What if Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford didn’t get hurt at the same time?

We haven’t done a “What if Wednesday” in a while. It’s time to bring it back.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Carl Crawford hadn’t have gotten hurt? By Owen Main

What if?

It’s a question that more successful people than me don’t ask themselves very often. For me though, the question of what could have been can be quite cathartic at worst and super interesting at best.

During spring training, Dodgers brass continually gave the same answer. It didn’t matter how well the young Cuban phenom was playing, they weren’t going to put him into the big leagues to start the season. And if they weren’t going to pull the trigger after a spring during which he batted .526, then Dodger fans would likely have to wait another year to see Puig grace the hollowed grounds of Chavez Ravine.

Fate, though, works in interesting ways. In the midst of a hugely disappointing start to the season, team leader Matt Kemp landed himself on the disabled list. The Dodgers decided to stand pat on Puig and use Skip Schumaker and Jerry Hairston Jr. instead. Then Carl Crawford went down. With Kemp already on the disabled list, the Dodgers had reached their threshold of need and decided to call Puig up. At the time, the team was 23-32.

Now, the Dodgers are 69-50. They gave the kid a shot and it’s worked out pretty nicely. With Puig on the major league roster, the team is 46-18, including winning 39 of their last 47 games.

When Puig was called up for the game on June 3, the Dodgers stood 7.5 games back and in last place in the division. Today, they are clearly the division’s best team, 7.5 games ahead of second place Arizona.

I find myself asking today, “What if”?

What if Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford had not been hurt at the same time? It was somewhat predictable that one or both of them would have been on the disabled list at some point during the season, but the Dodgers obviously felt that one of them being hurt was no reason to bring up the precocious and raw Puig. (ed. note — You can see why they were hesitant to bring him up this year. He makes stupid baserunning and defensive decisions and is a lightning rod for controversy. His batflip, while magestic, is sure to continue to enrage pitchers and opponents).

If the Dodgers had chosen to keep Puig down on the farm, we might have seen Joc Peterson — the team’s next best outfield prospect. He might have done all right, but he’s no Puig.

Had the Dodgers chosen to let Kemp and Crawford come back, they would have. It’s doubtful though, that the Dodgers would have even maintained striking distance at all with any of their division rivals in the mean time.

Had the team continued to wallow, the Dodgers would have lost so much of the momentum their new ownership and “Whole New Blue” campaign gave them. Being irrelevant in Los Angeles is worse than being in last place, though. So the team did the only thing they could have done — they picked up the phone, called Chattanooga, and brought Puig up to the big club.

Winning or losing, the team was instantly relevant once again. That meant that when they did finally go on their current winning streak, everyone was already watching.

Everyone still is.

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It’s a mild October evening in Los Angeles. The Dodgers are in the midst of a division series, or NLCS, or World Series. It’s a crucial moment in a post-season that the Dodgers would never have gotten to without the spectacular play of a young rookie.

That young rookie steps to the plate. What if he delivers the big hit? What if he goes from nice story, to Fernando-like legend. Will you be watching?