While You Weren’t There

While you weren’ t there, the Dodgers were playing well. Really well.

Clayton Kershaw won the pitching version of the triple crown.

Matt Kemp has been on a tear at the end of the season, chasing the traditional hitters’ version of the triple crown during the final week of games.

As a team, they’ve been really good also — 15 games over .500 (38-23) in the 61 games they’ve played since July 22nd.

For those of us who had generally stopped paying attention, the Dodgers’ performance comes as a huge surprise. James Loney managed to raise his average to over .280 and is in double digits in home runs once again. During the first few months of the season, nobody  would have thought either of those things had a foul ball’s chance of hitting someone at an afternoon game at a mostly-empty Dodger Stadium.

Javy Guerra and Kenley Jansen bounced back and made up for the virtual “no-shows” of Hong Chi Kuo and Jonathan Broxton out of the bullpen.

Ted Lilly and Hiroki Kuroda finished the year with more respectable numbers than I thought and while Kershaw and Kemp have put up all-time great Dodgers seasons.

For a team that was out of the race so early, the numbers will actually look more kindly on the Dodgers than the reality of the situation.

Despite being a Dodgers fan who has rebuked the current ownership, I would be remiss if I didn’t congratulate the players. The players are not the ones that made the Dodgers a joke throughout the league. The players didn’t lead a cornerstone franchise in the second largest media market into inexplicable bankruptcy. The players kept fighting. In the end, this year’s team, the players on the field, should be remembered for doing the best they could.

Despite Ned Colletti’s “logic,” who really expected aging infielders Casey Blake, Juan Uribe, or even Rafael Furcal to have impact seasons necessary for a real playoff run? Did anyone think that a team that planned on a Marcus Thames/Jay Gibbons platoon in left field would be a playoff team? Let’s not go and blame them for getting hurt and not living up to Ned’s sometimes-skewed logic.

The fans took a stand this year against the owner of a team that was more than 10 games back in the division for all but one day since June 28. In a city where getting anyone to care about anything can be a challenge, thousands of people lodged their protests against owner Frank McCourt by not going to games.

But the fans’ protest wasn’t of Kemp, Kershaw, and the players. I hope the players understand that. If not — if Kemp, Kershaw, and other young impactful Dodgers see the fans’ non-support as traitorous and use it as a reason not to be with the team long-term — things could get a whole lot worse before they get any better.

So congratulations Mr. Kershaw and Mr. Kemp for spectacular seasons. The players on the team have turned a completely embarrassing year into one that shows a glimmer of hope for the future with new ownership.

And for that, I say thanks.