By Jon Weisman
Well, that was a nice wire-to-wire victory for the Dodgers tonight.
As Los Angeles stomped the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-0 in 141 minutes, allowing only two singles and two walks, these noteworthy feats emerged.
Hyun-Jin Ryu
Ryu allowed six earned runs in two innings at the Dodgers’ home opener a week ago. Here’s how far back you have to go to find more than six earned runs allowed by Ryu on the road:
- Tonight at Arizona: seven innings, zero runs
- March 30 at San Diego: seven innings, zero runs
- March 23 at Arizona (in Sydney): five innings, zero runs
- Sept. 24 at San Francisco: seven innings, one earned run
- Sept. 16 at Arizona: eight innings, two earned runs
- Aug. 19 at Miami: 7 1/3 innings, three earned runs
- Aug. 8 at St. Louis: seven innings, one unearned run
- Aug. 2 at Chicago Cubs: 5 1/3 innings, two earned runs
Ryu has pitched 21 consecutive shutout innings on the road and has a road ERA of 0.27 in his last 33 road innings.
Adrian Gonzalez
Gonzalez had five RBI tonight — four by the top of the third inning — to give him the 24th game of at least four RBI in his career and third game of at least five RBI. His career high of six RBI came against the Dodgers on May 19, 2010.
Hanley Ramirez
The Dodger shortstop had two doubles tonight, tying him for the MLB lead with six this season. One of three Dodgers to play all 100 innings his season, Ramirez has combined his new-found durability with a .383 on-base percentage and a .595 slugging percentage.
Dee Gordon
Two more hits for Gordon, whose OBP is now .439 while slugging .541. He also stole his fifth base, tying him for second in the Majors. Still, expect him to start Saturday’s game on the bench when the Dodgers face Arizona lefty Wade Miley.
oldbrooklynfan
Last night’s game was like a fantasy. I know the Dodgers have championship quality caliber team but last night wasn’t only one sided but a very well played game offensively and defensively by the Dodgers. It was a real live dream.
Robert Fiore (@RobertFiore1)
Regarding Dee Gordon, I thought you might be interested in the answer to a question a posted on Bill James’ site, as to whether there is precedent for a player to learn to hit four years into his career. James’ answer:
“Well, Gordon hit .304 as a rookie in 2011 (224 at bats), then had a couple of tough years. There is certainly precedent for THAT: Matty Alou hit .310 as a rookie in 1961 (200 at bats), then struggled terribly from 1963-1965, got traded to Pittsburgh and hit .342, became a steady .330 hitter. It seems like Matty gets mentioned here at least once a week. Anyway. . ..highest career batting averages for players who hit .260 or less through a season ending with 500 or more at bats in the majors: 1. Ed Delahanty, .346. 2. Hughie Jennings, .311. 3. Baby Doll Jacobson, .311, 4. Luke Appling, .310. 5. Matty Alou, .307. 6. Charlie Jamieson, .303. 7. Buck Ewing, .303. 8. Rube Bressler, .301. 9. Michael Young, .300 so far. 10. Reggie Jefferson, .300. 11. Dante Bichette, .299. 12. Barry Bonds, .298. Intuitively, it doesn’t seem to me like we have persuasive evidence that Dee Gordon won’t be a good hitter. In his career so far, he is less than 25 hits short of .300. That’s not a lot.”
When you think back on how we didn’t realize what we had with Adrian Beltre, which is a near-Hall of Famer, we might want to give this some thought.