2024 review: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor had two productive months in 2024 in a largely lost year. However, recent news suggests that his runway to stay with the Dodgers may be rapidly running out.

When reviewing Chris Taylor in 2024, one must realize that if he had been on any other team this past year, he would have likely been released like Jose Abreu: a casualty of a contract that largely has not panned out.

At the beginning of the season, Chris Taylor told The Orange County Register that he was worried about his swing, which he admitted was not his natural swing but one that needed constant work as he built it to get to the major leagues.

“The best way I can describe it is – and I’ve used this term a lot, it’s kind of like a seesaw,” Taylor said. “I used to always try to hit ground balls, low line drives my whole career. I was kind of on this end of the seesaw (he lifts his right hand higher than his left). Then I put a lot of emphasis on hitting the ball in the air. So I got to here (he holds his hands relatively level).

Over the last couple of seasons, though, “I think the seesaw tipped in the other direction” and he developed a swing with too much uppercut, too much emphasis on lifting the ball. … I’m probably one of the tightest guys on the team so I have to get a lot of work done with the trainers and in the weight room to work on my mobility and making sure my body moves the way I want it to. That’s part of the reason my swing is kind of unorthodox with some of my moves and that reverse tip (dropping the bat head behind his shoulder before triggering his swing). That’s kind of funky. But I’m very tense and my back elbow wants to tighten up so this is kind of to keep it loose. I think the reverse tip was bigger in 2017. It got tighter and tighter the last few years. It’s bigger again.

Taylor’s fears were justified. To use Taylor’s metaphor, he fell off the seesaw for large portions of 2024, and taken as a whole, Taylor was awful for large stretches of the season.

Through the year’s first two months, Taylor generated unfavorable comparisons to 2023 Trayce Thompson. Taylor even went 0 for 31 at one point. From March 28 to May 29, Taylor played in 33 games with 21 starts. He went 8 for 74, which resulted in a slash line of .108/.221/.122. He had only a single extra-base hit — a double against the Reds on May 24.

During this stretch, he had 35 strikeouts and only nine walks. He was literally striking out in almost half of his at-bats. Taylor’s situation became so dire during this stretch that he was effectively benched for two weeks to clear his head.

Dave Roberts came as close as he ever does to calling out a player, and I was convinced the Dodgers were going to cut bait with Taylor to free up a roster spot.

The Dodgers kept the faith, and Taylor responded with his most productive month of the season in June. In 14 games, with nine starts, he went 10 for 36, which resulted in a .278/.333/.528 slash line. He hit his first two home runs of the year and stole two bases in two attempts.

The second home run of this stretch is noteworthy to Taylor’s season because of external factors. Max Muncy was injured, and with a lack of productive options, Roberts allowed Taylor to try and turn his season around with some runway at third. Taylor went two for three in a loss against the Giants, which seemed a promising way to end June and start July with a clean slate.

It wasn’t.

In 17 games (and 15 starts), Taylor went 9 for 52, which resulted in a .173/.318/.289 slash line. While Taylor had four extra-base hits, including his third home run of the season, he struck out an additional 19 times, which was 36.5 percent of the time in this stretch.

Adding injury to insult, on July 24th, the injury bug finally found Taylor, who suffered a left groin strain while breaking up a no-hitter. At the time, Taylor hoped the injury would be minor.

“I’ve never really had a groin or adductor injury before,” Taylor said, as shown on SportsNet LA. “I don’t want to guess or speculate. I’ll see what the doctors say. I didn’t feel a pop or anything like that, so I’m hoping it’s very minor.”

It was not, as he lost a month.

By the time he returned in late August, Muncy had returned to his duties at third base, and the infield runway had been closed, relegating Taylor to part-time duty again.

All things considered, Taylor had a productive final six weeks of 2024. In 23 games with 11 starts, he went 16 for 51 while in limited duty playing left field, second base, third base, center field, and pinch running. This stretch of time resulted in a .314/.368/.412 slash line with two doubles, his fourth home run of the year, and two more stolen bases.

He even had his only game where he had more than two hits: he went three for three in mop-up duty against the Rockies in Denver on September 28. He finally got his batting average above the Mendoza line on the season’s final day.

For the year, Taylor hit .202/.298/.300. Taylor was ninth on the team in strikeouts with 76 in literally half as many games (83) as everyone else. With that pace, had Taylor played a full season, the only two Dodgers who would have struck out more than our hypothetical Taylor would be Shohei Ohtani (162) and Teoscar Hernandez (188).

Taylor made the postseason roster as a bench player and played in all three rounds as a late-game replacement. He appeared in all but three games of the Dodgers’ postseason run. While only going 3 for 13 with five strikeouts, in a bit of trivia, Taylor scored the tying run while pinch-running for Gavin Lux on the base paths during Freddie Freeman’s historic grand slam to end Game 1 of the World Series.

To his credit, Taylor was the consummate teammate. He never complained and always worked and supported the team, making write-ups like this one painful.

As we enter the final year of Taylor’s current contract, to borrow a verse from Herman’s Hermits, the third verse was the same as the second and first: ineffectiveness mixed with injury.

Moreover, Taylor is now in the most important offseason of his career. On Black Friday, the Dodgers extended Tommy Edman to a deal and a role that should be strikingly similar to Taylor. Taylor is one of the last remnants of the 2017 team, signifying the previous era of the Dodgers.

While time catches up to us all, if Taylor wants to remain part of this organization, he cannot afford to repeat his 2024 performance in 2025 — not with his likely replacement signed to a five-year extension and a pending option decision waiting at the end of the season.

2024 particulars

Age: 33

Stats: 202/.298/.300, 74 wRC+, 246 PA, 4 HR, 28 R, 23 RBI, 5 SB, -0.5 fWAR, -0.1 rWAR

Salary: $15 million

Game of the year

As stated above, Taylor did not play many games of individual excellence in 2024, making this selection difficult. Accordingly, Taylor on June 30 was two for three with a home run and scored two runs in a blowout loss in San Francisco. This game is selected over the season’s penultimate game for a single reason: he played the entire game.

Roster status

Taylor will make $13 million in 2025, the final guaranteed season of his contract. The Dodgers hold a $12 million club option for 2026 with a $4 million buyout.