Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

Category: Dodgers (Page 32 of 70)

I want my baby back, baby back, baby back wins

The Giants “play as a unit, as a team, grinding out victories,” ESPN announced Dan Shulman said.

– Dodger Thoughts, May 5, 2013

I never get tired of Dodger victories. Even my favorite foods can get old through repetition – I can’t eat baby back ribs five nights in a row. But Dodger victories always go down smooth, and frequency only makes them sweeter.

After tonight’s 4-2 victory over San Francisco, giving the Dodgers a series sweep and pulling them within six games of first place in the National League West, my appetite is only growing.

In a taut ninth inning, Kenley Jansen retired the final three batters with the tying runs on base, saving Clayton Kershaw’s victory. Kershaw completed eight innings, striking out seven while allowing five baserunners, including a two-run homer by Buster Posey that put the Dodgers behind in the fourth inning, 2-1.

The Dodgers rallied with three runs in the bottom of the sixth, threading a double with three singles and a wild pitch, and the victory was theirs for the taking. And they took it.

Kershaw CLXVI: Kershawmp and Circumstance

Giants at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.

Matt Kemp is not in the Dodger starting lineup tonight. According to Dylan Hernandez of the Times, the Dodgers scheduled a day off for him after his return to action Tuesday.

What a difference a catch makes

Welcome back, Kemper

Giants at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.

Matt Kemp is in the Dodger starting lineup tonight, batting fifth.

Easy Puigy: Dodgers 3, Giants 1

Things went right. Again.

Yasiel Puig hit an effortless homer in the first inning. Hyun-Jin Ryu allowed 11 baserunners to his first 24 batters, and gave up but a run. Buster Posey fall down. Puig hit an effortless go-ahead single in the eighth. The bullpen faced eight batters without a hit or walk.

The Dodgers won their third straight game for the first time in more than two months, ending a five-game losing streak to San Francisco with a 3-1 victory tonight. Funny when things are happy.

Despite his unreal start, Puig was the cause of some concern heading into this game, having gone 1 for 7 with three strikeouts in the final two games in San Diego. But quietly, he drew two walks, showing signs of willingness or ability to lay off bad pitches. What would that mean tonight?

In the first, Puig took a called strike, then a ball, then smoothly drove a Madison Bumgarner pitch on the corner down the right-field line and just inside the pole for a 1-0 Dodger lead.

In the third, Puig fouled off a strike, swung and missed, then lined to center.

In the sixth, it was ball, foul, miss and then a single to center.

And in the eighth, facing the same George Kontos who gave up Clayton Kershaw’s eighth-inning, tiebreaking Opening Day home run, Puig took ball one, then lined a hard single to left field to drive home Nick Punto, who had led off the inning with a double.

That meant for the game, Puig saw 12 pitches and had more hits (three) than missed swings (two). He now has a .476 on-base percentage and .753 slugging percentage.

Puig also had an odd play in the top of the seventh, when Posey launched the 108th and last pitch from Ryu to the wall in right field. Puig camped under it, only to have the ball strike the wall above his head and miss his glove completely. It was the 12th baserunner to reach against Ryu, and the first since he got a 1-2-3 double play to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth (after Posey tripped hitting third base and had to stay there instead of trying to score.)

Ronald Belisario relieved and struck out Hunter Pence on a 3-2 pitch to end the inning, setting the stage for the Dodger bullpen to do what they needed to do – keep the Giants from scoring.

Things went right. Again.

Table for three, anyone?

On April 12, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and Clayton Kershaw on the mound in Arizona, but they lost.

On April 24, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and a ninth-inning lead in New York, but they lost.

On April 27, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and a seventh-inning lead against Milwaukee, but they lost.

On May 13, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and A.J. Ellis tripled, but they got plastered.

On May 17, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and a sixth-inning lead in Atlanta, but they lost.

On May 29, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and two homers in the ninth inning against the Angels’ closer, but they lost.

On June 5, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and Kershaw on the mound against San Diego, but they lost.

On June 8, the Dodgers had a two-game winning streak and … you get the idea.

Eight straight times the Dodgers have failed to win three in a row.  What happens tonight?

Giants at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.

Latka says Dodgers have everything they need


Well shoot, who knew all it takes to be happy is strong starting pitching, capable relief, clutch power hitting, diving catches and all-around greatness from Juan Uribe? We should’ve asked Latka.

Don’t demand the waffle

I’ve written in the past about my recurring dream, in which I’m trying get somewhere but never make it. It takes on many scenarios, but I’m good for having it at least once a week – and those are merely the ones that I can remember when I wake up.

Last night I had one, though with a bit of a twist in that at one point, I actually was moving fast toward my goal. The fact that my goal in this case was completing the buffet on a cruise ship is probably neither here nor there.

There were two lines, and in a fortuitous stroke, I picked the right one. While the buffet line on the left remained stagnant, the one on the right that I found myself in flew forward, and I was ready to get my food far sooner than the random person I had lined up with.

Unfortunately, things ran aground after that. I believe holding out for a waffle was a key factor, but in any case, I found myself stuck in the line as others flowed past me. When I finally sat down, it was in a bad spot with no friends or family and a sparsely filled plate.

The message is clearly this: If the Dodgers unexpectedly get on a win streak, just enjoy the meal. Asking for the waffle on top of it is probably too much.

Dodgers at Padres, 1:10 p.m.

June 22 game chat

Dodgers at Padres, 4:15 p.m.

The Pit of Despair


How low can they go?

The Dodgers’ current .417 winning percentage would be their worst over a full season since 1992, their second-worst since 1944.

Though it’s possible I’m just repressing it, I can’t recall ever expecting a Dodger team to be bad. There have been plenty of times when I wouldn’t have predicted them to win a title, and I was sufficiently skeptical this year, but a truly terrible record always takes me by surprise. That’s one difference I think Dodger fans – even cynical ones – have with fans in Pittsburgh or Kansas City. If you’re predicting horror in a given year, you’re probably in the minority.

The Dodgers won 86 games last year and didn’t hurt themselves in the offseason. Sure, there were weaknesses headed into 2013, but here are the 10 most prominent players the Dodgers shed from 2012: James Loney, Shane Victorino, Juan Rivera, Bobby Abreu, Matt Treanor, Adam Kennedy, Joe Blanton, Nathan Eovaldi, Jamey Wright and Josh Lindblom. Be honest: How could you have expected those departures would put the Dodgers on their current 68-win pace?

That’s right: 68-94.

Here’s one for you: Forget about the playoffs for a moment. Forget about .500. The Dodgers need to play .450 ball over their remaining 90 games to reach 70 wins. Will they do it?

Yes, there have been injuries – Chad Billingsley and Matt Kemp most prominently – but nearly every year has injuries. Team chemistry? The manager? People raise those red flags every time the Dodgers start losing, but are we to believe that this team really has the worst set of intangibles in two decades? You thought the Davey Johnson-Gary Sheffield-Kevin Brown teams were doing a revival of Hair? That Jim Tracy and Paul DePodesta were Romeo and Juliet?

Mediocrity comes with the territory in the post-1988 era. But true awfulness has been a rare thing.

With apologies to the 99-loss season in 1992, the worst stretch of Dodger baseball in my lifetime has probably been 1986-87. That’s the only time since the 1960s that the Dodgers have had back-to-back losing seasons – identical 73-89 campaigns. I know how it began: Pedro Guerrero’s gruesome Spring Training slide into third base – but my memories of 1987, beyond the implosion of Al Campanis, are almost non-existent. Guerrero came back with a vengeance (.416 on-base percentage, .539 slugging), and Orel Hershiser and Bob Welch was steady, but the rest of the team was essentially as incompetent as this year’s.

The core of that awful team won a division title in 1985 and a World Series in 1988. Tommy Lasorda managed every year.

I don’t know when the losing is going to end for this current brand of Big Blue Wrecked Crew. I do know that in Los Angeles, things tend to reverse course in a hurry, good to bad, bad to good. We’ve really seen it all in the past 25 years – all except for a World Series.

Perhaps it will come in a year when we least expect it.

Kershaw CLXV: Kershawnderama

Dodgers at Padres, 7:10 p.m.

Yasiel Puig has a bad three-quarters of a game

Amid everything that was so familiar about a 2013 Dodger defeat – fielding stumbles, poor situational hitting and a bullpen meltdown wasting a capable starting outing – there was something new about Thursday’s 6-3 loss to San Diego: fan frustration with Yasiel Puig.

What’s remarkable – and speaks volumes – is that it came in a game in which Puig hit yet another home run, his sixth (in 16 games) of the season, more than all but one other Dodger.

But after that first-inning, first-pitch blast, Puig struck out a career-high three times, chasing bad pitches like a young Raul Mondesi or Matt Kemp, and from then on you could hear the I told you sos.

Ken Gurnick of MLB.com provides the details of Puig’s second at-bat against Jason Marquis:

… with two on and no out in the third inning, he took a sinker he thought was too far inside and stared at the umpire.

“It seemed to irritate Yasiel and he started to swing at pitches out of the strike zone, and the rest of the night Marquis didn’t give in,” Mattingly said. “Yasiel has been fairly patient, tonight [he was] more aggressive out of the strike zone.”

He swung wildly at the next sinker and foul-tipped it. Marquis then came with a pair of down-and-away sliders Puig flailed at. Puig stared at Marquis as he headed toward the dugout and Marquis stared back. …

By the time Puig followed Skip Schumaker’s double-play grounder with a game-ending strikeout in the ninth – turning what for a brief moment looked like the potential for a stirring Dodger comeback into a deeper dive into last place – numerous Dodger fans on Twitter were not only chastising Puig but instructing him how he needs to change his stance.

Reminder: Puig has a 1.267 OPS at this moment.

Three points that should be obvious need to be stated:

• Baseball is a game of adjustments, and without a doubt, at some point Puig will need to make them. It’s understandable why alarm bells went off for fans with visions of a struggling Mondesi or Kemp. It was at a similar stage in his debut – after seven homers and a 1.287 OPS in his first 15 career games – that Kemp’s game first went south, pushing him back to the minors four weeks later.

• That being said, it’s one thing for fans to be frustrated, but after what he’s accomplished, Puig deserves more than three bad at-bats before the wolves come out, much less before people start tinkering with his stance in response to what simply might have been a night of frustration of his own. He is not going to spend his career flirting with a .500 batting average, so there needs to be some amount of pain tolerance.

• Puig is the least of the Dodgers’ worries right now.

The game was not without its highlights. Here’s one, courtesy of Adrian Gonzalez.

But the Padres outdid the Dodgers.

* * *

For you Manny Mota fans out there – and how could you not be one – here’s a detailed piece from Bruce Markusen at the Hardball Times on the famed Dodger pinch-hitter, who will be inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals this summer.

June 20 game chat

Dodgers at Padres, 7:10 p.m.

Rare dominant victory for Dodgers, 6-0

Before there were two out in the first inning at Yankee Stadium tonight, the Dodgers had five hits, which that quickly matched or exceeded their total in nine other games this year.

When the game was over, the Dodgers had a 6-0 victory over the Yankees, matching their second-biggest triumph of 2013. Only a 9-2 victory over Milwaukee on May 22 topped it.

I missed most of what happened in between, because of the sudden death of James Gandolfini, but Yasiel Puig and Hanley Ramirez (each 2 for 4) continued their exploits from Wednesday’s first game, joined by Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Capuano. Puig singled, was hit by a pitch, stole a base and shot his fifth homer of the season over the right-field wall, giving him three runs on the day. Gonzalez doubled and had two singles, Ethier singled and doubled, and Skip Schumaker added two singles.

Capuano, meanwhile, came off the disabled list to pitch six shutout innings, allowing three baserunners and striking out four. Chris Withrow followed with two perfect innings, and Brandon League pitched the ninth to complete the Dodgers’ eighth shutout of the year.

The victory pushed the Dodgers back to within 10 games of .500 at 30-40, eight games behind Arizona in the National League West.

Yankees, miscues bury Dodgers, 6-4

Well, they could have won.

That’s the positive to take away from the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the New York Yankees in today’s doubleheader lidlifter. And if that positive sounds a little Little League, well, the shoe kinda fits.

Los Angeles actually scored four runs, and Hyun-Jin Ryu allowed three. But as you know by now, there’s going to be more to the story.

There was Andre Ethier’s line-drive 1-5 double play with runners on second and third and none out in the fourth inning. That would be the 2013 Dodger season in a nutshell, if that nutshell didn’t also need to account for someone ripping a tendon and a bullpen meltdown.

In the seventh inning, J.P. Howell and Ronald Belisario cooperated with the latter, which featured a double non-play – a bobble and a throwaway — that gave Los Angeles four errors on the day and helped the Yankees go from a 3-2 lead to 6-2.

Yasiel Puig and Hanley Ramirez did their best to help the Dodgers overcome their foibles. Puig was a very loud 2 for 5. He hit a grounder up the middle in the first inning for a single but was caught trying to stretch it into a double — a boneheaded running play except for the fact that he almost made it. In the sixth inning, he hit a thunderbolt up the middle that brought Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano to the ground before the out was completed at first.

And in the eighth, Puig legged a double and then, in a rare feat, actually scored on someone else’s RBI. Ramirez’s fourth straight hit was a home run to left field that would have been quite the thrill if the previous inning hadn’t put the Dodgers down by four.

Back-to-back walks by Ethier and Juan Uribe put the tying runs on base with one out, but Skip Schumaker (who, mind you, had two errors in the game) popped out, and A.J. Ellis grounded out.

The two walks did help guarantee that Puig would bat in the ninth inning for the Dodgers … against Mariano Rivera. That happened with the bases empty and two out, and after taking two balls and swinging at two strikes, Puig froze on a called strike three down the middle from Rivera to end the game.

Puig remains an astonishing 25 for 53 this season.

Hiroki Kuroda went 6 2/3 innings for the Yankees, allowing two runs on eight hits and a walk while striking out two.

Dodgers at Yankees, 4:05 p.m.

Page 32 of 70

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