1975 Los Angeles Dodgers: Great Pitching, Fading Bats & A Rival’s Revenge

The 1975 Los Angeles Dodgers were coming off a breakthrough year. After four straight second-place finishes, they won the NL West in 1974 and went on to reach the World Series. The Dodgers were still a good team in ’75 but an old nemesis rebounded with a vengeance to leave Los Angeles on the outside looking in when October rolled around.

A weak offense was the primary shortcoming for L.A. in 1975. Leftfielder Bill Buckner was injured early on. The Dodgers got poor years from Steve Yeager at catcher and shortstop Bill Russell. Willie Crawford in rightfield had a decent .345 on-base percentage but lacked power.

With half the lineup a liability there was little room for error. Jimmy Wynn had a stellar OBP of .403, but the centerfielder saw his power decline. Davey Lopes was an ignitor, with a .358 OBP and a league-leading 77 stolen bases, but he wasn’t going to provide the muscle. Steve Garvey batted .319 and slugged a solid .476, but the first baseman wasn’t a home run hitter.

Only third baseman Ron Cey had a truly complete offensive season, finishing with a .372 OBP, 25 home runs and 101 RBIs. It wasn’t enough to stop the Dodgers from ranking eighth in the 12-team National League for runs scored.

The good news is that L.A. didn’t have to score a lot. Andy Messersmith, Doug Rau, Don Sutton, and Burt Hooton combined to win 68 games. Messersmith’s 321 innings pitched led the league and he posted a 2.29 ERA. The ERAs for Sutton, Rau, and Hooton were all in the high 2s to low 3s. The same went for spot starter and reliever Rick Rhoden.

While closer Mike Marshall slipped a bit from his Cy Young performance in 1974, he still worked over 100 innings and finished with a 3.29 ERA. Al Downing and Charlie Hough had good years in relief. The Los Angeles pitching staff delivered the best composite ERA in the National League.

THE DODGERS & REDS RENEW A CLASSIC NL WEST RIVALRY

The Cincinnati Reds were the Dodgers’ principal rival in this era. Prior to 1994, the leagues were split into just two divisions, an East and a West, with only first-place finishers going to the postseason. The Reds, Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros (a National League team until 2013) joined Los Angeles, the San Diego Padres, and San Francisco Giants in the NL West, with franchises like the Arizona Diamondbacks or Colorado Rockies still decades from existence.

It was the Reds that the Dodgers had ran second to three times in the first half of the decade, and it was Cincinnati that Los Angeles held off to win a good division race in ’74. When the Dodgers started this 1975 campaign by going to Cincy and losing three straight, it was less than an ideal sign.

A week later the Reds made the return trip west, for a four-game series. Los Angeles got off to a good start, with Cey and Wynn both homering in Monday night’s opener. Rau pitched into the seventh inning and Marshall got the final eight outs of a 5-2 win. On Tuesday, Wynn homered again. Sutton took a no-hitter into the seventh inning before giving up a solo blast to Johnny Bench, and the Dodgers won 3-1.

Wynn had more heroics in store for Wednesday night. Trailing 6-2 in the seventh inning, he unloaded a two-out grand slam to tie the game. In the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and the bases loaded again, Garvey singled to deliver the 7-6 win.

Thursday afternoon’s getaway finale had the look of a missed opportunity when Los Angeles gave up two runs in the top of the ninth and fell behind 4-3. It was time for more two-out magic. Garvey’s RBI single tied the game. In the 11^th inning, Wynn and Garvey both singled, and a subsequent error scored the winning run. Los Angeles had come up with a four-game sweep.

The NL West race was tightly packed from top to bottom on the last weekend April when the Dodgers made the trek north to face San Francisco. On Friday night, they got two hits from Lopes and Garvey and three more from Lee Lacy. While Messersmith didn’t pitch well he did it with his bat—three more hits—and he pitched eight innings. L.A. won 6-5.

Cey set a fast tone on Saturday with a three-run blast in the first and the Dodgers raced out to a 9-2 lead after just two innings, cruising to a 13-3 win. On Sunday, Sutton went the distance, Crawford had three hits, and both he and Lacy drove in three runs apiece. Los Angeles won 7-3 and closed out another big series sweep.

The Dodgers had the division lead, and they played steady baseball throughout the month of May. By the time Memorial Day arrived, Los Angeles was 28-17 and held a 3 ½ game lead on Cincinnati. It looked like the power shift that had taken place a year earlier might hold.

SUMMER SLUGGISHNESS OPENS THE DOOR TO THE BIG RED MACHINE

But the early summer brought problems. The Dodgers came out of the holiday and lost consecutive series to the Mets and Chicago Cubs. Later in June they lost a pair of series to a rising young team in Philadelphia. They were swept in San Francisco and lost four of six right before the All-Star break against contenders from Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

A sluggish period of the season isn’t unheard of, and Los Angeles still had a 49-42 record at the break. But what was almost unheard of was the torrid pace Cincinnati got on. By the break, the Reds were sitting on a stunning 61-29 record. Unbelievably, in a matter of less than two months, the Dodgers had gone from a 3 ½ game lead to being 12 ½ back and virtually dead in the water.

Nor did things get better in the late summer. Los Angeles lost a home series to Pittsburgh and dropped three of four against the Cubs and Cardinals. Over late July and early August, the Dodgers and Reds had seven head-to-head matchups. By this point, Los Angeles would have to sweep all seven to even have a puncher’s chance at making this a race. Instead, they lost four of the seven games. They were 15 ½ games back in early August.

A NICE FINISH BUT NO OCTOBER FOR THE 1975 DODGERS

With the Reds on their way to a 108 wins and a World Series title, it would have been easy for the Dodgers to mail in the rest of the season. But they didn’t. They kept competing and started to play better. Los Angeles won five of six against Philadelphia, took three of four from Cincinnati and played their way to a final record of 88-74. It was the third-best record in the National League and the seventh-best in MLB overall.

It was a playoff-caliber year by the standards of today, but it was a harsher world in 1975. And things didn’t change in ’76, as Los Angeles won 92 games but again finished second to Cincinnati. Not until 1977 did the Dodgers get back on top in the NL West.