Spring Training, Day 3

Highlights:

  • Clayton Kershaw allowed only an unearned run and three baserunners in three innings with three strikeouts.
  • Trayvon Robinson had a fourth-inning triple that gave the Dodgers the lead for good.
  • Jamie Hoffmann singled, doubled, scored and drove in a run.

Lowlights:

  • Kershaw, Dioner Navarro and Justin Sellers made errors in a grotesque third inning.
  • Travis Schlichting gave up three runs on four baserunners in an inning of work.

Sidelights:

  • Kershaw walked leadoff batter Juan Pierre, who was then caught stealing.
  • There were more remembrances of Duke Snider, including these from Jay Jaffe, Ross Newhan and Ross Porter, who transcribes an old interview with the legend.
  • The Dodgers have the second-toughest opening schedule in the National League, according to Buster Olney of ESPN.com, with 22 of their first 38 games against teams that were .500 or better last year and 21 of their first 38 on the road. “No team in the majors has a more difficult schedule right out of the starting blocks,” he writes, “with 19 consecutive games to open the season against clubs that finished over .500 last year, including six games against the Giants and back-to-back series on the road at Colorado and San Diego. And then, after that initial burst of games against NL West teams, they get back-to-back four-game series against the Cardinals and Braves.”
  • Spring training continues to make for colorful departures, as this chronicle of Matt Kemp’s attempted exit from Diablo Stadium by Roberto Baly of Vin Scully Is My Homeboy shows.
  • Alex Belth writes at Bronx Banter about Eliot Asinof’s novel “Man on Spikes,” published before Asinof’s “Eight Men Out.”
  • Paul Francis Sullivan chronicles for the Hardball Times the many paths that former Dodger (and former nearly everything) Mike Morgan crossed.