You have to start with this, because it's the ignition switch of the Los Angeles Dodgers' 2019 season: They share a collective rage.
Losing the 2017 World Series to the Astros was disappointing, for sure, but it was a baseball rock/paper/scissors, a seven-game coin flip. If Marwin Gonzalez doesn't go oppo off Kenley Jansen in Game 2, if Clayton Kershaw pitches as well in Game 5 as he did in Game 7, then it might have been the Dodgers who dogpiled. Tip of the cap to the Astros; stuff happens.
But last fall's World Series was different. It was a train wreck. After pushing the National League boulder back up the mountain in another summit attempt, the Dodgers faced the Red Sox and got destroyed. Five games, and it wasn't that competitive.
Some on the Boston pitching staff thought that if they worked to the Dodgers' weaknesses, L.A. had no chance because their hitters seemingly couldn't make adjustments. That's exactly how it played out. The Dodgers batted .180 and struck out in 30 percent of their plate appearances, including that final toppling at-bat of Manny Machado as he flailed at a Chris Sale slider.
All of this brought the Dodgers to a crossroads in the offseason. They could be content with their silver medals, change little, and drift onto the same path that had led them to moments when they watched other people celebrate. Or they could dig in, fix swings, effect change and try to find a way to climb on top of the baseball world in 2019 and create an alternative to that Kirk Gibson home run highlight package that's been running at Dodger Stadium for 30 seasons.
So now, the Dodgers are angry and extremely focused at the outset of this season, and they are bulldozing opponents with offensive results that defy convention. Through their first 10 games, the Dodgers had 24 homers; only the Seattle Mariners had more. Entering the week, they had a team OPS of .991, were averaging 8.4 runs per game and had a whopping run differential of plus-36.
But the greatest evidence of change -- the manifestation of the effort to improve -- is in the next-level metrics. The Dodgers' early-season swing-and-miss rate is 7.8 percent, the second-best rate in baseball and about half of what it was in 2017. The team's contact rate on pitches in the zone is 81.4 percent, the second-best in the majors. And the Dodgers -- those guys who seemed to hack at everything the Red Sox threw last fall -- have swung at the lowest percentage of pitches out of the zone, at 23.6 percent. That's the best in the majors.
To sum up their collective work in this 10-game sample: They haven't swung at pitches out of the strike zone, generally. And when they have swung, they're crushing the ball.
The Dodgers hired Robert Van Scoyoc to replace hitting coach Turner Ward, who moved on to the Reds. Van Scoyoc built his professional reputation rehabilitating the swing of J.D. Martinez and others, and fluently speaks the language that this generation of hitters embraces.
Every day, veteran catcher Russell Martin said, each of the Dodgers' position players is presented with two plans -- first, a teamwide approach against the opposing staff, and second, an individualized plan of attack. The rate at which the Dodgers' staff has been accurate in predicting how opposing pitchers will work has been remarkable, in Martin's experienced eyes.
"I've never seen anything like it before," Martin said. "It's another level.
"It's like having to pass a test -- but you're getting all of the answers ahead of time."
Van Scoyoc joined the Dodgers at the perfect time because the clubhouse is filled with players open to change. Joc Pederson is 26, after four-plus seasons of big power and some extended slumps, and if he's going to become a star, it needs to happen now. Yasmani Grandal has departed, and Austin Barnes has a chance to establish himself as an everyday catcher in the big leagues. If Enrique Hernandez is to be more than a super-utility player, this is probably the year he needs to advance, because he's 27.
Cody Bellinger has been an All-Star, a Rookie of the Year and a World Series bust two years running, the most prominent example of the Dodgers' inability to adjust. He has 45 plate appearances in the Fall Classic, with five hits and 23 strikeouts. He's grown up in baseball, the son of a big leaguer, and yet he spent the winter diligently learning about his swing, learning the feel, learning what makes it work -- mental tools that he believes will help him adapt from pitch to pitch, from at-bat to at-bat.
What manager Dave Roberts has seen, as a by-product, is a completely different mindset in batting practice. No more pseudo Home Run Derby, filling the right-field stands with batting-practice balls. Rather, in BP, Bellinger has been working the ball to the biggest part of the park in left-center -- waiting a little longer. When he does that, Bellinger is in position to react to what the Astros first identified as his kryptonite -- breaking stuff down and in, at his feet. He has been driving everything this spring, to all fields, line to line. Bellinger has more home runs (seven) than strikeouts (six).
Roberts remembers something Van Scoyoc said during spring training -- and Roberts loved this -- that as far as Van Scoyoc was concerned, the regular season was merely a dress rehearsal for the Dodgers' big show in October, when they would have to be prepared to face the aces, the No. 1 and No. 2-type starters, the best relievers on the best teams, with starters doubling down in relief appearances. There is a lot of discussion about hitting, yes, but Roberts is encouraged that there has been greater attention to approach.
The collective work in the batting cages, staffers say, has been outstanding. The Dodgers are putting in the work, the dive is deep. The buy-in is there.
The rage is there.