It's been a perfect storm of undervaluing defense, misjudging defensive prowess, executing defensive analytics badly, failing to develop defense, and players underperforming.
The Dodgers system does seem to work though. If they still consider Justin Turner a viable 3B at his age surely Bohm can remain so at his. And there's no reason Kingery can't play as well as Chris Taylor, if he has it in him to be that good.
With Hoskins it's still not clear if they thought "who cares if he stinks in LF?" - i.e. the analytics said it didn't matter - or if they legitimately thought he could provide an acceptable level of performance, especially with good positioning. If he had actually hit well while adjusting to the position he also still might be there.
They also claimed Kingery graded better than Crawford at SS but you don't see them putting him back there do you? And then they gave the job to Cabrera that year.
And somehow they ruined Herrera even in the field, which I'm sure was a two-way street, and now Cutch predictably is in decline.
But obviously the argument still exists that last year's offense was good enough to compensate for bad defense, and last year's rotation was good enough to make the playoffs easily. It was just the bullpen. They certainly didn't do anything to fix the defense, though hopefully Harper will still be good (he graded terribly last year apparently). Maybe Didi will be better rather than worse, he's still only one full season worth of games removed from coming back, and also had to deal with the mask and COVID stress last year.
