Dodger Thoughts

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

How bad was June?

The Dodgers hit more home runs on September 18, 2006 (in the 4+1 game) than they hit in the entire month of June.

I’m guessing that it’s been a while since the Dodgers had as many triples as home runs in a month. Not to mention the same amount of hit batters.

Leaving aside the small-sample MVP performance at the plate by Chad Billingsley, this is what we have …

In his Dodger career, Juan Pierre had a .339 on-base percentage, .357 slugging percentage and .696 OPS.  Except for A.J. Ellis’ .380 OBP, every other Dodger in June was below the Pierre lines. (Pierre, by the way, OPSed .738 for the Phillies in June.)

As a team, the Dodgers OPSed .571.  The only pitchers last year to hold opponents to an OPS below .571 were Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander.

The Dodgers had 191 hits in 899 at-bats.  Steve Garvey had seven seasons in which he had more than 191 hits.

Juan Uribe went 5 for 42 with no walks.

Dee Gordon and Tony Gwynn Jr. managed to hit into seven double plays.

Gwynn’s .229 batting average was the second-best on the team. Every Dodger regular not named Juan hit between .200 and .230 in June.

With all that, the Dodgers were having a winning month until their current seven-game losing streak began.

Tonight could become the first night of 2012 that the Dodgers haven’t been in line for a postseason berth. They are currently tied with the Mets for the No. 2 wild-card position, .001 behind Pittsburgh.

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72 Comments

  1. this isn’t a regression. can’t be accounted for by advanced metrics. this is now officially biblical retribution. 

    • Anonymous

      Good thing I slaughtered that lamb last night and smeared the blood on my front door.

    • i’m going with the theory that someone really really important is unhappy about the new dodger ownership making frank mccourt rich. Ned better start building that ark NOW.

  2. Jonathan Broxton made AL All Star final vote list. How could that be possible? I thought he was the Worst Pitcher Ever and my fellow Dodger fans were glad to see him flee the city.

    • have you seen him pitch? he’s not the broxton you remember. check the K per inning thingy you guys look at.

      • Anonymous

        I think you were missing the original point there.

      • Anonymous

        Yeah he doesn’t strike anybody out now. KC’s been fortunate so far with giving him closer money, but I don’t think he’ll have a place on our pen.

    • Anonymous

      That’s one ox that got gored around here.

    • Anonymous

       What speed is he pitching now?  I assume he wouldn’t still be in the bigs if he was still throwing those 96mph meatballs that think they are 101mph fireballs like he was in the end here.

    • It’s a fair point, he’s not missing bats this year. His stats are a bit misleading and they’re overrating saves. Still, better than his final season in LA.  And yes my other point was that he was kind of overused and abused by Dodgers and then excoriated by fans who thought he was doner than done.  He’s been better than decent at least, in a tougher AL environment. 

      • Anonymous

         If he’s made the adjustment from washed-up fireballer to actual pitcher, good for him.

        I think the lack of visibility in terms of his toe issues caused a little resentment for whatever reason.

        • Thanks for the report. Yeah, saw him pitch a couple of times this year and he definitely looked better than last year in LA where he was just banged up in several places and not what he’d been.

  3. Christopher Staaf

    OK, what was the most alarming number on the stat sheet? 6 home runs by the entire team was horrible but I am gonna go with Dee Gordon leading the team with 25 Ks in June. 

    • Anonymous

      Meh, that’s just a 20% K rate.  Alarming is A.J. with 28% for June.

      • Anonymous

        AJ needs to start hitting some or his OBP won’t stay at .380 for log. No use having a good eye if you can’t punish pitchers for getting behind the count.

        • People have been telling Ellis that his whole career, and he has consistently proven them wrong. 

        • AJ is not a great hitter, he’s  a great walker. when he was in no. 2 hole the pitchers went right at him when there were runners on. and while he walked some, when runners were on he mostly struck out. he does better in the back of the lineup because they’re not so intent on challenging him.

    • Anonymous

      Dan Uggla led all NL players with Ks in June with 33. The #2 player?

      Why, none other than Cody Ransom with 32. Giancarlo Stanton also had 32.

      17 different players hit more home runs in June than the Dodgers did as a team. 

      • Anonymous

         Adam Dunn had 43 in June.  Moving him to the AL opened that field right up.  Upton also missed 5 games in June, otherwise he’d be in the running.

    • Anonymous

       I personally like Harang as a bigger plate threat than Uribe.

  4. Anonymous

    On-topic, the BP playoff predictor just gave us a -32.3% 7 day delta.

    That might be a pre-ASB record.

    • is that good or bad?

      • Anonymous

         Extremely bad if you think their modeling has any value – basically it says they think we went from 2/3 odds to make the playoffs to 1/3 in the space of a week.

        Of course, relative to itself, the Phils had an even more disastrous week – 1/10 to 1/25.

        • so which analysis was wrong. both can’t be right right?

          • Anonymous

            Sorry, VODF, not getting your question.  The projection is just a mixture of the team’s current performance and BP’s Jamesian voodoo.

            Note, Baltimore is at 15% vs Boston at 45% despite a better record.

          • sorry isotope i was just trying to get a rise out of mike tink. no honestly i know you were just offering it up as fyi. i was being difficult. it just seems to me so many of the stats are produced to produce stats and make the stat people happy. which of course i don’t mind at all. it’s just when a stat person takes some of those meaningless bits of info and try to make some argument out of it without taking into account non stat factors. and swearing it’s obviously god’s word. so sorry for the interruption. Carry on.

          • Anonymous

            why not?

  5. Was hoping Capuano would make the All Star game, he sure deserved it. He’s pitching the last game before the break though (I think?) so he wouldn’t pitch anyway; still, symbolically would’ve been nice.

  6. Anonymous

    June was a very rough month to listen to the Dodgers on radio and hear the promos for the team with Steiner yelling “THE HOME RUNS JUST KEEP COMING!”

  7. A.J. Ellis is 3 for 8 with a walk batting in the No. 2 slot. With runners on base while batting in the No. 2 slot, his OBP is .333 (6 PA). He’s played two games in that batting slot, so I can’t see how one could draw any lasting conclusions about his ineffectiveness there.

    • well it’s the opinion i came up with after watching each at bat. my recollection is seeing him strike out three times with men on base in front of him when the pitchers came right at him. i remember a walk. and i remember a single. i was thinking when i watched that he looked helpless in those couple times with Dee on first and ethier coming up next i believe. that’s how i came to that opinion. perhaps you saw them to and have a different opinion. 

      • So because he struck out those three times, he’s hopeless with runners on base, despite everything else he’s done with runners on base?

        • darn it jon i’ve never ever said aj ellis is hopeless. i say he’s best suited for the back half of the lineup because it plays to his strengths. i don’t believe batting second plays to his strengths. but that’s just my opinion. i try to make my opinions as best i can based on what i see.

          • You wrote, ” he does better in the back of the lineup because they’re not so intent on challenging him.”

            You drew that conclusion based on two games, in which he actually performed reasonably well. 

            His strengths are working the count and getting on base. Batting second basically had no impact on that.  

            Sometimes it’s best to wait before forming an opinion.  Two games at the No. 2 slot, in my mind, is not enough – especially when a good amount of evidence contradicts that opinion. 

          • Well i’m trying to agree with you Jon. But when Dee Gordon is on first and Andre Ethier is batting behind you they’re not going to let you work the count. they’re going to come at you with their best stuff to avoid as much trouble as possible.. and if they’re got good stuff it will work. at the back of the lineup they can dance around more. they have weak hitters coming up next. they don’t have a threat like dee gordon on the base in front of them. they don’t have to come right at you. working this situation is ellis’ strenght. you have to know something about situational baseball to make a full and complete opinion. not just stats. but that’s just my opinion.

          • the reason elian’s stats are coming down is not because he’s a 9 year minor league player but because the pitchers have adjusted. and the adjustment they have made is challenging him. he was not swinging at balls outside the zone almost as much as ellis. he was geting to 3-2 everytime. now the pitchers have figured it out. elian’s trying to adjust by ambushing pitchers earlier but so far hasn’t worked. he’s got to be a better hitter if he’s going to bat second. but seeing as how he’s only seen major league pitching for two months he still has a chance to make that adjustment. if he was batting 8th he’d be doing better but the whole team can’t bat 8th.

          • Anonymous

            While, I’m sure there will come a time when you will do what MSTI had to do and ban vodf, he does keep making the same point over and over which breaks one of the rules here, actually AJ did not perform reasonably well, imo, in the 2 games he batted second in the line-up. One was when Gordon hit 8th on May 31 and the other Gordon lead off on June 12. If you take a closer look at those games I think you will agree

    • Anonymous

      I think Ellis and some of the others have fallen into that “trying to do too much” in Kemp’s absence, trying to hit a double or homer instead of a single or even taking a walk. 

  8. Anonymous

    AJ Ellis…. sure having an interesting season, isn’t he?
    ….
    Just when I begin to get frustrated with him for taking too many pitches and getting behind in the count (ala.. VODF’s comment) …. he seems to frequently come up with some really nice 2-strike base hits (ala. Weisman’s comment) ….
    ….
    To me, he’s an enigma (but the good and nice kind) … :-)

    • i like ellis. i think he’s a great story. and i was on the side last year that said they were obviously missing a bet about playing him. don baseball has almost admitted he might have made a mistake on that. still i don’t think he’s the best catcher in the National League or a great hitter. I think he gets absolutely everything out of what he has which is a fantastic attribute. and i’ll take him any day of the week. but he’s not the hitting legend the sabre rattlers try to make him out to be. he’s a smart hitter, just not a great one by any means.

    • Anonymous

       You can always debate how much a catcher has to do with pitcher performance, but he also deserves credit for catching some great pitching performances this year.  I expected much less from Lilly, Harang and Cap than what they gave us in the first 50 games, and AJ may have had a better-than-average role there.

      • Anonymous

        Catchers ERA is soooooooooo underrated.

  9. Anonymous

    Also… I don’t know how many of you listened to Kevin Kennedy on Post Game Dodger Talk after the game yesterday, but he had some really nice things to say about Mark Ellis.  And spoke about just how much Donny loves this guy.  Ellis sure impressed me early on.
    ….
    To me, he seems like the right guy at the right time for this club.

    • i’m pretty sure mark ellis was panned as a signing by the numbers folks.

      • foul tip

         Around here there’s considerable diversity of opinion about nearly every signing and trade, for as many reasons as there are opinions.  And some who even think “let’s see how it goes.”

         If the newer stats/numbers weren’t a significant advancement in measuring players, they wouldn’t have been adopted so widely throughout the game over the last few years.  But they’re not perfect, and I don’t think anyone is very well served by being a slave to them.

        But–while I don’t think intangibles should be disregarded–the more complete picture available through advanced stats seems to be on target more often than not.

  10. Anonymous

    He’s no Scott Hairston.

  11. I thought they were going to announce the HR derby participants this morning? Anybody know when that will happen?

  12. Anonymous

    I’d vote for our old friend a ton of times, Brox…………if you know who wasn’t on the final five ballot.

    ZERO ERAs rule!!!

  13. I’m very sorry to have given the impression that I knew nothing about situational baseball before today.  Sheesh. 

  14. Anonymous

    Below the table Jon provided it says View Original Table. If you click on that you can put the various stats in ascending or descending order by clicking on the abbreviations at the top of each column.
    Here is a link to a Baseball-Reference page for the season to date where you can see the % GIDP each Dodger hitter has as compared with his AB’s when he had a chance to do so. Rivera is at the top with an incredible 9 for 31 in this very negative stat.
    The Dodgers have the most GIDP in the NL at 76 exceeded only by Baltimore. Pittsburg has the least at 45.

    • Anonymous

       That’s been the most painful part of the past month – so many ^&*&^ GIDPs in close games.

  15. Anonymous

    Guerrero hit 15 in June 1985?

  16. foul tip

    And just think….there was a time when 4 Dodgers hit at least 30 HR.  Each!  In the same season!

    Where have you gone,  DustySteveRonReggio?

    • Anonymous

      Piazza, Karros, Mondesi, Zeile :)

      • foul tip

         And, where have you gone EricMikeToddRaulo?  ;-])

  17. Anonymous

    Tonight’s #2 hitter for the Dodgers: A.J. Ellis.

  18. Anonymous

    If you said, ‘Tell me how many Hr we hit in June” and I had only 10 seconds to think about it, I don’t think my answer would have been as high as 6 !

  19. Anonymous

    Perhaps all the losing is making us “chippy” with each other….  :-/
    ….
    How about we all do something ‘different’ with our DT’ing today and try to get the Dodgers a win?
    ….
    Post from a different computer…
    Post while “buzzed” … have a beer….
    Post in pig latin….
    ….
    Personally, I’ll try to not use even one single “period” in any posting I may make this evening…..
    ….
    …. ….. ….. ….. ….. (sorry, just trying to get it out of my system….)  :-)

    • Anonymous

      Scott Hairston is playing tonight.

      The real Scott Hairston.

      At first base for the Mets.

  20. Anonymous

    Miguel Cairo is playing 1b (and Rolen already subbing in at 3b) for the Reds.  

  21. Anonymous

    “The real Scott Hairston” 
    I love it btimm
     

  22. Anonymous

    Is our current 1-11 mark in the last 12 games tied for the worst 12-game span in club history, or have the Dodgers ever lost a dozen or more in a row?

    • Anonymous

      The Dodgers lost 16 in a row back in 1944.

  23. Anonymous

    How do ya like Colletti now??

  24. Reds just took the lead on the Gnats! 2-1 after a 2 run homer from Frazier.

  25. July, please be better than June, She was a harsh mistress. 

  26. I’m a little disappointed Capuano didn’t make the All Star pitching roster. Maybe even ahead of Kershaw, who did make it.

  27. Anonymous

     Benches clear in SF.  Jackass Giant trying to bunt with his face…

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