Jon Weisman has a good rundown of the Dodgers heading into the postseason. One thing that jumped out as I ran down the LA roster is just how many rookies played key roles on this team – LA got 67 Win Shares (25% of the team’s total) from Russell Martin, Takashi Saito, Andre Ethier, Jonathan Broxton, Chad Billingsley, Hong Chih-Kuo, and James Loney.
Which raises an interesting chicken-and-egg question. On the one hand, the staggering number of successful rookies in the NL this year may bode well for the future strength of the Senior Circuit. On the other hand, you could say that those rookies succeeded in part because the NL was relatively weak this year.