Dodgers: L.A. Columnist Somehow Thinks 2022 NLDS Loss Puts Asterisk on 2020

After Saturday's stunning loss by the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLDS, Los Angeles Times writers Bill Plaschke, Jorge Castillo, and Jack Harris took to YouTube to get their feelings out. Like all Dodger fans, they were frustrated and shocked by that night's turn of events.

Unlike most Dodgers fans, they didn't have the good sense to wait until their minds had cleared before commenting. Case in point: this exchange between Castillo and Plaschke.

Castillo: "These guys talk about how this is a crapshoot — small sample size in October, anything can happen. Now we have a 10 year sample size of this team in October — and the only time they won the World Series was when the season was unlike any other."

Plaschke: "And there's an asterisk by that [championship] that's getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year. That 2020 seems like a fluke."

Now, you might be wondering what in the world a 2022 meltdown has to do with the 2020 World Series. If so, congratulations on thinking more clearly than Bill Plaschke! (A low bar, to be sure, but life is all about little victories.)

The whole "sample size"/"crapshoot" thing is a red herring. If the playoffs really are a crapshoot, the Dodgers would have had a 63 percent chance of winning at least one World Series in the past 10 years. As it turns out, they've won one and had another one stolen from them, so the math checks out in their favor.

This video was really just an excuse for Plaschke to rant like a guy who is good at typing words but not very good at saying them. And when Castillo asked him at the end what he would do if he were the owner of the team, this is Plaschke's exact quote:

"Ahh, I don't know. I would hold a meeting with the front office and the coaching staff and say, 'What's gotta change?' Something's gotta change! Something's gotta give. I don't know what that is, it's too early, I'm too [looks at the camera for effect] enraged and embarrassed to make a call on that. But something's gotta give. Something's gotta give."

Maybe Plaschke was just a huge fan of the 2003 romcom "Something's Gotta Give" starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Or maybe, just maybe, he's a blowhard who has plenty of criticisms and no actual ideas. And who somehow things a bad series in 2022 negates the Dodgers winning the 2020 World Series in the most grueling postseason in baseball history.