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I’ve heard this drivel before, and I just can’t wrap my head around it.

Last summer, Nomar Garciaparra was confronted about his hitting woes, and responded that the team was winning, and that was all that mattered. This spring, he is repeating the same mantra. From Ken Gurnick at Dodgers.com:

He’ll point out that while he was hitting only two home runs over the first half (Gonzalez had 10), the Dodgers spent most of the time in first place.

“Certain numbers were definitely down,” acknowledged Garciaparra. “But throughout all of this, with everybody writing that I and Gonzo and Jeff were not producing, we were winning. What matters? Whether it looks pretty? The stats don’t matter. Wins matter.

I guess in a vacuum, the sentiment is correct, but if you take a step back, you’ll see that the team won because the pitching was superb in April/May, fueled by the electric starts of Penny and Lowe. They won in spite of Nomar’s struggles, not because of some innate knowledge about what it takes to win. If Nomar had that, then maybe he would be wearing a ring that he actually contributed to, instead of piggybacking on the incredible Red Sox surge of 2004, after he was traded. Even though Wilson Betemit had displayed more power and patience then Nomar, and had an OPS 100 points higher, when Loney came up, it was Betemit who hit the bench while the struggling Nomar was given the bulk of the playing time at third base. His hitting picked up, but the team that was 31-22 at the end of May would never have a winning month again, even as Matt Kemp and James Loney did everything possible to keep the boat from sinking.

Later in the summer as the losses mounted, the veterans — frustrated over the losing and losing playing time — seemed to blame it on the kids even though the kids were doing the bulk of the hitting. Luis Gonzalez summed up the feelings of the veterans with his rant on the Dan Patrick Show:

So in baseball a lot of times people look at the numbers instead of the results, and the results for us were we were not winning games, but that’s what the organization wanted. They wanted to develop these young kids. And instead of us going out there and winning games, we ended up finishing in fourth place and the fans are ticked off, and the organization is now going to continue to this youth movement, which is great for them.”

And as I said, Nomar continuing right where he and the other veterans left off. He talks about the lack of hitting with runners in scoring position, but fails to mention the real culprit, which was the collapse of the pitching staff. The Dodgers got through the woes of August — when they couldn’t hit a lick with runners in scoring position to save their lives — still in a position to compete for the playoffs. When the pitching really nosedived in September, the win total went with it, and so did any hopes for a post season birth.

It was plain and simple. They stopped winning because the pitching went from a strong suit to average to below average to old Rocky bad.


It doesn’t take Drew McCourt’s rocket science mind to see that as the pitching got worse, the team lost more games. Even a team OPS of .808 in July was not enough to counterbalance a team ERA of 4.74. It is a testament to James Loney and his historic September onslaught that their win/loss record was only 12-16 when you take a look at the 5.05 ERA they posted in Sept.

After the All-Star break, Brad Penny went from a legitimate Cy Young contender to Brad Average. On July 2nd, D Lowe had an ERA of 2.98, and with Penny, was keeping the Dodgers in the pennant race. He would end the season with an ERA of 3.88, only made five quality starts out of his next 15, yet was one of the biggest whiners on the team about veteran playing time issues. In comparison, Chad Billingsley (a kid) posted a 3.12 ERA, and was the defacto ace of the rotation once he stepped in from the bullpen. After that, we had nothing. David Wells gave it his best effort, but the cumulative effect was still a 5.12 ERA in games he started. Estaban Loiaza was even worse, giving us an 8.34 ERA in the 5 games he took the mound. Schmidt was down, Kuo was down, Wolf was down. They turned to Mark Hendrickson, Brett Tomko, and Eric Stults, and none could keep runs off the table.

The problem was pitching. Plain and simple.

Phil Gurnee, co-author of True Blue LA, takes a look at the current, past, and future of his Los Angeles Dodgers. Mixing a totally subjective viewpoint with statistical analysis, he looks at baseball from both sides of the mirror.

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