Dodger Thoughts

A pure “Wow!” moment.

Adrian Gonzalez, piled to the sky with expectations as big as the Louisiana Purchase, set up for glory when the Dodgers started their first inning Saturday with three consecutive hits, pulverized a Josh Johnson fastball down the right-field line at Dodger Stadium for an era-opening three-run home run.

The blast gave the Dodgers a lead and a headline they would never relinquish on their way to an 8-2 victory that cut their deficit in the National League West to two games, though Andre Ethier has done his best to steal the show.

Going 4 for 4 for the second night in a row (with two singles, a double and a homer), Ethier has broken the 35-year-old Los Angeles Dodger record held by Ron Cey and tied the 93-year-old franchise mark of Ed Konetchy with hits in 10 consecutive at-bats. Ethier, left in the on-deck circle when the Dodgers made their final out of the night, had a bloop single to center for the milestone hit – and his home run, it should be noted, came off Marlins lefty Wade LeBlanc. Ethier, who is within two of the major-league record, has credited his streak with choking up on the bat slightly and shortening his swing, in response to the blister he has on his palm.

Johnson withered under the Dodgers’ revamped offense (even without Shane Victorino, who was a late scratch with back pain). He threw 46 pitches in the first inning, only escaping further damage when a borderline 3-2 pitch to Clayton Kershaw was called for strike three, and exited the game after a mammoth 89 pitches in only three innings.

The Dodgers had 10 hits off Johnson, 16 in all, including three by Mark Ellis and Matt Kemp and two apiece for Luis Cruz and A.J. Ellis. Ethier and Mark Ellis each came within a triple of the cycle. Gonzalez ended up 1 for 5.

In the records kept by Baseball-Reference.com, Johnson is only the third starting pitcher to have thrown at least 89 pitches against Los Angeles in a start of three innings or less. Over the past two nights, Johnson and Nathan Eovaldi have combined to throw 165 pitches in only six innings, while allowing 12 runs (including five homers) on 20 baserunners.

Amid all this, Kershaw quietly shut down the Marlins over eight innings. After allowing a leadoff double that came around to score on two groundouts in the first inning, and a Giancarlo Stanton special for another run in the second inning, Kershaw held Miami hitless save for an infield single that replays (and my naked eye, for that matter) concluded should have been an out. Kershaw struck out eight, walked two and threw only five more pitches than Johnson.

The Dodgers have as many homers in the past 26 hours, six, as they had in all of June. The atmosphere at Dodger Stadium … jovial, to say the least.

Adrian Gonzalez and Clayton Kershaw, in the same lineup. Hello.

• At the plate this month, Kershaw is 7 for 10 with a sacrifice fly.
• Keith Law offers a scout’s perspective on the trade at ESPN.com.
• Peter Abraham writes about the traded Red Sox at the Boston Globe under the headline, “Bad contracts, sure, but not bad people.”
• Still awaiting word on the Dodgers’ official roster moves. Will update before the game if they come in a timely fashion.
• Farewell, Neil Armstrong.

Going to try to get away from the computer for much of today – wish me luck – so here are some bullet points.

• As anyone reading this site knows by now, the Dodgers pulled away from the Marlins with a five-run seventh for an 11-4 victory Friday. Andre Ethier went 4 for 4, and Luis Cruz delivered three runs on one play by hitting a 50-foot infield grounder with two on base and circling the bases on two Miami errors. Ethier, Hanley Ramirez and Juan Rivera all homered off former teammate Nathan Eovaldi in the first three innings.
• An MRI on Chad Billingsley “revealed only right elbow inflammation and nothing worse,” reports Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. “He said his elbow felt similar to what it felt like in July, when he was placed on the DL, but that Saturday morning would be a better determinant for his immediate pitching future.”
• Cruz went 2 for 4 to raise his batting average to an incomprehensible .299. Mark Saxon of ESPNLosAngeles.com gives us the backstory on the Dodger folk hero.
• Chad Moriyama breaks down the big trade in detail, while here’s Dave Cameron’s take at Fangraphs and Jay Jaffe’s for SI.com.
• Jaffe provides a chart of the Dodgers’ salary commitments, which I am going to pilfer and place here (all dollar figures in millions, and all annual salaries taken from Cot’s Baseball Contracts):
  

  Player	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
  Gonzalez	$21.00	$21.00	$21.00	$21.00	$21.00	$21.50	$21.50
  Crawford	$19.50	$20.00	$20.25	$20.50	$20.75	$21.00	Free Agent
  Beckett	$15.75	$15.75	$15.75	Free Agent
  Subtotal	$56.25	$56.75	$57.00	$41.50	$41.75	$42.50	$21.50
  Dodgers existing	$105.42	$135.51	$76.66	$48.46	$46.96	$47.46	$29.00
  Total	$161.67	$192.26	$133.66	$89.96	$88.71	$89.96	$50.50

• Did the big trade actually happen, or will we find that it, like everything else, is a figment of Tommy Westphal’s autistic imagination?
• I tweeted this mid-week but never put it on the site: The Dodgers signed 16-year-old lefthanded pitcher Julio Urias from Mexico, according to Ben Badler of Baseball America. “One of the better pitching prospects on the market, (Urias) has touched 92 mph and shown good feel for pitching for his age,” Badler writes.
• Adrian Beltre became the second player ever and first since Joe DiMaggio in 1948 to hit three homers in a game and hit for the cycle in the same week.
• Former Dodger lefty Eric Stults pitched seven shutout innings for San Diego, lowering his ERA to 2.68, and went 2 for 2 with three RBI to help put some distance between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks for second place in the National League West.
• Josh Lindblom (15 baserunners, 7.88 ERA in eight innings) is having a bad time in Philadelphia, writes Ian Riccaboni of Phillies Nation.

The Dodgers scored four runs, three of them in an exciting eighth-inning rally. But that still left them four runs behind the San Francisco on the night – and as a result, 2 1/2 games behind the Giants in the standings.

Hope you’re getting used to the ups and downs by now. This is not a straight path to the finish.

People getting impatient with Matt Kemp for a few hitless games is pretty silly. But Andre Ethier has been a source of frustration for some time now.

Tuesday’s game-ending double play was a tipping point for a few people to point the spotlight at him, including Steve Dilbeck of Dodgers Now, Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. and — in the most detail — Mike Petriello of Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness.

Petriello notes that a second-half slump is nothing new for Ethier, although in the past it was easier to blame things on injuries. This year, he’s not so sure:

… While the poor K/BB trend isn’t good, I don’t think he’s suddenly lost all patience and ability to make contact. It seems to me that it’s more of a symptom than a cause, and that the real root of the trouble is simply this: other managers aren’t blind.

Here’s what I mean by that. Check out the percentage of lefty pitching that Ethier has faced over the last six years, shown in the table at right. For years, Ethier routinely faced lefties 25-30% of the time. This year it’s well over 40%, and as I hardly need to tell you, Ethier is absolutely awful against lefty pitching. Well, I don’t need to tell you, but I will – in over 1,000 career plate appearances against southpaws, Ethier hits only .238/.298/.351 (.650); this year, it’s even worse .216/.281/.315 (.596). Despite his briefly effective first few weeks against lefties this year, Ethier’s back to his typical awful performance against them, and other managers are taking advantage of that fact. If there’s any mystery here, it’s why it took them so long to do this since Ethier’s never really been able to hit them.

Yet either because Don Mattingly is unwilling to offend a star or he simply has no one on the active roster to turn to (and while I know Mattingly-bashing is a fun sport, I’m more inclined to believe the latter, because the bench is short and does anyone really like Rivera that much?) Ethier continues to hit against lefties.  …

It’s a problem without much of a solution, certainly not as long as first base is in its current quandary. The only moves I can think of are to call up Jerry Sands and Elian Herrera as platoon partners for first base and left field, and get rid of a couple of Juans. Otherwise, we’re just hoping for the best.

In the short term, Stephen offers a source of optimism for tonight:

… A pair of left-handers have had success against Cain in their careers. Andre Ethier is 24-for-50 with two doubles and a triple, hitting .480/.500/.560 against Cain in his career, and is 2-for-3 with a double this season. Ethier has still sitting on 29 doubles on August 5, one double shy of becoming the first Dodger in the 129-year history of the franchise with six consecutive seasons of 30 doubles or more.

James Loney is hitting .364/.429/.533 (16-for-44 with five doubles and a triple) against Cain with 11 RBI in 17 games, including 2-for-3 this season. …

The Dodgers began the season hot at home and cold on the road. Now they are cold at home and hot on the road.

Here are the explanations:

• Through player transactions, the team has evolved from one more suited to playing at home to the opposite (possibility: 15 percent)
• Coincidence (possibility: 80 percent)
• Tides (possibility: 5 percent)
• Anything else (possibility: <0.5 percent)

* * *

Stephen Fife has a 6.05 ERA with Triple-A Albuquerque since being sent back down, largely because he allowed nine runs in 4 2/3 innings on August 16. He has two quality starts in his other outings. In 19 1/3 innings, he has the same number of strikeouts (nine) as homers (three) and walks (six) combined.

I’m still comfortable with the idea that Joe Blanton – as disappointing as he’s been – was a better bet than Fife. Perhaps the tides will allow Rubby De La Rosa to be better still.

* * *

Elsewhere …

• On his 36th birthday, former Dodger Randy Wolf has been released by the Brewers. Wolf had a 5.69 ERA, 1.574 WHIP and 6.13 strikeouts per nine innings this season. Milwaukee will swallow the remainder of his $9.5 million salary for 2012 and a $1.5 million buyout of his 2013 option.
• A few people wrote Tuesday about what impending free agent Nick Swisher of the Yankees will be worth on the open market; Dave Cameron of Fangraphs used Andre Ethier as a comparison.
• Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports devotes his column to the Matt Kemp-Tim Lincecum at-bat with the bases loaded Tuesday.
• The double-shot of 10-strikeout, no-walk performances by Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw on Monday marked only the third time since 1920 such a feat happened in the same game, according to Elias Sports Bureau.
• Former Dodger Jon Link has a 0.75 ERA in a comeback-from-release attempt with the Marlins’ New Orleans affiliate, writes Christopher Jackson of Albuquerque Baseball Examiner.
  

  … Link was cut (by Norfolk) on June 12 and was still unemployed going into July.

  “A month without a paycheck and a baby on the way is not the best situation to be in,” he said. …

• Carson Cistulli of Fangraphs has fun with an 1887 newspaper baseball clipping.
• Umpire Jim Joyce performed life-saving CPR on an Arizona Diamondbacks employee Monday.
• Best wishes to MLB players union chief Michael Weiner, who is being treated for a brain tumor.

Heavens to Murgatroyd.

What a revoltin’ development.

Sheesh.

These and other expressions summarize tonight’s 4-1 Dodger loss to the Giants.

For starters, the Dodgers lost by three runs on a night they gave away at least three runs – all after starting pitcher Joe Blanton surrendered two runs before he got an out.

Blanton allowed 10 of the first 19 batters he faced to reach base and was charged with all four San Francisco runs in another disappointing outing that actually lowered his ERA as a Dodger to 7.71. But even as Blanton struggled and Tim Linecum (who retired his first 10 batters) dominated through the first five innings, the game was very winnable, but for some ugly play by the Dodgers.

I’m not exactly a perfectionist, but I offer you the following from the top of the fourth:

• With one out, No. 7 hitter Gregor Blanco singles to center on a ball that Hanley Ramirez seemed to approach glacially. Not an effort issue but a speed issue.
• A Blanton pickoff throw goes awry, and suddenly instead of having a runner on first with one out and the No. 8 and 9 hitters coming up, he’s on third.
• Brandon Crawford reaches and pokes a looper to left field. And again, I know it’s not an effort issue with Shane Victorino, but I thought it would be at best a sacrifice fly. Instead, it was an RBI single.
• Because there is still only one out, Lincecum is able to sacrifice Crawford to second base.
• And with two out, Angel Pagan hits a ground ball up the middle that again illustrated how important range is. Adam Kennedy (2 for 3 at the plate) couldn’t reach it, and in came the fourth Giant run of the game.

Now, it wasn’t exactly Three Stooges ball out there, but it was frustrating to know that if any one of those four plays were made, the Giants don’t score two runs in the inning, and if any of the first three plays are made, they don’t score at all.

To top it all off, the Dodgers finally got to Lincecum in the sixth inning, with their first four batters reaching base, but only got a single run out of it because A.J. Ellis was nailed at home trying to score from second on a Victorino single – down by four with nobody out. You’ll almost never see that.

The Dodgers lost in every facet of the game today. It happens. Sometimes my kids misbehave, sometimes they don’t clean their rooms, sometimes they skin their knees, and sometimes it all happens in the same day. Life can be hard to watch.

Most of me had given up on the game by the ninth inning, but thanks to Dodger relievers Scott Elbert, Brandon League, Randy Choate and Jamey Wright retiring 10 of the 11 batters they faced, part of me had hope – which grew when Matt Kemp singled with one out. (Kemp went 1 for 3 with a sacrifice fly and made hard contact in three of the four at-bats, including a deep fly to right with the bases loaded in that sixth inning, so I think you can see signs of him busting out of his mini-slump). But with Hanley Ramirez on deck as the potential tying run, Andre Ethier completed a long evening by grounding into a game-ending double play.

That’s all, folks.