LOS ANGELES – The 133-year rivalry between the teams we now know as the Dodgers and Giants has taken a slightly different turn recently, and maybe that’s why it’s more intense, gut-grinding and fascinating than ever. (And yes, we realize that takes in quite a bit of territory.)
It has always been good guys vs. bad guys, of course, the roles and the historical perspective depending on whether you wore blue or black and orange. In a blood rivalry like this, no less can be expected.
But while the Dodgers and Giants will always eye each other warily, the teams and organizations and their ways of doing things may be more similar than ever.
Case in point: Before Tuesday night’s series opener, the Dodgers publicly announced their batting order around 3 p.m., four hours before game time, as is fairly traditional. The Giants waited to announce theirs until around 4:30.
No surprise. Dave Roberts has learned to be ready for anything when Gabe Kapler’s in the other dugout.
“We do,” he said with a smile.
And it works both ways. Roberts listed his own Wednesday starting pitcher as TBA on Tuesday, again a minor breach of tradition but one that keeps the opponent guessing. “You can say it’s gamesmanship, but I don’t think we’re dead-set on who we want to start (Wednesday),” he said, adding: “Right now there’s no benefit to divulging that.”
(A little before 11 a.m. Wednesday, the Dodgers confirmed it would be Tony Gonsolin.)
Maybe the Dodgers’ manager has figured it out. Other Giants opponents (hello, Padres!) have seethed this season over Kapler’s desire to toss the game’s unwritten rules aside – you know, ignoring those fusty prohibitions against things like not bunting or stealing or swinging at a 3-0 pitch with a huge lead. The more effective strategy might be just to do unto others as they’d do unto you, rather than yelling at the clouds about violations of baseball etiquette.
“I completely understand his thought process,” Roberts said early Tuesday evening. “I might or might not follow suit, but I understand where he’s coming from.”
This is baseball’s oldest rivalry and again its best.
The Giants won 107 games in the 2021 regular season, the Dodgers won 106, and controversial check-swing calls were decisive in both San Francisco’s division title and the Dodgers’ five-game Division Series victory. They’re at it again, as evident by the home team’s tense 3-1 victory Tuesday night in The Ravine in the first of 19 meetings this season.
“Even on the other side (of the country), you could see how good each team was” in 2021, said Dodger newcomer Craig Kimbrel, who watched last year’s developments from Chicago and had his first up-close taste of it by getting the save Tuesday night.
“And it’s not too many times you have two teams – actually, really three teams in one division (including San Diego for a while) – play as good as they did and still have that many wins. So they were beating up on everybody else pretty good.
“Still two really good ballclubs.”
It’s a grind, but when I asked Chris Taylor on Tuesday night if these games were mentally exhausting, he demurred.
“No, I think it’s fun,” he said. “These series are why you play these games. The crowd was awesome. Just a great game. You know, it’s exciting playing in this rivalry.”
The mirror image part? Farhan Zaidi has taken what he and Andrew Friedman developed in L.A., and before that what Zaidi learned under Billy Beane in Oakland, and has applied it in San Francisco in what may be the biggest shape-shifting development in this rivalry since Leo Durocher took his managerial talents from Ebbets Field to the Polo Grounds in the middle of the 1948 season.
“How they think, how they play the game, we think a lot alike,” Roberts said. “So when you take two organizations that sort of see the world similarly in a lot of aspects, it makes it fun and challenging.”
Many of the same ingredients exist on both sides – players who can play multiple positions, emphasis on matchups and taking advantage of leverage situations, and acquiring players who seem flawed or are coming off serious injuries and finding ways to turn them into productive players.
The difference: The Giants can’t yet paper over mistakes with money, with a $155.4 million opening-day payroll compared to the Dodgers’ best-in-MLB $280.8 million, according to Cot’s Contracts. The Dodgers added Freddie Freeman to their lineup of All-Stars. The Giants couldn’t keep Kris Bryant, who went to division rival Colorado, but added left-hander Carlos Rodon, who held the Dodgers to three hits and two runs in six innings Tuesday night, for $44 million over two years.
The Giants also signed former Dodger Joc Pederson for one year and $6 million, a bargain-basement contract for a guy who through his career has scorched right-handed pitching but hasn’t been trusted against lefties. Things haven’t changed: Through Tuesday he has 53 at-bats against right-handers with six homers, nine RBIs and a 1.133 OPS. He’s 1 for 3 against lefties. (One thing has changed, though: Dodger fans booed Joc ferociously when he pinch-hit Tuesday night.)
The fun is just beginning. And one of the flaws in 2023’s more balanced schedule format will be fewer of these meetings, with their energy, intensity and stress, as well as what Roberts called the “cat and mouse” process, in both dugouts.
I say we need more Dodgers-Giants games, not fewer.
jalexander@scng.com
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