to the DL for All-Star Shortstop Hanley Ramirez, just 4 games into his return from missing the first month of the season.
Dodgers fans fondness for Cruz has clouded their judgement and caused them and perhaps the front office to overlook the fact that Cruz needs to be replaced on the roster, and his replacement has to be the talented promising youngster Dee Gordon.
But really should that stop them from making the move, a move which could improve the Dodgers stagnant offense by adding much needed speed to the lineup, and does anyone expect another team to claim someone hitting .098? Hanley is most certainly headed to the DL which would open up a spot for Gordon who is hitting over .300 in AAA, has significantly improved his strikeout to walk ratio (17 K’s to 14 BB’s) and despite having 8 errors in 25 games, he’s getting on base nearly 40% of the time and doing what he does best stealing bases (14) and scoring runs (19).
How could putting Dee in the lineup possibly not improve the offense, it’s not like Cruz or Sellers are hitting at all or getting on base.
It’s been nearly a week since Ellis injured his quad, and while he has participated in some baseball activities he hasn’t run, it’s obvious he’s not ready physically to play in a game, so why are the Dodgers not putting him on the DL.
Yet with all of those changes here we are watching Luis Cruz and Justin Sellers flounder offensively, while the club overall continues to struggle to score runs while falling further below .500.
If the object is to put the best talent on the field and the goal is to score more runs than your opponent, then it’s time for Dodgers to make changes to their current roster, who clearly isn’t getting the job done.
No offense but the status quo simply isn’t getting the job done and unless the Dodgers are willing to make some obvious changes to a floundering offense, like other successful Major League teams are doing, then they are going to continue to struggle.
The Dodgers left 13 runners on base against the Giants Friday night, they’ve been doing this all season, it’s time for changes to the roster, if changes aren’t made then the Dodgers are going to fall further behind the leaders in the NL West.