Dodgers fan confidence in team still going strong

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Dodgers fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

As you may have guessed, Dodgers fans are still voting in the 80 percent range. For the past nine weeks, the polls show fan confidence remains steady.

Despite the results being consistently high, fans from another team in the NL West are much more confident in their squad. San Diego Padres fan confidence has not dipped below 90 percent ALL YEAR. If Padres fans can still have faith, maybe Dodgers fans shouldn’t be so hard on their team. After all, the Dodgers are 17 games above the Friars.

SB Nation FanPulse

Let’s take a second to talk about what the Dodgers can do to decrease the 20 percent skepticism gap.

First and foremost, the bullpen. The Dodgers relief pitchers are finally starting to find their groove, but they remain the most unsteady part of the team. Perhaps adding a new arm to their pen will raise fan confidence ... and help them win more games.

Now let’s take a look at Joc Pederson.

Pederson has played at first base 11 times in the last 13 games. This move — highly publicized in the Dodgers sphere — is debated amongst fans. So, we decided to ask the fans what they think about Joc’s new trial run at first base.

The respondents nearly split the vote, but ultimately were not in favor of Joc at defensive position No. 3. Fifty-five percent of fans voted against the move while the other 45 percent would like to see Pederson continue his new role.

We asked the same question on Twitter, where the results seem to lean heavily towards the “no” side. And yes, the tweet has a typo.

Pederson has -1 defensive runs saved in 11 games at first base and four defensive runs saved in 69 games in the outfield. Though this comparison does not have same sample sizes, it is interesting to note.

Remember, you can sign up to participate in future FanPulse surveys using this link! Surveys will go out each week and only take a few minutes to complete. We would love to have your input to make the results representative of the entire fan base.

See you next week with more results!