Surprises

Will Leitch expounds on the five teams he believes will surprise in 2016. One of them is a surprise inclusion on the list:

All right, all right. No reasonable person believes the Dodgers to be anything other than a serious playoff contender. They’ve made the postseason three consecutive seasons, they’ve got the biggest payroll in baseball, they’re the freaking Dodgers. I get it.

But it sure feels like the rest of baseball has forgotten about the Dodgers, doesn’t it? The Mets and (especially) the Cubs are the hipster fun young teams, with their mimes and their crazy Cespedes cars. The Giants and the Diamondbacks are the ones who made the big free-agent acquisitions in the offseason. The main news the Dodgers have made has all been bad, from their pitcher injuries to their television situation to the fact that this is going to be Vin Scully’s last season, a fact I refuse to believe.

These are all real problems for the Dodgers, but they’re disguising the fact that this is still a terrific, deep team.

Right now, it’s popular to try to knock the Dodgers down. They are one of a number of teams trying to steal “The Team Easiest to Hate” from the Yankees.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/230VxNc